Editorial Policy of The Standard

Henry George

[An editorial defending the decisions of the editorial team of The Standard
against accusations made by Hugh Pentecost in
Twentieth Century magazine; The Standard; 10 August, 1889]

In the Twentieth Century Hugh O. Pentecost asks me certain questions as to my approval of the conduct of THE STANDARD during my absence. Ordinarily I should pass by such questions without notice. And I had intended that the brief paragraph which I last week devoted to the quarrel which the Twentieth Century has been having with THE STANDARD should be all the reference made to it in this paper, But in justice to those who have been misrepresented and for the relief of those who seem to have been really worried by the notion that there has been an attempt to change the course of THE STANDARD and lower the aims of the movement , so as to ignore the religious and moral element and reduce our demands to "a mere fiscal change," I think it may be best , with as little unpleasant personal reference as is possible in a matter which springs from personal feeling, to make a few statements , which may correct erroneous impressions. Since each of Mr. Pentecost's questions involves a misrepresentation, it would require too much space; and too much sacrifice of dignity to answer them seriatim.

Here is a letter which, only because it is brief and direct, I select from a number of others - some regretful, some indignant:

HARTFORD, Conn. - I am a reader and admirer of THE STANDARD, and distribute two or three copies every week where they will do the most good. I am not ashamed to say that I read the Twentieth Century also, and like it; and was shocked to discover, in reading the last number of the Twentieth Century, that THE STANDARD, which has always been the standard bearer of freedom in everything, is beginning to hedge and is leaning toward restriction, and worse than all, is considering what is policy in certain matters. Now where shall we look for honesty if THE STANDARD fails us, unless, indeed, to the Twentieth Century for I feel as if some near friend had been caught stealing sheep! I hope I am not one of those who think they know how to run every paper better than the editor thereof, but I don't want to see THE STANDARD lowered, in a double sense. Now, you will probably run your own paper as you see fit. I am individualist enough to do so if I were in your place, and to want you to do so as it is; but how are we to ever expect free trade, free land and free men, if free thought and free speech is denied by those who would become "leaders" in freedom?

W. L. CHENEY.

Here is the source from which the misapprehensions have come that have troubled others of our friends and given hostile newspapers a chance to sneer at what they style a split in the single tax ranks. Friend Cheney reads THE STANDARD every week. But it was not in THE STANDARD that he made the shocking discovery that has caused him to feel as if a near friend had been caught stealing sheep. It was in the Twentieth Century.

This is not unnatural. Few people, save those who for some special purpose make a business to do so, read any paper with such care that they can say precisely what it has said, or can read two papers of the same general kind without to some extent confusing what has been said by one with what has been said by the other. And where one of these papers is constantly reiterating charges which the other does not deny, the reader even of both is apt to accept them as true.

The fact is, that there has been no attempt whatever to change the course of THE STANDARD; no attempt on the part of ''self-constituted leaders" to use its columns to set up a policy and excommunicate those who did not agree with it, and no attempt to ignore the moral and religious side of the movement, and degrade it into a mere "feelingless tax reform."

THE STANDARD during my absence has not been under the charge of Mr. Croasdale, but under that of Henry George, jr., who held my unlimited power of attorney, and whose sole desire has been to keep the paper as closely as possible to the course which I would take, and to follow the only special instruction which I gave during the whole of my absence. This was to avoid any quarrel with Mr. Pentecost, and if he sought a quarrel not to reply. Mr. Croasdale has had, during my absence, no connection with THE STANDARD, except, like Mr. Shearman, that of a voluntary, unpaid and valued contributor to its columns.

Mr. Croasdale, Mr. Shearman, or Mr. Post have never set themselves up as leaders or attempted to dictate any policy. The persistent insinuations that Mr. Pentecost has made by referring to them as "leaders" - putting the word in quotation marks as though they had used it - conveys an utterly false impression.

The quotation which Mr. Pentecost has been constantly making from THE STANDARD for the purpose of showing that the ideal of the movement has been lowered in its columns, viz.: "The right of property in land is not the present practical question in connection with the single tax, " is but a part of a sentence, torn from its context so as to convey a false impression. The full sentence, as it appears in THE STANDARD of July 6, in an editorial article on "Farmers and the Single Tax," written by Louis F. Post , is as follows - I emphasize the words which Mr. Pentecost in his quotations has constantly omitted:

"ALTHOUGH the right of private property in land is not the present practical question in connection with the single tax, IT IS IN VOLVED AND SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD BY ALL WHO UNDERTAKE TO PROMOT'E OR ANTAGONIZE THE MOVEMENT."

And immediately following this sentence comes the declaration that "while all men ought to possess land, no man ought to own land."

