Championing Free Trade Within
the United Labor Party

Henry George

[Reprinted form The Standard, Vol.3, 7 January 1888]

The communications received by THE STANDARD with reference to the policy of presidential nominations by the united labor party shows great interest taken in the subject. Although among them there have been a number which assigned weighty reasons for keeping out of the contest, the majority have favored independent action. But through most of these declarations in favor of entering the national field there seems to me to run two questionable assumptions. First, that to refrain from going into the presidential contest would be to abandon the cause; and second, that the party is a unit upon the tariff question or could ignore the tariff question.

It is natural for men who have taken an active part in organizing a party for the purpose of advocating a great principle, to begin, perhaps to a large extent subconsciously, to think that success of the party and success of the cause are synonymous. We all feel the impulse of organization, and our contests are apt to develop in us an affection for our own party and an amnity for other parties that may at times warp the judgment of the coolest. It is well, therefore, to remember that parties are but organizations of men, and are of themselves neither good nor bad, further than their policy or their conditions may attract good or bad men to them. No matter how high the principle to support which a political party is formed; no matter how pure the motives of the men who cluster under its banners while there is no possibility of using it for personal ends, yet , under existing political conditions, just as it advances toward success so will corrupting influences enter into it.

The republican party, noble as was the impulse that led to its formation, rapid as was its growth, did not reach power without having become as thoroughly corrupt as the democratic party, which it displaced. And so would it be with the united labor party, or the prohibition party, or any other party. "Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." This is no reason why we should shrink from political action, for it is only through political action that we can improve conditions which produce corruption; but it is a reason we should always bear in mind that parties are but means to ends, and that it is not well to let either our affections or our enmities engage themselves to mere names. The men, of whom there have been several, who have written to THE STANDARD that they had resolved never again to vote either a democratic ticket or a republican ticket are themselves, though they show it reversely, still under the influence of that spell which has been such a potent cause of political corruption, by leading honest men to blindly follow any ring or gang who could capture the regular organization of their party.

What we owe fealty to is not party but principle. And for the advancement of principle we are dependent upon no party - not even upon the party we may have organized for the advancement of that principle. What is needed for the advance of a great truth like that imbodied in the platform of the united labor party is to arouse thought, to provoke discussion, to familiarize with it the minds of men. This may sometimes best be done by bringing it directly into politics, and gathering around its standards those who are willing to cast their votes for it, no matter how hopeless may be the chance of winning an election. At other times it may best be done by refrom direct political action, and urging on one or the other of the great political parties, or by leaving those who believe in it free to mingle with the adherents of those parties, and among them sow seeds of the truth. But at no time can the men who are bent on advancing a great truth fail to find opportunities to do so. Whether they be gathered into one party or scattered in several, the truth will compel those who see it to become its missionaries.

To think the refusal of the united labor party to go into a presidential campaign means the abandonment of the cause of which it is an instrument, is not merely to accept the assumption that this would necessarily destroy it, but it is to assume that the organization is more than the principle, that the life of the soul depends upon the life of the body. The united labor party might not merely decide not to go into the national field in this election - it might definitely and forever disband, without any one who had really felt the impulse of the cause abandoning the cause. Such men as Dr. McGlynn, Rev. Hugh O. Pentecost, Father Huntington, Judge Maguire, and hundreds of others whose names are familiar to the readers of THE STANDARD, would continue to preach the truth and to find opportunities to preach the truth. The tens of thousands of men and women between the Atlantic and Pacific who are now thoroughly imbued with our principles, and are working day and night as quiet missionaries in our cause, would go on with their work; our tracts would still circulate; the discussion we have started would continue, and the people we have already set to thinking would perpetuate the impulse and pass on the torch.

We should still have our anti-poverty societies and our land and labor clubs, and our friends would still continue to work in other organizations. Abandon the cause! We could not abandon the cause if we tried to. And if we could, and did, that cause would still march on and find new advocates. Every one, man, woman, or child, may do something to help forward a cause such as ours; but it has now so far advanced that we all together could no more than delay it a little. It has passed our power to stop.

