Albany's Gilbert Tucker and The Self-Supporting City
H. William Batt
[A presentation made at the annual conference of the Council of
Georgist Organizations, held in Albany, New York, 13 July 2010.
Reprinted from
GroundSwell, July-August 2010]
Albany New York's most notable Georgist was Gilbert Tucker, more
completely Gilbert Milligan Tucker, Jr. He deserves a significant
place in the Georgist pantheon of historic figures. He was born on
November 3, 1880, died on February 26, 1968 at the age of 88 in
Monterey, CA, where he'd lived for a short time, and was brought
home to be interred in Albany Rural Cemetery family plot. He was
survived by his wife, Mildred, of many years, but had no children.
Tucker wrote six books, four on Georgist philosophy which deserve
our attention. They are The Path to Prosperity (1935), For
the Good of All (1944), Common-Sense Economics (1957),
and The Self-Supporting City, (1946, revised 1958). His last
two books were Your Money and What to Do With It (1960) and
The Private School (1965).
Writing came to him easily, as his forbears were all journalists.
Luther Tucker, the great-grandfather, was founder of early
newspapers in Rochester and publisher of a farming journal called
The Genesee Farmer, later consolidated with The Country
Gentleman as a monthly which continued until 1955. For many
years it was the largest and most widely circulated agricultural
publication in America. When the first Luther Tucker died in 1873,
responsibility passed to his son, Luther H. (1834-1897). Ownership
ultimately went to the great grandsons Luther H. and Gilbert M.
Tucker, Senior (1847-1932). Tucker Senior wrote a book on American
English, Our Common Speech in 1895, that was an important source
for H. L. Mencken's more widely known book on the subject published
in 1919. In 1913 he offered an exposition of his religious ideas
titled A Layman's Apology.
Gilbert Tucker, Jr. also led a long and interesting life as did
his older brother by eleven years, Luther Henry Tucker. All the male
Tuckers are identified in the records of the elite private boys'
school, Albany Academy. Gilbert Junior graduated in 1898 with a
strong record in French and Latin as well as the sciences. He was
class treasurer, wrote for the literary magazine, and was on the
debating team. Gilbert would go on to Cornell University rather than
to Williams where his father had gone, finishing in three years. His
last book pays tribute to the quality of his Academy education by
noting not only the "criticism and correction" of his
writing but the literature to which he was introduced. (p 68) One of
these authors, he notes, was Henry George. In a letter decades later
to the Headmaster of the Academy, he again expressed gratitude for
its honing his debating skills, noting therein that presiding over a
gathering of "some hundreds" of Georgists was made easier
by this training.
The next time Gilbert Tucker's name appears in history is on April
15, 1912, when he was 31, as he was one of 705 (of about 2,200) to
survive the sinking of The Titanic. His cabin was C-53, First Class,
strategically chosen to be near a woman he'd met in Europe and with
whom he was purportedly smitten. The record shows that he was
rebuffed, however, and he ultimately married at age 42 to Mildred
Penrose Stewart. In stories about the Titanic in the Albany
Times Union and as far away as the Baltimore American,
Tucker was listed as a "prominent person" worthy of note.
During the first World War he was involved in food administration,
and one wonders if he may have known Herbert Hoover who was director
of the relief program. This is noted in the first edition of The
Self-Supporting City. From 1918 to 1933, he was Supervisor of
Exhibits in the New York State Health Department's Division of
Public Health Education. He was responsible for articles, exhibits
and films about epidemiology and health maintenance. The
Department's Health News noted upon his retirement that early on "Mr.
Tucker developed the Healthmobile [sic], probably the first
automobile to be equipped to show health motion pictures in
localities where electric current was not available." The
Department of Health films were shown even in the most remote
sections of the State, frequently before people who had never seen a
motion picture. Tucker's other activities in Albany involved editing
the family's weekly magazine and work with the Albany Institute of
History and Art.
Gilbert Tucker, Jr. grew up in Albany. In 1913 he moved to a 40
acre estate in the Albany suburb of Glenmont. But he returned to the
City of Albany in the late 1950s. He moved to California for the
last three years of his life.
Georgist philosophy was important to him. His first book, The
Path to Prosperity, was published in 1935 at the depth of the
depression, an experience which may have turned his fortunes as well
as his intellectual concerns. This book shows that he was already a
dedicated and knowledgeable Georgist; he begins his first chapter
with a quotation from Progress and Poverty, then lays out
his views on the plight of the nation as he saw it. His exposition
of Georgist thought begins in Chapter VIII, and his remedy follows
Henry George to the letter. He has no use for Roosevelt, and sees
the intervention of government on so massive a scale as both
misguided and threatening. He also expresses alarm at the more
liberal turns in philosophy expressed by the Supreme Court.