If this is not willful misrepresentation then there is no distinction between honesty and dishonesty. Yet this is the way in which Mr. Pentecost, complaining that THE STANDARD had ignored the religious and moral element, attempts to prove his case. I am only giving one instance where a number might be given.

Nothing has been refused publication in THE STANDARD during my absence that ought to have gone in. The article which has been paraded in the Twentieth Century as having been refused by THE STANDARD ought to have been refused because, to go no further, its first sentence conveys a misstatement. Nothing has been excluded from the columns of THE STANDARD except what was inconsistent with the settled policy of the paper, what was not true, or what was calculated to promote strife or compel criticism that would have seemed unfriendly.

So far from preventing the other side from being heard, THE STANDARD permitted Mr. Pentecost to have his say in its columns in the issue of July 20, although he used it to make misstatements and implications which ought not to have been allowed to appear in this paper without challenge - a too literal compliance with my instruction not to have any unpleasant controversy with Mr. Pentecost, preventing the criticism that ought at the same time to have appeared.

As for the exclusion which has been one of the undercauses of the bitterness that has manifested itself in the columns of the Twentieth Century - the exclusion of an eulogistic article on one of Mr. Pentecost's Sunday services - the explanation is this : That the attitude which Mr. Pentecost has assumed in his Sunday meetings have for some time made it undesirable to give such prominence in THE STANDARD to the Unity congregation addresses as would seem to accept them as expositions of single tax principles.

When Mr. Pentecost first came out for the single tax he was a Congregational minister, and was all the more warmly welcomed on that account. One of his first addresses on the subject was published in THE STANDARD, and very largely circulated in tract form under the title, "A Christian Minister on the Remedy for Poverty, " When he afterward saw fit to leave his church, not because of his advocacy of the single tax, but because he could no longer hold its creed, what we all hoped and expected in starting the Unity Congregation, which was gotten up chiefly by the exertions of Mr. Croasdale and was almost if not exclusively composed of single tax men, was that we were about to secure the services of a man who, without bothering with creeds, was going to preach the application of the deeper principles of all true religion to social affairs. THE STANDARD did all it could to help the starting of the Unity services and to give prominence to them. It began to print Mr. Pentecost's addresses, and would have continued to do so had they not begun to assume a tone with which THE STANDARD could not in any way identity itself or permit the cause to be identified. Mr. Pentecost was perfectly free to preach against the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, nor, although I do believe in both, had I any objection to make, except the objection made to him privately that I did not think he was in the frame of mind or had sufficiently considered such matters to publicly pass upon them.

But, while I did not desire to criticize Mr. Pentecost' s religious views, and did not consider it the province of THE STANDARD to do so, I was at the same time solicitous that there should be nothing in the attitude of THE STANDARD that would countenance the idea that these views are connected with the belief that the rights of men to the use of land are equal and inalienable - in short with that body of economic opinion and aspiration for social improvement that we have come to speak of as the single tax. We had already been led into what to many people was a seeming hostility to one church. Warned by that experience, I did not wish to do anything that would in any way countenance the idea that we were in hostility not merely to all churches, but to those deepest feelings of the human soul that underlie all churches and all religions, and that must shatter, as the rock shatters the surges, every movement that hurls itself against them. This has been the reason that since that time it has been the rule of THE STANDARD to treat the Unity meetings only as it treated other religious or semi-religious services. It was in consistence with this rule that an exclusion occurred that has resulted in a good deal of the bad feeling that has found expression in the columns of the Twentieth Century.

Mr. Croasdale, against whom the bitterest attacks have been made, had nothing whatever to do with this. On the contrary, he was, until the personal bitterness of these attacks had fully developed, the warm friend and admirer of Mr. Pentecost.

About the close of the last presidential campaign I began to receive practical evidence of the impolicy of in any way allowing Mr. Pentecost's agnosticism to be confused with efforts for the diffusion of the single tax. Indignant letters came to me from people who had been at pains to get signatures to the single tax pledges which we during that campaign circulated. These letters complained that the list of names which had been secured by the single tax pledges were being used to send to the signers what they styled an atheistic paper, and protested in the strongest terms against what they declared was a violation of good faith in uniting the single tax movement with an anti-religious propaganda. I inquired into the matter , and found that Mr. Croasdale, in his good feeling toward Mr. Pentecost and desire to see the Twentieth Century succeed, had, without thinking much of the matter , let the publisher of that paper have a list of the signatures to the single tax pledge. This list was being used, and has since been used, for the purpose of sending out sample copies of the Twentieth Century. I thought this wrong, and told Mr. Croasdale so. When he had thought of it he came to the same conclusion. And when , during my absence , the Twentieth Century made application for the use of the whole petition list for the same purpose , it was refused , and I think properly refused, by a unanimous vote of the whole committee .

