The Drum Beat of Social Redemption

William Lloyd Garrison, Jr.

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 1930]

May I venture to compliment you upon the vitality of the Nov.- Dec. number of Land and Freedom. I was glad to see Mr. Millikin's excellent analysis of the several Single Tax groups, and I welcome his term V which is descriptive and just.

Personally I am unable to generate enthusiasm over any of the forms of Companionate Single Tax. They all seem to be such a pale shimmering of the real thing.

George's crusade had the high beat and rhythm of Salvationism. Its tone was robust and vibrant, its accent Olympian. The flight of his imaginative, yet reasoned, thought carried round the world whereas piecemeal compromises of his idea crawl over mere political surfaces and tend to stagnate in swamps of petty controversy.

Chatty talks to cheery clubs about exemptions and excess are all very well, but they create no crusaders. As you are well aware, Henry George drew no rainbows in charcoal. His pictures glowed with the high color of emotional fervor, and in his heavens dwelt a God who provided for all his children. What one hears in the pulsations of "Progress and Poverty" is the drum beat of social redemption. When this major theme is stifled, and the flutes and piccolos of minor tax reform sound their thin and quavering note, is it strange if public attention wanders and the world hastens back to the solace of its radio?