Carrying the Torch Raised by Henry George

William Lloyd Garrison Jr.

[A letter sent to those assembled at the Henry George Congress,
12 September 1927, New York, New York
Reprinted in Land and Freedom, September-October 1927]

I greatly appreciate the courtesy of an invitation to be on the programme of the New York convention. I am aware that the eternal verities were never more true than they are today. I am conscious of the fact that a system of land tenure based on the Georgian plan could keep a democracy upon a reasonably even keel.

But I see the country drifting steadily away from that concept. I see statute law building Chinese walls about the existing speculative land system and I suspect that when the great popular upheaval comes, which will break down those walls, we shall be thrown into the confusions and imbecilities of Socialism or else the insanities of dictatorship.

Despite a good digestion, I am forced to the conclusion that the perfectionism of Single Tax is akin to that of the New Testament and that its advent can only be secured by civilized people who detect a spiritual order in the cosmos.

Meanwhile I am grateful to you and your associates that you hold your torch aloft and thereby mitigate the shadows of ignorance and stupid selfishness that darken our national outlook.