Society, Party and Principle

Henry George

[Reprinted from The Standard, Vol.3, 25 February, 1888]

I have been in the west for over a week and return too late to write much for this issue of THE STANDARD.

As to the split in the anti-poverty society, it is, I presume, necessary that I should say something; but I feel like saying as little as possible.

Dr. McGlynn' s coup d'etat in packing the executive committee of the anti-poverty society, and the views and sentiments to which he gave expression on that occasion, make it impossible for self-respecting men longer to act under his presidency, and I heartily approve of the action of the majority of the old committee.

Nevertheless I feel about the anti-poverty society as the true mother did about the infant when King Solomon proposed to divide it between the contestants. Whatever may have been the first promptings of a not unnatural indignation, I am glad to know that before I had returned to New York the majority of the committee had unanimously come to the conclusion to abandon to Dr. McGlynn the entire management of the society. The spectacle of two anti-poverty societies in New York would be both shameful and ridiculous, and could only hurt the cause we wish to help. And while it is true that legality and right are with the majority of the committee, while it is true that Dr. McGlynn did not originate the idea of the anti-poverty society, and in its formation took only the part of a friend counseling with friends, upon terms of equality, it is also true that from the first it was our plan and desire that Dr. McGlynn should be the head of the society, and that it should afford him a platform for preaching the gospel of peace and good will, larger than that from which he had been expelled.

We all designed that he should be the central flgure and chief exponent of the society, and in our unquestioning respect for what we believed to be his chacacter, and the warm affection which his many lovable qualities inspired, we were content to put unusual power in his hands and to defer in all things to his wishes. It is also true that the great success of the anti-poverty society was largely due to the popularity and eloquence of Dr. McGlynn, and that its membership and audiences have been largely made up of that devoted personal following, which, whatever be his qualities as a politician, testify to his qualities as a priest, However offensive, therefore, the blunt assertion of despotic power, and the declaration "I am the anti-poverty society," may have seemed to the gentlemen of the committee, there is good reason why they should not dispute the claim that it is Dr. McGlynn's society, further than by withdrawing themselves from its management and leaving the matter to the membership, and why they should not attempt to set up any rival organization that might in any way interfere with that over which Dr. McGlynn presides. This, at any rate, is my feeling.

Under happier circumstances I should have desired, in laying down the position of vice-president of the anti-poverty society, to say words of thanks and fellowship to the great audiences that have so often warmly greeted me in the Academy of Music, but lest my appearance there should be misconstrued I shall content my self with sending a brief letter of resignation to the president of the society. I do not propose to be put in a false position when I can help it. But so long as it takes two to make a quarrel there shall be no quarrel between me and one who has rendered such service to the good cause, and who is yet I trust so capable of rendering further service, as Dr. McGlynn. If, owing to personal idiosyncrasies or divergent views of policy, we cannot work together, we shall at least accomplish some good by working separately, each in his own way, for the same great end.

As I feel with regard to the anti-poverty society so do I feel with reference to the united labor party. Even when, in 1860, I cast my first vote for Abraham Lincoln, as the nearest representative I could find of my desire to protest against property in human flesh and blood. I regarded parties but as means to ends, and this feeling has strengthened as my views of public policy have become more mature and definite. And certainly my faith in party organization has not been increased since I have seen how readily a little machine may be developed even in a little party. I shall certainly enter into no unseemly squabble over the policy of the united labor party. I have frankly stated my own views, and in the colunms of THE STANDARD the views of others have had free and fair opportunities for expression. This is as far as any loyalty I may owe to those who have twice selected me as their standard bearer , and to those who in other states have been prepared to gather under the same political standard, calls on me to go.

Some of our friends in the west - where all our friends, so far as I have been able to learn, are free traders - write that while they approve my position, they think I ought not to have expressed my intention to support Mr. Cleveland in case he represents the free trade side of the tariff question until a national conference of single tax men had debated and decided what would be best. They seem to think that such delay was incumbent on me from a regard for the opinions of those who, as they phrase it, had been prepared to act under my leadership in a national party. Such a conference, they say, I could have been absolutely certain would not have consented to ignore the tariff question. But the national party of which they speak has no existence; it has as yet not passed the nebulous and expectant state. And the conference of which they have been thinking, I know moreover, would be called by some semblance of authority with a pre-determined purpose, and probably in such terms as to exclude those who think as I do, and to include those with whom neither I nor the friends who thus write me have anything in common . Such a conference, moreover, if intended to serve the purpose of republican protectionism in the doubtful states, as I have for some time known to be intended, could most easily be packed at the cost of a comparatively trivial sum. For outside of a few localities we have no organizations that could even elect representative delegates, much less defray the expenses of delegates to a national conference. Such a conference must therefore be necessarily in greater part made up of volunteers who could afford to pay their own expenses without thought of return. What proportion even of our most enthusiastic friends could do that? And how easy it would be by the intelligent use of a comparatively small fund to pack such a conference with the representatives of the views of a minority by simply furnishing, unknown to each other, men of that way of thinking with part or all of the money needed to enable them to attend? How efficacious the use of even a small amount of money may be in securing control of a nebulous party can be seen in the fact that the ability to hire an office, to pay a few salaries and to buy stationery and postage stamps has in New York given to three men such importance that they virtually assume dictatorship. The reason why there has been but one meeting of the state committee of the united labor party of New York, and that but slimly attended, since they were chosen at Syracuse, is that the majority of its members cannot well bear the expenses of meeting together.