As to Mr.Croasdale's statement that it had been his aim to "lift a great movement out of the howling dervish stage of emotional insanity into the realm of common sense and practical action," which has been used in the Twentieth Century as showing his wish to eliminate religious feeling and moral force, that expression was used in the Twentieth Century and not in THE STANDARD. And no one can know better than Mr. Pentecost that it was not intended to convey the meaning which he has since sought to put upon it ; that it did not refer to the times when men cheered the Lord's Prayer , but to an element in the anti-poverty meetings which we all knew and recognized as something quite distinct from religious enthusiasm, to something - which was indeed a species of unreasoning man worship . Mr. Pentecost was himself one of the men who severed their connection with the anti-poverty society at the same time and in the same way as Mr. Croasdale , and it seems indeed strange that he of all who left at that time , should be looking back to the "religious enthusiasm" of the anti-poverty society with such regret .

I do not now wish to go into the question of how much of land values it may be possible to take by means of the single tax. It is enough to say that I am, and always have been in favor of taking, as I have frequently expressed it, the full amount as near as may be. But of Thomas G. Shearman , who has been spoken of as a mere tax reformer , wishing to degrade the movement to a mere fiscal reform, I should like to say that he has never assumed any other position than that he now holds, and that in advocating the single tax as the best mode of raising government revenues he has , in my opinion , done more to advance the cause than he could have done in any other way . His help is extremely powerful, simply because his trenchant facts and figures appeal to men who distrust enthusiasm, and are not moved by deductions from general principles. But underneath his appeals to cold reason beats a heart as warm and an impulse as generous as ever moved man. He has for years given time , toil , ability , influence, money , in the most effective way he could to the improvement of social conditions - in many cases never letting the left hand know what the right hand was doing . What for? A "fiscal reform," yes; but a fiscal reform in which he saw the promise of making earth more like heaven.

Mr. Shearman has never assumed to fully agree with me nor I with him. But that I have never regarded as a matter of any moment, nor, for that, has he. We have each been content that the other should work in the way that has seemed to him best, and in which he could be most effective.

The single tax in my book "Protection or Free Trade?" is certainly unlimited enough. When that came out Mr. Shearman spent nearly a thousand dollars in circulating it. When I ran for mayor of New York it was certainly not on a "limited" platform. Mr. Shearman sent a check to help in the expenses. When, again, next year Mr. Pentecost and I were stumping the state, it was certainly not to advocate a mere "fiscal" idea. Mr. Shearman again sent a handsome check. And so to this day he has been, both with purse and with brains, the prompt supporter of everything calculated to advance our principles.

This is the man whom Mr. Pentecost has got info his head wants to degrade a great moral movement into "Shearmanism," and to ignore the religious element.

Mr. Pentecost has recently taken a great liking to state socialism. No one has questioned his right to do this, but it is not right that he should endeavor , by extracts from my books, many of them wrested from the context , to make it appear that such are my views . He knows what I have written in the book in which I most fully treated of the differences between socialism, and the views I entertain; he was present at the Syracuse convention an d congratulated me on the speech in which I defined the issues between the men I represented and the socialists, and he knows the consistent attitude which I have ever since held. I have no objection to socialists. I would welcome the aid of any socialist who is willing to go our way, but between state socialism and the single tax idea there is all the difference that exists between repression and freedom.

I have devoted enough space to this miserable one-sided quarrel, and do not wish to refer to it again, though I shall take opportunity to speak fully of whatever of principle has been involved. I only wish to say in conclusion that I have the best of feelings for Mr. Pentecost , who has , it seems to me , in this matter been largely used a s "the handle of the whip. " I admire his great ability and know his warm and generous nature, and hope that by and by he will be with us again as heartily and enthusiastically as he once was.

And since so much has been said of him I would like t o say of William T. Croasdale that I have known him for some years intimately; that I have found him ever frank, straightforward and honest, in word and thought, and thoroughly devoted to the cause which he believes is that of the emancipation of men; a man incapable of what has been insinuated of him.

As to Louis F. Post, who has also been represented as a wily "leader," striving to degrade a great cause, the regard in which I hold him after a long and tried acquaintance is so warm that I hardly like to speak of it. For years I have found him never thinking of himself, always anxious to do whatever he could to advance what to him is a religion - sagacious, conciliatory, devoted; a true man and a good friend.

If THE STANDARD readers who have become concerned about the loyalty of such a man to the principles he has consistently worked for, knew him as well as I do, they would think the fears that have been aroused supremely ridiculous.