Whether the united labor party ought or ought not to go into the presidential campaign is purely a question of policy, on which men of equal devotion to the cause may honestly differ, as the columns of THE STANDARD show that they do differ.

Many of our friends (especially those in the west) who have most strenuously urged that we should as a party enter the presidential campaign are, I am inclined to think, under the impression that we could enter that campaign without developing any serious differences among us on the tariff question. There are others who think that we could practically ignore the tariff question, and saying to protectionists and revenue reformers "a plague on both your houses," leave them to fight out their own battles, while we continued to advocate the single tax. Both assumptions are, to my mind, clearly erroneous. There is, I think, no question that the great body of our friends are thoroughgoing free traders.

We are indeed THE free traders, the successors, a century after, of that school of great Frenchmen who began the free trade movement in modern times, and like us, advocated the single tax, and from whom Adam Smith and the Manchester school took only so much of the free trade doctrine as was palatable to British capitalists, and thus degraded the glorious name free trader by attaching it to half hearted revenue reformers. But, nevertheless, although our doctrines as to the relations between land and labor lead to full free trade, and cut the ground from under protectionist fallades as the mere revenue reformers never can cut it, there are many among us who have not yet fully seen the connection. These men are well represented by our recent candidate for comptroller, Victor A Wilder of Brooklyn, who contributes to THE STANDARD of this issue a suggestive letter.

They are with us on the direct line of abolishing state and municipal taxes upon labor and the products of labor and concentrating them upon land values. That is to say they are with us in state politics, but would not be with us in national politics, when the tariff issue assumed prominence. Their position is, that they are willing to accept free trade after we get all taxes save those imposed by the tariff abolished; but until that time they are protectionists. This is, in national politics, and at the present time, an irreconcilable difference. Such men as Mr. Wilder and myself, while we could act well enough together in a municipal or state campaign, could not possibly agree upon a common platform in a national campaign when the tariff question is in issue. Is not the best thing we can do, then, to agree, with mutual respect for each other, to disagree in national matters, and to unite upon purely state issues?

That the best loved man among us all, the man who has made the greatest sacrifices for the cause, and whose services have been equal to his devotion, should be among those who think that we could enter a national campaign without taking sides upon the tariff question, is sufficient, if there were nothing else, to entitle that view to grave consideration. But highly as I esteem Dr. McGlynn's judgement, I think that in this he is mistaken. Free trader as he is, I do not believe that Dr. McGlynn himself, no matter how much he tried, could find any platform which could keep him from taking part in a tariff controversy such as there is every indication will rage in the next presidential campaign, any more then the typical Tipperary man could keep on playing the fiddle while a discussion with sticks was ringing about his ears.

And if it should be possible for some of us to hold this negative position, it seems to me certain that the great majority, whatever we may think now, would, as the contest became warm, be certain to be drawn or forced to one side or the other.

But further than this, and more than this, I for one, cannot feel that it would be right to keep out of such a contest. It is true, as Dr. McGlynn said on Sunday night, that in "Protection or Free Trade?" I show (what is, of course, involved in the reasoning of "Progress and Poverty") that free trade, even to the utter abolition of custom houses, though it would enormously increase the production of wealth, could, no more than any other improvement, permanently better the condition of the working class, unless its principle were carried further, to the point of abolishing that greatest of all impediments to production and that fundamental cause of unjust distribution, the monopoly by some, of those natural opportunities intended for the use of all.

But my purpose in writing that book was not merely to prove that the logic of free trade leads irresistibly to free land, but to show, what up to that time had never been shown - the real cause of the wide acceptance of the fallacies of protection among the class to whom it falsely appeals in the United States on the ground that it "protects American labor." The main purpose of that book, and it runs through it, from introductory chapter to conclusion, was to point out to those who had really at heart the emancipation of labor that the true side for them to take upon the tariff question was the free trade side. "This," I said in conclusion, alluding to a simile used in the opening paragraph, "is the way that the bull must g o to untwist his rope." And what made me anxious to write that book was that. I foresaw that the coming into political issue of the tariff question which, unless they could be brought to clearly see the relation between the tariff question and the land question, "place in political opposition to each other those who are at one in ultimate purpose."