He was in the fullest sense a classical nineteenth century
liberal, and his exposition of Georgist thought was grounded in
natural law every bit as much as that of George himself. At the end
of Chapter VI, he wrote, "If we would leave these matters to
work out freely in accordance with natural economic laws, keeping
our fingers out of the pie, we should all be a great deal better
off." He had no regard for social programs, believing that
self-reliance, given the opportunities which a Georgist regime would
offer, would be sufficient to relieve injustice and poverty.
In a pivotal chapter titled "The Land Privilege," he
buttressed his argument — twice! — with passages from
Blackstone. He then pointed out that "In recognizing the right
of absolute ownership of land and its resources, we are denying to
every man his natural right, his share in the ownership of those
things which are rightfully the heritage of all." To further
make his point he chose a quotation remaining from the New York
State Constitution of 1846 and 1894 that, "The People, in their
right of sovereignty, are deemed to possess the original and
ultimate property in and to all lands without the jurisdiction of
the State." This language, deemed a vestige of feudal law
culminating in New York's "rent wars" of the 1840s was
already vitiated by other provisions, and was finally eliminated
only in 1962. Its implications for a Georgist regime of taxing land
rent is a subject for another place and time.
Even though The Path to Prosperity is 75 years old as
this review is written, the book is very timely. The references to
events and issues of the time are few; rather the pages are filled
largely with exposition of general themes and arguments. If the
references to natural law and moral truth are dated to some,
certainly his prose is not, making his work easily readable. He does
cite a few names recognizable today, and his references to the
spectrum, to air and water, and to other resources yielding "rents"
make clear that he understands "land" in the broadest
sense.
Tucker's second Georgist work, For the Good of All, is
half the size of his first Georgist piece and was completed at the
height of the Second World War. Much of what he says earlier, is
repeated, as Georgist thought certainly didn't change. The first
chapter is titled "A Universe of Law," again reflecting
his view that there are laws that govern not only the natural realm
but the moral and political realm as well. But he spends much more
effort in laying out what he sees as the ideals and proper role of
government before then describing "The Great Injustice"
(i.e., the usurpation of land rights), followed then by "The
Doctrine of Henry George" and "Practical Benefits"
(i.e., The Remedy). Almost as much attention is later given to
advocacy of free trade before finally turning to a concern about
world peace. Again, like the first, this book has a timelessness
that warrants its being part of a Georgist compendium.
Mr. Tucker would write The Self-Supporting City at the
end of WWII, but revise it a decade later. A few copies remain
available today from its publisher, the Robert Schalkenbach
Foundation but it's largely forgotten. It touches on urban blight
and explains how land value taxation can revitalize cities in
flagging circumstances. Both editions cover the ground in about 100
pages, exploring in non-mathematical language what has since come to
be known as the Henry George Theorem: that the totality of taxable
rent generated in any urban locality is commensurate with the
community requirements for its services. In hindsight, this is
Tucker's most significant contribution: he unearthed an insight from
Progress and Poverty that others had overlooked until recently. Both
contain chapters on matters such as "the poor widow,"
delinquency and forfeiture, zoning, corruption, and slum clearance.
In line with the thesis of its title, Tucker argues that taxing land
value could supplant other taxes, and indeed that all the ground
rent should be collected (p 24-25, 88,98). The first edition
contains a forward by Lawson Purdy, a leading figure in both the
Georgist movement as well as Director of Taxation and Assessment for
New York City for decades. Probably because the reviews in various
journals were positive, this book is easily accessible in libraries.
He addresses the question whether to call such revenue "ground
rent" or taxes, concluding that it's really a technical point
with no practical difference (p 72-73). He further argues, however,
that governments too should pay ground rents on the sites they
occupy, simply as a matter of cleaner bookkeeping (p 93). By
inference this would include non-profit organizations as well, but
he doesn't explain that doing so would ensure land use efficiencies
now lacking in urban areas. To phase in a shift to taxing land
values, he first proposes that land assessments should be raised to
their true market price. He also proposes public acquisition of land
sites instead of forfeiture for unpaid taxes or delinquency (p 99),
thereby leaving over-extended people their houses. Parts of it are
superseded today by empirical work of the Center or the Study of
Economics now based in Philadelphia. But no exposition of the
arguments is more complete and better written than what The
Self-Supporting City lays out.
