George - Progress and poverty : an inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth : the remedy

• introductory.
  The Problem
• Book I.
  wages and capital
  • Chapter I.
    The Current Doctrine of WagesIts Insufficiency
  • II.
    The Meaning of the Terms
  • III.
    Wages Not Drawn from Capital, but Produced by the Labor
  • IV.
    The Maintenance of Laborers Not Drawn from Capital
  • V.
    The Real Functions of Capital
• Book II.
  population and subsistence
  • Chapter I.
    The Malthusian Theory, Its Genesis and Support
  • II.
    Inferences from Facts
  • III.
    Inferences from Analogy
  • IV.
    Disproof of the Malthusian Theory
• Book III.
  the laws of distribution
  • Chapter I.
    The Inquiry Narrowed to the Laws of DistributionNecessary Relation of These Laws
  • II.
    Rent and the Law of Rent
  • III.
    Of Interest and the Cause of Interest
  • IV.
    Of Spurious Capital and of Profits Often Mistaken for Interest
  • V.
    The Law of Interest
  • VI.
    Wages and the Law of Wages 204
  • VII.
    The Correlation and Co-ordination of These Laws
  • VIII.
    The Statics of the Problem Thus Explained
• Book IV.
  effect of material progress upon the distribution of wealth
  • Chapter I.
    The Dynamics of the Problem Yet to Seek
  • II.
    The Effect of Increase of Population Upon the Distribution of Wealth
  • III.
    The Effect of Improvements in the Arts upon the Distribution of Wealth
  • IV.
    Effect of the Expectation Raised by Material Progress
• Book V.
  the problem solved
  • Chapter I.
    The Primary Cause of Recurring Paroxysms of Industrial Depression
  • II.
    The Persistence of Poverty Amid Advancing Wealth
• Book VI.
  the remedy
  • Chapter I.
    Insufficiency of Remedies Currently Advocated
  • Chapter II.
    The True Remedy
• Book VII.
  justice of the remedy
  • Chapter I.
    Injustice of Private Property in Land
  • II.
    The Enslavement of Laborers the Ultimate Result of Private Property in Land
  • III.
    Claim of Land Owners to Compensation
  • IV.
    Property in Land Historically Considered
  • V.
    Of Property in Land in the United States
• Book VIII.
  application of the remedy
  • Chapter I.
    Private Property in Land Inconsistent with the Best Use of Land
  • II.
    How Equal Rights to the Land May Be Asserted and Secured
  • III.
    The Proposition Tried by the Canons of Taxation
  • IV.
    Indorsements and Objections
• Book IX.
  effects of the remedy
  • Chapter I.
    Of the Effect Upon the Production of Wealth
  • II.
    Of the Effect Upon Distribution and Thence Upon Production
  • III.
    Of the Effect Upon Individuals and Classes
  • IV.
    Of the Changes That Would Be Wrought in Social Organization and Social Life
• Book X.
  the law of human progress
  • Chapter I.
    The Current Theory of Human ProgressIts Insufficiency
  • II.
    Differences in CivilizationTo What Due
  • III.
    The Law of Human Progress
  • IV.
    How Modern Civilization May Decline
  • V.
    The Central Truth
• conclusion .
  The Problem of Individual Life

Out of the open West came a young man of less than thirty to this great city of New York. He was small of stature and slight of build. His alma mater had been the forecastle and the printing-office. He was poor, unheralded, unknown. He came from a small city rising at the eastern golden portals of the country to set up here, for a struggling little newspaper there, a telegraphic news bureau, despite the opposition of the combined powerful press and telegraph monopolies. The struggle was too unequal. The young man was overborne by the monopolies and his little paper crushed.

This man was Henry George and the time was 1869.

But though defeated, Henry George was not vanquished. Out of this struggle had come a thing that was to grow and grow until it should fill the minds and hearts of multitudes and be as an army with banners.

For in the intervals of rest from his newspaper struggle in this city the young correspondent had musingly walked the streets. As he walked he was filled with wonder at the manifestations of vast wealth. Here, as nowhere that he had dreamed of, were private fortunes that rivaled the riches of the fabled Monte Cristo. But here, also, side by side with the palaces of the princely rich, was to be seen a poverty and degradation, a want and shame, such as made the young man from the open West sick at heart.

Why in a land so bountifully blest, with enough and more than enough for all, should there be such inequality of conditions? Such heaped wealth interlocked with such deep and debasing want? Why, amid such super-abundance, should strong men vainly look for work? Why should women faint with hunger, and little children spend the morning of life in the treadmill of toil?