Smyrna Times

It is proof that human nature in New York city only repeats the manifestations it has many times put forth among the Tartars, that the mode by which Henry George proposes to rescue our advanced civilization from its evils is to restore us to our first estate of barbarism and savagism, wherein the land will be again owned in common, as it is in Africa by the Gorillas. In Henry George's works he nowhere points out that this is exactly where we were when the Cave-dwellers, the Mound-builders and the Stone Age bade defiance to all monopolies and abhorred all capital. Yet he seems to feel a deeper sympathy than he explains, between his so-called Gospel of Relief and simple naked barbarism, when twice in his recent speech at the Cooper Institute he refers to the methods of savage life as superior to civilization.

One of these is the reference to the New Zealand tenure of land, which we admit is in accordance with Mr. George's theories, and in the other he says

In this metropolis of the Western World, in this worst of grace there is a large class so-called free and independent American citizens with whom no red Indian in anything like his native state could afford to exchange

If this were true, it would be necessary, before it would make out a case for the Indian system of free land as against private titles, on which Mr. George has exercised his morbid fancy, to show how the population now on the earth could be maintained at all, under a system which required the entire Continent of North America for a number not greater than is contained in one of our cities.

It might probably likewise be said that there were robbers in Dick Turpin's band, or pirates under Lafitte in Barrataria, who fared better in most respects than some residents of New York City. Such a fact, if admitted does not place robbery and piracy in the rank of Gospels of Cure to civilization.

Roscher, in his exhaustive survey of the economic conditions of mankind, shows that the first mode of land tenure known to all savage races without exception is private ownership, by the occupant, of his improvements only, to continue only so long as he improves, the title to the soil itself being always in the state or tribe in common. This, and the absence of capital and money, of monopoly and association, are the essence of savagism. Yet they are also all there is of Henry George's Gospel.

Exactly what he proposes as a cure for all social ills, and commends the New Zealanders and North American Indians for possessing, is, according to Roscher, enjoyed in full in Congo and along the Gold Coast of Guinea, where the chief for the tribe is the owner of all the land, and everywhere, "in whole villages, the land is tilled in common and the harvest distributed among the families per capita." This does not occur because the people are so generous towards each other, for they will occasionally eat each other when the harvest gives out but because law has not yet developed to the condition where a private title to anything of value could be defended successfully. Henry George is fond of describing a civilization sufficiently advanced to respect private titles as consisting of "workingmen, lawyers and thieves." But on the Congo and in Guinea, where his system of land tenure prevails, the lawyers and workingmen are both absent, and there are present only slaves and thieves.

Throughout India, ancient and modern Persia, in Tartary, among the Foulah and Mandingo negroes, the Caribs, the Kuskowimers of Russian America, on the Aleutian Islands, among the Obomabs on the banks of the Orinoco, in Peru and Mexico before the Conquest, among the ancient Scythians according to Strabo, among the ancient Spaniards according to Plutarch, and among the Ichthyophagi on the Red Sea, who lived in caves, went naked and plundered shipwrecked mariners, the exact system of land-owning prevails which Henry George thinks will suit the City of New York.

The plain truth is that George's pretended Political Economy is like that of Rousseau and Proudhon-a mere passionate and unreasoning preference for the methods of barbarism over those of civilization. What all crime is in practice Georgeism is in theory. It contains neither truth nor sense. To apply even some small segment of it to actual practice would bring ruin and chaos, first of all on the people who pledge themselves to vote for him.

We do not doubt his sympathy with poverty. He sympathizes not only with poverty, but with the causes which insure and compel poverty; with the desire to substitute the force of numbers for private right, and the power of the tribe for the liberty of the individual, which are the essence of the distinction between civilization and savagery. What he calls the reign of capital, is simply the protection which the law affords to private right of every kind. He pledges himself that as Mayor the police shall not exercise the power to arrest and club, until an accusation has been made in court and a Grand Jury has found an indictment. This is equivalent to saying that under his reign the power of a mob to run riot should never be checked at all, and that Anarchy should have free course to fight out her fight against Order. For it has never yet been the law that a policeman should not use his club on those whom he sees engaged in crime. To announce such a principle is to announce Anarchy. Henry George, personally, is like Byron's corsair,

-"As mild a mannered man,

As ever scuttled ship or cut a throat,"

but his principles contain no boon of relief to any working man or woman. Those who would see the outcome of his theories should have stood in the Haymarket in Chicago when the bomb was thrown. His Political Economy differs not one whit in essence from that of the eight condemned Anarchists. They recognize him as their leader. In fact, whoever accepts the fundamental article of Georgeism that the methods of barbarism are the cure for the evils of civilization is already far on the way towards practical Anarchy.-Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.