Common-Sense Economics was Tucker's last Georgist work, a
textbook issued by the Stackpole Publishing Company in Harrisburg,
one of a series in what was presumptuously called the Stackpole
Library. Two others in the series had more than one printing, used
at the college level in classes of business and economics. In
twenty-eight chapters and just under 300 pages, Tucker's book covers
the ground. I was fortunate in obtaining what is likely the last new
copy. The dust jacket lists questions reflecting subject matter: "Should
Homes be Taxed?, Foolish Spending, Inflation and Prices, Public
Revenue and Borrowing, The American Way or Communism, What is
Wealth?, Is the Income Tax Fair?, Does Capital Aid Labor?, The
Maligned Profit Motive, What is a Monopoly?, Figures, Fallacies, and
Frauds, and Are We Losing Our Liberty?" This listing is more
provocative than the actual chapter titles inside. As befits a
textbook, each chapter ends with questions that invite review and
understanding.
Common-Sense is sufficiently commonplace in its wording
that it is easily comprehensible. It is characteristically Georgist
in arguing that ground rent should support all public goods and
services. Repeating his earlier argument, he writes, "Were the
entire ground rent taken in lieu of taxes, it would reduce the sale
price of land, possibly almost wipe it out, but it would increase
tremendously the use-value of land, the benefit which results from
ownership, tenure, occupation and use. Therefore, the landowner, if
a land-user, would gain far more than he would lose." (p. 210)
In Georgist parlance, he is very much a protector of property
rights, the right of people to keep all of what they earn or buy.
Today's property rights advocates, more interested in capturing
speculative gains, would find it hard to understand the distinction
that Tucker makes.
In his later years, Tucker became vehement in his denunciation of
socialism, and was alarmist in his view that the US was drifting
toward a socialist political economy. He picks several
illustrations, the TVA for example, to support this. Looking at all
his work together one sees the growth of this paranoia in The
Self-Supporting City.
The list of suggested readings at the end of Common-Sense
Economics is just as timebound, focusing as it does on the
spectres of socialism and communism. Most of the suggestions reflect
the conservative orientation that captured Georgist thought during
this period, for example the accolades heaped upon Albert J. Nock's
Our Enemy the State, and Herbert Spencer's Man Versus
the State. At that time both were available from the
Schalkenbach Foundation. In this regard, the book is not at all
reflective of contemporary Georgism — the reading list begins,
for example, with a recommendation for one book he deems "Excellent:
shows how communism has penetrated our educational institutions and
how insincere are the 'leftists' in pleading for freedom of speech,
academic freedom, and similar high-sounding aspirations, by which
they mean freedom for their side and for no one else." He also
praises William F Buckley, Jr. whom he may not have known was also
very much a Georgist. The book is dedicated to the leader of the
Henry George School in Seattle, George Dana Linn, "in gratitude
for his generous support, encouragement and friendship." Linn
is sometimes mentioned in passing in Georgist accounts, but was a
distinctly minor figure; his notability may be best remembered as a
friend of Gilbert Tucker. Wylie Young's book, Antidote For
Madness, published first in 1976 and again in 1999, is dedicated
to Gilbert Tucker.
As Tucker aged, he became more disillusioned with the capacities
of government to address matters of social concern as he saw them.
His fifth book, Your Money and What to Do With It (1960),
was just that, a simple advisory on personal finance, and it
ventured political commentary only in one spot. He castigated
Roosevelt for taking the US currency off the gold standard. He also
noted (p 55-56) "Senator Harry Byrd [of Virginia] ... as saying
that the present national debt exceeds the value of all property in
the United States of every kind and nature — land, buildings,
machinery, railroads, personal possessions, and everything —
regardless of who owns it. In other words, our nation is insolvent,
our liabilities exceeding our assets. The carrying cost of this debt
— the interest which must be paid sooner or later if our
national credit is to be preserved — is terrific and is
constantly increasing. State spending and state debts are getting
constantly bigger, and the federal government seems determined to
spend, waste, squander, and give away the money wrung from its
taxpayers regardless of the size of the debt. Taxes are growing
apace and the business of the country is operated for four months
out of each year not for the profit of the owners or the workers but
to support the government, for taxes take a third of our earnings."
The rest of the chapter continues in the same vein.