Dr. McGlynn has on several occasions spoken with much stress of a conference held in Cincinnati by the citizens of a number of western states, which he appears to consider the voice of the west demanding that, no matter how circumstances may have changed, we must forthwith proceed to make a national party and put a presidential candidate in the field. I happen to know a good deal more about that than does Dr. McGlynn, since I was present and he was not. It was a small gathering of friends of our cause, most of whom are now against any presidential nomination. The resolution which was offered verbally by Mr. Williams of Indiana and put into shape and sent on here after I had returned, was as follows:

Be it resolved, That we, the representatives of the Henry George idea of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, in conference assembled at Cincinnati , deem it expedient and necessary that a national conference or convention be held in October, 1887.

We authorize and request Mr. John McMackin of New York to appoint a committee of five, of which he shall be chairman, to issue a call for said convention, fixing the time, place, ratio of representation and details of said convention.

Comment is unnecessary.

But all this, though it may be suggestive to those disposed to think truly representative national conferences easy things to hold, is only incidental. The reasons why I have not waited for any conference to declare my intention is, in the first place, that I have no need of any conference to tell me what, under certain conditions, I ought to do ; and , second, that if any weight attaches to my intention it was important that it should be declared at once. In matters of doubt I am ready enough to take counsel with my friends and to be guided by the weight of opinion. But on matters of clear conviction, matters which involve principle, I never have been, and I trust I never shall be, in the habit of conforming my position to majority votes, even of my friends.

The friends of whom I am now speaking seem to think that I have announced some months too soon where I should be found in the event of the struggle between the two great parties turning on the tariff question. They are too moderate. If I have been too soon in such an announcement it is years too soon, not months too soon. For the principles which I have thus declared shall govern me in the national contest this year are principles which I have held for years and avowed again and again.

In 1872 I cast my first vote for a democratic candidate for the presidency. I was then as strong a free trader as I am now. But I not only voted for the arch protectionist, Horace Greeley, but worked for his nomination, because it then seemed to me that his nomination and election would clear the way for bringing up economic issues by burying the issues that grew ou t of the war. In the same way I am now in favor of the nomination and election of Grover Cleveland because his nomination and election on the tariff issue would, it seems to me, best clear the way for bringing into practical politics soraething far more important than tariff reform. It makes no difference to me what Mr. Cleveland may think of my ultimate aims. To force the issue which he stands for in practic l politics will clear the way to bring into practical politics what I aim at. If I have miles to walk I do not refuse the chance to get a lift on a wagon that will go but a mile and then turn back, especially if that mile be a steep grade, after which my road lies down hill. I take advantage of the wagon and thank the driver, and when he comes to where he proposes to turn back, I get off and continue on.

Puck publishes a cartoon representing me as a pigmy laying a paper marked "Henry George' s indorsement of Cleveland's message" on the scale on which, in gigantic ponderosity, Mr. Cleveland stands. This may properly represent the political value of any indorsement from me. But no matter of how little weight my support of Mr. Cleveland may be, I have hastened to avow it as soon as I was reasonably satisfied that he would not go back on his tariff message. And I did this at once, not merely because the best and timeliest conference of single tax men was being held in the columns of THE STANDARD, but because scheming to defeat Mr. Cléveland's nomination on the plea that his tariff message would prevent his election was going on in the democratic party, and every feather's weight of evidence that he would be stronger, not weaker, because he had assumed to lead his party toward freedom, would tell as against his plea and help to defeat this scheme.

Now for my part I regard Mr. Cleveland's nomination as far more important than his election. The stand he has tåken in his message and the public attention that has been aroused will give to his nomination the certainty of a campaign on the tariff issue, no matter what the platform of his party may say. Believing as I have long believed, that the fight against the protective tariff is not merely the first great national step that can be tåken toward the real and permanent emancipation of labor, but that it will [help?] to educate the American people in economic principles, to send the old hack politicians of both parties to the rear, and to bring t o the front men of thought and principle, I regard the nomination of Mr. Cleveland as a more important political event than anything that has occurred since the close of the war. I should be false to my very highest convictions of political duty if I delayed to do anything I honorably could to bring about so desirable an event. If, as I hardly think now possible, the intrigues of the banded cormorants should succeed in defeating Mr. Cleveland's nomination, and sidetracking the tariff issue between the old parties, then the whole situation would be changed, and a conference to see if we, in concert with mere tariff reformers and free traders, cannot run a candidate who shall uplift the standard of the anti-protection light, would become imperatively necessary.

And now, having fully explained to my friends my position and opinions, I trust that I may have no more to say in anything like criticism of those who, differing from me in minor matters, have at heart the same great purpose, and I trust that enough of the space of THE STANDARD has been given to mere questions of party policy, and that hereafter we can devote more of it, not to the advocacy of men, but to urging forward the issue which lies immediately before us, that of free trade as against the robbing and demoralizing system of protection.

I spent last week in the west I lectured on Monday before the state university in Bloomington, Ind., on Tuesday at the state normal school in Terre Haute, Ind., on Wednesday at De Pauw university in Greencastle, Ind., on Thursday at Evansville, Ind., on Friday at Indianapolis, and on Monday of this week at Dayton, 0. It is cheering to observe how the discussion of single tax doctrines is steadily increasing in that part of the country, especially in the colleges and higher schools. What is also very gratifying was to find that all through this part of the west the discussion of the tariff question is now the popular theme, and men are avowing themselves not merely revenue reformers, but absolute free traders, who a little while ago would have feared to look cross-eyed at the fetish of protection. And among all the many single tax men I met I did not meet a single one who was not an out and out free trader, anxious for the abolition of all tariffs and turning all custom houses to some useful purpose. We are indeed moving fast and in the right direction.