Social Problems (ePub)

This book by the author of 'Progress and Poverty' will doubtless be read with much interest on this side of the Atlantic. The name of Mr. Henry George is now a familiar one to both sections of the Anglo-Saxon race, and they really have no reason to be ashamed of so robust and genial a son, sadly mis guided on many points though he is. Enthusiasts there will always be with an easy method of curing social discontent - men who do not take sufficient account of the difficulties and real conditions by which life is circumscribed, and who dream that by uttering a new formula the gathering evils of the world can be charmed away. Naturally, it is to be regretted that such men have not more of the judicial faculty, which can see all the sides of a complicated question. But enthusiasm and the judicial faculty are seldom associated in the same mind ; and, as we cannot do without the enthusiast, let us be thankful for Mr. George, who is a sincere and noble man, proclaiming earnestly what he believes to be saving truth. For those who may think of reading this book, we hope it is unnecessary to state that Mr. George has no sympathy with the blood-red anarchy which seeks to overturn altar and family and all the existing institutions of civilized society. Instead of disturbing the sacred traditions, Mr. George is evidently a man of strong religious faith, who in all sincerity supports his theories of social reform with quotations from Scripture. Throughout his book there runs a vein of cheerful optimism ; of the cynicism and scepticism which mark so many of the revolutionary class there is scarcely a trace. Nor can we agree with those who think that Mr. George's pet idea, which here reappears, of the nationalization of land by the confiscation of rent is a dangerous one. In a country like ours such a proposal is so extravagant and unpractical that it may be dismissed as harmless. The real danger seems to be of a very different kind - the danger, namely, that the colossal blunder of Mr. George may hide from us the valuable truths or suggestions of truth that may undoubtedly be found in this book. 'Social Problems' consists of twenty-two chapters, each of which treats of a phase of our social condition. It is written from the American standpoint, and a number of questions are discussed which can be rightly appreciated only by those who have an intimate acquaintance with American affairs. But most of it will be quite as interesting to Englishmen as to Americans. The treatment is more popular than in Progress and Poverty ; it is less labored and controversial, and, it must be said, less sophistical. The book is marked by the same eloquence, the same sympathy with the claims of labor, and the same wide and often true insight into the great industrial movements of our time. In these qualities, and not in his theory of the land, lies the strength of Mr. George. He has evidently been a shrewd and sympathetic observer of the social condition of his own country and of ours. He is inspired with the poetry of labor, often tragic to a terrible degree; he has felt its pathos, and knows its dreary monotony, and its subjection to vast economic influences over which it has no control - all the anarchy, in short, that results from the free play of individualism and of unrestricted competition. Mr. George has watched with his own eyes the effects of the most extraordinary development of industry and population that the world has ever seen.