Book VII:
"Justice of the Remedy"

Chapter 1: "The Injustice of Private Property in Land"
Chapter 2: "The Enslavement of Laborers the Ultimate Results of Private Property in Land"
Chapter 3: "Claim of Land Owners to Compensation"
Chapter 4: "Private Property in Land Historically Considered"
Chapter 5: "Of Property in Land in the United States"

Chapter 1:
"The Injustice of Private Property in Land"

1. What is the basis of property rights? 334

The right of a person to himself.

2. What well-known philosophers anticipated George's formulation?

John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government, 1690; Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776; Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, 1863. George writes in a long tradition: he didn't just make this up.

3. Whom is George quoting, "the rain falls alike upon just and unjust"? 336

Jesus, Sermon on the Mount. In those days most literate people were conversant with the Bible, and took it seriously.

4. What is his point?

Nature gives only to labor, no more to the just than the unjust. Whether that is what Jesus meant is an interesting question, but there is little question that Jesus was a Jewish prophet, one in a long line of Jewish prophets who were all land reformers. Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to overturn the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them." Previous prophets had urged the Jews to divide land equally.

5. Is there really "no escape from this position," 336, that rent is part of the fruits of labor?

The marginal-productivity theory of distribution is such an escape. The "fruits of labor" are only the marginal product of labor times the quantity of labor, leaving rent as the product of land, and interest as the product of capital.
George, who did so much to pioneer a marginal productivity approach to wage determination, may seem here to be regressing to a pure labor theory of value. However, his meaning, as developed elsewhere, is more subtle and defensible. He recognizes that labor's direct product is only what it "adds" to output, and rent imputes to land. The subtle point is that he sees this rent as the indirect product of the people in the community, who by their "presence" generate land rents. Their "presence" causes demand for land; and also generates spillover benefits that increase the productivity of land. This is a subtlety that eluded J.B. Clark, founder of neo-classical economics, and has eluded most neo-classical economists ever since.

6. Why does the law distinguish so carefully between personal property and real estate? 337

"Personal" property, in tax and property law, means movable property. Movable property in feudal law belonged to private persons, hence movable = personal. To whom did land belong? To the public, through the King. The English King who established this system was a Frenchman, William (orig. Guillaume) the Conqueror. William's court language was naturally French, in which "real" means regal.
"Real estate" means the King's property. Others hold land merely from him, as his tenants. We abolished kings in this country, but not sovereignty. We merely transferred this to state governments.
Buildings attached to land are a mixed bag. The lawyers have let them merge with land as "real estate." George is pointing out that buildings have more in common with personal property than land, economically. This is because buildings are capital. Like other capital they are built by man, and they wear out and must be replaced. George is right about this, and it is a key point. See the reading, "Land as a Distinctive Factor of Production." The upshot? Classical economists would have improved their analysis had they emphasized that buildings are capital, in spite of being fused with land in the word "real estate."
To sort this out, and keep it sorted out, simply keep three categories in mind: A = land; B = buildings; C = personal (movable) property. A+B = real estate; B+C = capital. B is the overlapping part that is both real estate and capital.

7. Is it clear that all men have an equal right to breathe the air, as alleged? 338

It seemed so when George wrote, and our instincts tell us so. However, it is not clear if you follow Nobel laureate Ronald Coase of the University of Chicago, or the Federal EPA, or the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Coase and these agencies claim that ancient polluters with long histories of fouling the air have established prescriptive property rights, vested interests to continue polluting. It is called an "offset right"; the program for trading permits is called RECLAME: you read about it in the papers every month or so. Confirmed Coasians will even tell you that those wanting to breathe clean air should pay by buying breathing rights from vested polluters.
Even in the absence of these recent refinements, it has long been true that to breathe clean air you must rent or buy where the air is clean. Those locations rent or sell at premium values. It is this kind of inequality that George is seeking to offset. We will see he comes up with a workable, simple program for doing so.

8. Can we not suppose that some men have a right to be in this world and others no right? 338

Some people have no problem with that supposition. They use the "lifeboat theorem" of Professor Garrett Hardin of U.C. Sta. Barbara. Hardin says the world is a lifeboat and those on board should keep off new boarders lest they swamp the boat and destroy all. Hardin is replicating Malthus, as quoted by George, 338-39n.

9. Whom is George paraphrasing, "For what are we but tenants for a day?" 339

Moses. See Leviticus 25:23. Another excerpt from this chapter is engraved on The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land." "Liberty" in Leviticus is not an abstraction: it refers to the Jubilee, a Jewish tradition of revitalizing society by distributing land equally every 50th year.