I am perfectly aware that no settlement of the tariff question can of itself settle the labor question, and as I have phrased it in "Protection or Free Trade?" the tariff, important as it is of itself, is only one of the minor robbers that strip labor of its earnings, while land monopoly is "the robber that takes all that is left" But I have always believed, and yet believe, that we cannot ignore this minor robber, and that to fairly get at the greater robber we must fight the little one. For the protective tariff I care very little, but in the protective idea I recognize the greatest obstacle to our progress. Until men get past the notion that labor is a thing that must be protected. they never can fully see how much it will gain by freedom. Thus I not only think that a thorough discussion of the tariff question would have a most important educational effect upon the American people, including many of those who are disposed to act with us on the direct line, but that any breach that can be made in the lines of protection will make it easier to undermine and overthrow the whole linked system of robbery.

The principle of free trade was enunciated in the Clarendon hall platform of 1886 and again in the Syracuse platform of 1887, not merely in declaring that all taxes upon labor and the products of labor ought to be abolished, but also in the declaration that "we aim at the abolition of all laws which give to any class of citizens advantage, either judicial, financial, industrial or political that are not equally shared by all others," and in the declaration that "we do not propose that the state shall attempt to control production, conduct distribution or in any wise interfere with the freedom of the individual to use his labor or capital in any way that may seem proper to him, and that will not interfere with the equal rights of others."

It was not necessary to make any more explicit declaration in a municipal or state campaign; but the moment we enter the national Geld the great question which confronts us is the tariff question, for it is by means of the tariff that the greater part of the revenue of the federal government is raised. Unless we can take clear and decided ground upon this question then it seems to me that we have, as yet, no business in the national field.

I alluded in this column recently several letters asking me to reply through THB STANDARD to an address delivered by Rev. Dr. Bates before the Cleveland land and labor club and told the members of that club that they ought to answer Dr. Bates themselves. This suggestion was not needed, as at the succeeding meeting of the dub, two members, Mr. John Benton and Mr. Franklin EL Smead, came forward with replies to Dr. Bates's criticisms. Mr. Benton's reply has since been published in full by the Plain Dealer, and the same paper has given a synopsis of Mr. Smead's. Both answers are courteous and sound. They show that the Cleveland land and labor club need not go through its own ranks to find advocates of our principles able to meet any one who may attack them. The opening sentences of Mr. Benton's address have the true ring:

I know several members of this club question the propriety of inviting gentlemen who are opposed to us in this movement to come here and argue the question from their own standpoint. Now it is certainly going contrary to the ordinary course pursued in such matters, and if we were a republican or democratic club it would certainly appear absurd. But we have got to bring this question into public discussion. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose by that discussion. We must arrest the attention of thinking people. We, who have been in this movement for any time and tried to convince others of the justice of it, know that the hardest thing to do is to first get persons interested, to get them to think on the subject.

So I contended that the club did right in asking Dr. Bates to deliver the lecture he did at our last meeting, and I feel that sure that the measure of good or harm that lecture will do us is in the use we make of it. We are not afraid to fight this question through against all opposition. And I say let us, as soon as we get through with Dr. Bates, invite an other gentleman from the opposition; we don't care how strong he is; some of us can answer him, and when we get through with the giants we can make short work of the small fry. And it should be a source of gratification to us to see so able a man as Dr. Bates - and he is unquestionably an able man - make so poor an argument for the side he takes.

That is just it. Nothing more is needed to convince many people of the truth of our principles than to let them see how weak are the arguments against them.

It is, perhaps, yet too early to decide what our policy should be, as this political situation is not yet clear. But it is well that we should coolly and carefully weigh all considerations, that when the time comes we shall be able to agree.