His last book, The Private School: Its Advantages, Its
Problems, Its Financing is a 127 page treatise less about the
value of private education than his expressions of alarm about the
political and economic directions of the nation — for which he
held the schools and colleges accountable. Published in 1965, three
years before he died, it reflects his increasingly conservative
political and economic thinking, if this is possible. Since he
relied on Vantage Press, he likely paid for it himself. With his
vituperative harping on America's drift to socialism and communism,
it is no wonder that the book found little audience. He was just as
disturbed by usurpation of state and local government powers by
Washington. Quoting Woodrow Wilson, he wrote, "The history of
liberty is the history of the limitation of government powers ...,
the concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction
of human liberties."
His central argument for private schools is lost in the sweep of
his other diatribes, where he argues that "Unlike the public
schools they can implant a background of spiritual and moral values;
and if desired by their patrons, they can teach a definite creed or
sectarian theology. This is not desirable to some but to others it
is, and there should be complete freedom of choice, but all
schools should endeavor to promote a sense of spiritual and moral
values in the minds of youth [italics original]. The private
school can also teach very definite political science and economics
without being submitted to political pressure and control or threats
of denial of funds. In questions of political philosophy and of
economics, there is room for difference of opinion, and the honest
and conscientious teacher will teach the philosophy which he
believes to be sound." (p 42)
Many might accept the validity of his criticism of "some of
the social sciences, and we do not mean the rubbish often included
in 'progressive' education but refer particularly to studies
necessary if we are to be worthy of citizenship. Elementary
economics, the ability to define such words as 'wealth,' 'rent,'
'wages,' 'interest,' and the knowledge of what determines price and
fixes wages, also the basic relations of capital and labor, and the
meaning of inflation, all are things to which every student should
be introduced. There is a feeling, perhaps due to Carlyle's
unfortunate comment on economics as 'the dismal science,' that it is
dull, boring and difficult. Generally presented as a mass of
artificial phraseology, questionable statistics, algebraic equations
and tiresome charts, it is pretty heavy; but, if properly taught, it
can be made fascinating even to immature minds, for it is concerned
with human desires and how to gratify them. That it can be taught to
mere children has been demonstrated by using simplified and abridged
versions of Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson,"
(p 70-71) The next section is a short summary of basic Georgist
thought, but in the midst of a 127 page verbal onslaught, its value
is lost. Tucker would have been better to stop writing after his
book on how to manage money; in fact some sections of the earlier
book are repeated at the end of this one — which make no sense
here and are totally out of place. His views about paying taxes was
unwavering, and his last will, composed in 1966, a year after
completing The Private School and two years before he died,
leaves the bulk of his fortune to Albany Academy.
Yet there are other legacies than his books that Gilbert Tucker
leaves to us. He was, for a time, a Director on the Boards of the
Henry George and Schalkenbach Foundations. He attended Georgist
conferences, and took an active part. Clearly he had hopes that
Georgist economic thought would reach a broader audience at some
point, but opposed a project to abridge Progress and Poverty. In
1952, he chartered a non-profit corporation in Albany called the
Economic Education League, Inc., which numbered among its trustees
other well-known Georgists Edward Harwood and Wylie Young. Under
this mark, he also wrote a pamphlet on "Housing and Slum
Clearance at No Cost," and published under contract a Lehigh
University study in 1958 on the feasibility of land value taxation
in Pennsylvania. The ownership of his Common-Sense Economics
text arguably reverts to this organization, since Stackpole Press no
longer cares to hold title to it. He also wrote reviews of others'
books for the Georgist publication Land and Freedom, and his "The
Value of Land and Its Assessment" appeared in a 1953 issue of
American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Several other short
pieces on either George or his philosophy were published elsewhere,
one in Scientific Monthly. There is evidence that WGY, the
General Electric flagship radio station in Schenectady, carried a
scheduled program hosted by Gilbert Tucker in the 1920s and 1930s.
It was likely first in his capacity as representative of the State
Health Department. But it occasionally focused on the philosophy of
Henry George.
I would like to see Tucker be better recognized among past
Georgists, as he wrote clearly and helped maintain visibility of
Georgist ideas. The Path to Prosperity is in the public
domain as is Common-Sense Economics. The Baker Publishing
Group, which bought the original publisher, Revell, in 1971, will
allow us to reprint For the Good of All essentially at cost, and the
Schalkenbach Foundation is the publisher of The Self-Supporting
City.