10. What is "fee simple"? 339

The word "fee" derives from "feudal," and imports that the land is held from some superior to whom services are due. "Fealty" (loyalty) was also due, indicating the relationship was personal and/or patriotic, not purely commercial. Absentee ownership, especially foreign holding of land in fee, was unthinkable. It is a later development, one that still raises deep questions about the nature of nationhood, citizenship, and community.
What do we care today about ancient English Kings? Because our law of real property came down from them in the "common law," which is embedded in almost all state constitutions. Our word "own" comes from the word "owe": those who "own" land also owe obligations to the community, through the sovereign. The sovereign ultimately "owns" land, but he, in turn, owes the people public services. It is, ideally, a balanced system of mutual rights and duties on all sides.
"Tenure" of land means holding conditionally. Individuals hold from the sovereign, subject to various overriding powers which are still called "servitudes," such as taxation, police power, eminent domain, and control of fish and game (ferae naturae, to a lawyer). Ferae naturae are reserved to the sovereign; hence the power of game wardens to enter private land, and the application of bag limits to landholders, the same as others. The folk saying "I can do what I want on my own land" is a bumptious assertion of wishful thinking, rather than a legal truth. The only unconditional landholding is the "allodial" ownership, which George mentions later. It means ownership not subject to a sovereign. It is a rare bird: it means the owner is his own sovereign.
Landholders who fail to perform their servitudes are subject to "escheat," i.e. reversion of land to the sovereign. The most familiar form of escheat is loss of land title for failure to pay taxes. The sovereign State of California has delegated this power to counties, which sell tax-delinquent land from the steps of the Court House.
"Fee simple" is not simple; it only says the estate is inheritable free of any limitation to particular heirs. Entails (fee tail) are generally illegal in this country. Most states followed Virginia, where Governor Thomas Jefferson took the lead in outlawing entail, even before the Revolution. Other kinds of deed restrictions and covenants are still common, where not in violation of other laws. Their use for racial and religious discrimination was once common, but is now illegal.

11. What does "seized of" mean? 340

Possessing title to land. It is also spelled seised, and like seize in the usual sense comes from the French saisir, to seize. This is no accident: land tenure originates in seizure, and the law has simply formalized and legitimized the process.

12. How does the poorest infant born become "seized of" a right to land equal to that of the Astors (then the largest landholders in New York)? 338-40.

Here we have the heart of George's philosophy, in which a nation is an extended family in which being born gives you equal rights to land. This is a rather more practical application of the same theology that today says being conceived gives you a right to be born. George said that being born gives you an equal right to live, hence an equal right to the earth itself. This is "right-to-life" carried to its logical conclusion.
George often stresses that the world is occupied by succeeding generations, so equal rights mean nothing unless every member of every new generation, however humble or helpless, be granted equal rights.
Thomas Jefferson had said much the same, as brought out by George on p. 545. "All men are created equal; ... they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …. " With what can the Creator endow us but that which is the Creator's to dispense, i.e. Creation, the Earth.
Whether that has any literal basis, who can say? However, if we believe it should be true, and act accordingly, that makes it true in practice. We, the nation as a community, have that power that Jefferson imputes to the Creator, to dispose over the Earth. It is a concept that attended the birth of the nation and that most Americans still seem to take seriously. George is simply making it concrete.
How about the "unalienable" part? Just as you cannot sell your child into slavery, you cannot sell or trade away your child's birthright, a piece of the Earth; nor can you buy or trade for the birthright of others' children. That is the meaning of "unalienable" rights: they are outside the market system.
It is up to the young to keep reminding the old of this, else it is easily forgotten in the rush to help pensioners and retired homeowners. The righteous used to protect "widows and orphans"; now, only the widows. Orphans still get some protection and support while in utero; after that it is sal se puedes, or sauve qui peut. Young people today have grown less conscious of their rights, thanks in part to the hypnosis of TV and the decline of literacy. Old people have become more selfish because they live so long, have moved so much, and retire away from their communities, if any. So the system is increasingly stacked against the young; but they don't find out about it until tuition rises, and more so when they try to buy their first home.

13. What California Governor borrowed George's wording, "unjustly enriched"? 341

Jerry Brown, referring to land value increments enjoyed by holders of desert land on the west side of the San JoaquinValley, in Kings, Tulare, Fresno, and Kings Counties to which the State brought subsidized water. Interestingly, this was the very place, with some of the very same large landholdings, that moved George 120 years ago to write his first book, Our Land and Land Policy, 1871.

14. How can California land titles go back to a king of Spain? 342

The treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo, 1848, by which Mexico ceded California and other areas to the USA, provided that existing land titles be recognized and undisturbed. Earlier when Mexico had rebelled successfully against Spain, the Spanish titles were likewise validated. It is a way for the winning nation to
minimize opposition from the losing one.
When you buy title to land the title is in the form of a chain going back to the first appropriator who followed our form of property law.
To the extent that the Spanish had originally expropriated the Indians, and were absentees, there was nothing necessarily "honorable" about "honoring" the Spanish titles. It was a political and military decision, to turn many of the Mexican landowners into Yankee collaborators.
It was different after the American Revolution, when the lands of many Tories (like the De Lancey family of New York) were confiscated by the winning colonial governments. Some 1/3 of the lands in the original 13 colonies were transferred in that way. Again, the lands of hundreds of Indian tribes were routinely confiscated throughout American history.
Spanish landowners have led a charmed life as their empire melted away, however: the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish- American war also validated Spanish titles in Cuba and the Philippines. Those in the Philippines survived the Japanese occupation, also. Then they survived the American reoccupation after 1944-45, in spite of their obvious collaboration with the Japanese. They continue today as major obstacles to economic democracy in the Philippines.
The Church has not been so lucky. Many countries have confiscated Church holdings over the centuries, even though much church income is devoted to social welfare.

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Chapter 2:
"The Enslavement of Laborers the Ultimate Results of Private Property in Land"

1. What is philology? 350

The study of speech to shed light on cultural history. It is an application of linguistics.

2. Does nobility give land? 351

Rather, land gives nobility. The world is full of "decayed nobility," who lost their land and retain only their noble titles. They become pathetic or comic material for opera bouffe, and cease to count for much.

3. When did English landlords shake off the obligation of providing for the defense of the country? 351

In stages. The abolition of military tenures by the Long Parliament was a major step (p.383). Tariffs and other excise taxes were introduced to pay for national defense.
The British taxpayer then was squeezed to do the same for many of the constituent states of the British "Empire." Britain always ruled by allying with local landlords who sold out their own countries and welcomed the British army because it relieved them, too, of paying for national defense and internal
suppression. The Indian name for such landlords is "Zamindar." A more generic term is "cacique."
Today it is American taxpayers who are used in this way, to relieve landlords in Latin America, Africa, Japan, the middle east and elsewhere of paying for their own defense. These, in turn, contribute heavily to American political campaigns and hire retired Congressmen as lobbyists.

4. Why are slavery and serfdom useful to landlords only in sparsely settled countries? 352

To keep labor from moving to free land. In settled countries labor may be milked through the market, where labor is free to compete for starvation wages.

5. Why did the planters of the Southeastern U.S. sustain no loss from the loss of slaves? 354

Because they kept control of the land, by George. He is oversimplifying: some plantations were divided, and many changed hands. But the system remained, so those without land continued to be exploited.
In many areas they instituted peonage (debt slavery) that was not notably different from the old slavery. Every time the issue reached the U.S. Supreme Court it threw out the state laws supporting peonage, but not many peons can carry their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the recurrence of Alabama and Georgia laws that had to be thrown out makes it clear that old ways die hard.

6. What happened to the "great movement" of Negro emigration that George saw commencing? 354-55

Emigration from some parts of the old South was made very difficult at times by organized planters wanting to keep their cheap labor and enforce peonage. If George means migration to the northern USA, that was not massive until considerably later.
The recent development of civil rights in the South, coupled with labor-saving machinery, has changed the preferred strategy of the landowning oligarchy. Rather than keep cheap field hands available, the landholder now would just as soon see them move away, to be replaced by the more docile, non-voting machines, trees, and cattle that are taking over southern farmlands. The landowning oligarchy still holds the high cards.

7. What sustained wage rates in the U.S. in spite of land monopoly? 356

The frontier. A few years later Frederick J. Turner incorporated George's idea (without credit) in his famous essay "The Frontier in American History" (1890), and other works. It is known as the "safety-valve theory," the frontier being the safety-valve to relieve excessive pressure on wages in the east.
Turner also said the frontier had shaped the American character. On p.390 we find George saying exactly that: "All that we are proud of in the American character, ... " etc.
George in fact inspired many leading thinkers, doers and writers of the next two generations. For a lot of detail on this see Eric Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny.

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Chapter 3:
"Claim of Land Owners to Compensation"

1. Why do most men not recognize the wrong in existing institutions? 358; cf. also 368

Here for the first time we see a touch of frustration that George has not shown before. "... the majority of men do not think. With them whatever is, is right, until its wrongfulness has been frequently pointed out, and in general they are ready to crucify whoever first attempts this."
He might better have stifled such thoughts, but even Jesus cried on the cross. Generally, George bounces back with incredible optimism for the development of human capacities to think.

2. What was Mill's plan to compensate landholders?

Compensate them for present value, and keep all future increases for the state.

How does George view it? 360-61

Interest on the funds required to buy land would exceed the present rent. Here George is stating in words exactly what the equations passed out in class show algebraically: the carrying costs of land exceed the current rent.
George also gives a strong clue to what he means by "speculative rent," a term we have found to be fuzzy before. He means the current cash flow plus the excess required to pay interest on the value—which equals the current increment in value.
He does not mention Alfred Russell Wallace's plan, which is to base compensation just on capitalized current income. He would presumably have liked that better. Indeed, George and Wallace became firm allies.
On p.365 George suggests a view not too distant from Wallace's, in fact. "Let the land holders have ... all that the possession of the land would give them in the absence of the rest of the community." That would be about zip. On urban fringes, construing that generously, one might say that only the "development value" of suburban farm land should be taxed, and the pure farm value left untouched. Britain used that concept in 1946 when it socialized the "development value" of suburban land (a policy it then gradually abandoned).

3. How does George view those who think landholders deserve compensation? 362

They "still wear the collar of the Saxon thrall, and have been educated to look upon the vested rights of land owners with all the superstitious reverence that ancient Egyptians looked upon the crocodile."

4. How much compensation was paid to slaveholders at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation? 362

None, although many people wanted to. The superstitious power of property rights to blind people to obvious wrong is the theme of Huckleberry Finn (1884).
The Proclamation only purported to abolish slavery in states in rebellion and did not apply in border states nor in states then occupied by Union forces; and it had no force in the states still in rebellion, either. The 13th Amendment is the more telling document; it does not forbid compensation. Congress can do nearly any fool thing it pleases, and often does. None was, however, actually paid. After the bloodiest war in American history, Congress was in no such mood. War radicalizes people, at least for a while. The Radical Republicans who controlled Congress, 1964-70, came near to confiscating the lands of the southern oligarchs, as well.
The British Government, as George mentions, did compensate slaveholders in the BWI. Presumably it would have done the same thing in the southern states, had its troops succeeded in putting down the American Revolution.

5. Is George committing an ethnic slur on p.366?

No, he is quoting someone else in the vernacular of the times, just as Mark Twain did in Huckleberry Finn. George might better have used quotation marks, and if writing today probably would. It would be hard to accuse anyone with George's views about equal rights of ethnic bias, however. If he had any it was anti-Chinese, an attitude that permeated the labor movement in San Francisco. However in a notable incident he once lost an election by refusing the support of labor leader Dennis Kearny because of Kearny's overt bigotry.

6. Did anyone else ever propose to go farther than George and confiscate improvements as well as land? 367

Karl Marx, Nicolai Lenin, Mao-tse Tung, Bela Kun, Erich Honecker, et al. But it is not only from the extreme left that such confiscation proceeds. Our present tax system, framed and promoted by conservatives, confiscates both capital and labor routinely, to protect land from direct taxation. One of the great ironies, not without its important lessons for us, is that the extremely conservative Chicago School economists strongly favor taxing capital and its income. This tenet was made part of Chicago orthodoxy by the founding father of the Chicago School, Professor Frank Knight. Like J.B. Clark, whom he followed faithfully, Knight's oft-professed purpose was to undercut Henry George. George Stigler, one of Knight's disciples, has professed the same purpose.

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Chapter 4:
"Private Property in Land Historically Considered"

1. Has any society ever recognized common rights to land? 370-84

Many societies have, including our own at various times. The illustrations George gives are generally valid. You should know something of the historical role of Lycurgus, Solon, Licinian Laws, Gracchus, Roman Law (see 372n), the Teutonic mark (as in Ostmark, aka Austria), latifundia, fief, primogeniture, entail, infeudation. Does it strike you as harsh to be asked to know or look up scholarly and historical references in a writer so learned as George? If so, give some thought to this: George never finished high school. Should you know as much history when you graduate from this college? You may, but only if you get turned on as he did. Motivation works wonders.
The "military frontier" is a useful concept. Historically, nations used to lure families to frontiers by giving them land and freedom. Hence conditions of equal landholdings were found on frontiers, while lands safe inside the core concentrated into a few hands. Today, however, soldiers are available cheaper: we enlist foreigners into our military service by offering them American citizenship. Rome did the same in its declining years: an inauspicious precedent.
Andrew Bisset, The Strength of Nations, cited at 384n, had a deep effect on George's thinking.

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Chapter 5:
"Of Property in Land in the United States"

1. What is distinctive about placer mining? 385 (Placer rhymes with gasser, and is a corruption of the Spanish plaza.)

It is a simple hand operation, requiring no machinery and little space. Hence, anyone could do it.

2. What were the "pueblo lands" of San Francisco? 385-86

City-owned lands, set aside originally under Spanish law, to provide for future population growth. (Pueblo = city.)

3. What happened to San Francisco's pueblo lands? 386

They were "reduced to private ownership in large tracts." It is a good guess that they went to the wrong people, at sweetheart prices. George thought the only way the public can get its due when public lands are privatized is to subject them to continuing taxation, which rises as their value rises.
Certain cities, notably Los Angeles, also have ancient "pueblo rights" to water. One LA Council tried to give the people's rights away to their friends, too, in the spirit of the times, but finally was forced to take them back. Then it created the LA D.W.P., which has waxed mighty.

4. How were the placer lands treated? 386

As common property, subject to use on a strict "use it or lose it" basis, in limited quantity. Title remained in the government; individual holdings were "possessory" claims only. "The essential idea of the mining regulations was to prevent forestalling and monopoly." Claims were about 10' x 10' – the diggings looked like antheaps. Claims expired when the miner left. Today in the Amazon there is a similar gold strike followed by a gold-washing operation with a similar proliferation of minute possessory interests and an ant-heap of labor-intensive activity. If you ever get a chance to see the documentary film on TV, it is mind-blowing.

5. What is "patenting" of lands? 387

Securing a title in fee simple from the government.

6. How does a "possessory title" differ from a fee-simple title to land? 387

A possessory title is ownership contingent on occupation of land, and ends when occupation ends. "Possession" seems to imply power and therefore permanence, and sometimes it works out that way; but legally it only implies temporary occupation, and is not permanent unless in "fee simple."
Possessory interests are often in a state of evolution as they "ripen" into de facto fee simple titles through custom and political pressure. Holders of possessory titles are sometimes in a strong political position to extend their claims. Settlers tend to get ahead of formal systems of land titling, and occupy and use natural resources. "Squatters' rights," for example, were possessory interests the government finally converted into fee simple titles under laws like the Preemption Act of 1841. The Mormon pioneers settled the Mormon states well before the Feds showed up to legitimize what they had done, and both sides
agreed on some legal fictions that let the Mormon pattern of village living be passed off as complying with the residence requirements of the Homestead Act.
Appropriative water "rights"—licenses, actually—and broadcasting licenses are other examples of possessory interests ripening into permanent interests having the de facto characteristics of fee simple titles. Many aircraft landing rights, on the other hand, failed to be permanent and were lost when airlines were deregulated in the Carter Administration.
There are many other examples of squatters' being evicted, even after many generations. Some of our ancestors came here from the British Isles because the "clearances" and "enclosures" drove them from their ancestral lands. In American cities today, homeless squatters are being evicted from tents and cardboard box shelters.
The difference between possessory and fee simple titles may be summed up in resale value. People buy fee simple titles as "investments," a word used to imply that future resale value will equal or exceed the current price. This gives rise to absentee ownership and speculation. Possessory interests on the other hand are not for trafficking, they are for use only.

7. How did the early settlers of New England differ from those of Virginia and to the South? 388

New England settlers held land more in common. In fact they did more than George relates here: they taxed land according to its value, just as George advocates. Wm. Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation describes the process in enough detail to make it clear that when the Puritans divided land into private parcels they taxed it "as ye valuation wente," in Bradford's antique spelling. They divided land in equal shares, but "he that got a better" was taxed to compensate him that got a worse. "This gave generally good contente," according to Bradford. One result of this policy was dense settlement, urbanization, and rapid growth, both in New England and in areas which New Englanders settled: western New York, Ohio and Michigan, notably, where economic development proceeded faster than in states settled on the aristocratic basis.
George is making a different point here, and in the process understates the degree to which his policies had already some partial application and the validation of experience.

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