Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age

Henry George is too little known today, but he wrote the 19th century’s bestselling book, Progress and Poverty, a work of political economy written for the general reader and still extremely relevant. George was also a moving force behind the formation of the New York City labor party that almost got him elected mayor. O’Donnell, an expert in Irish-American history at Holy Cross, brilliantly examines George through the lens of New York City and its Catholic politics of the 1870s and 1880s, while also explaining the stew of reform ideas and impulses of the day. George’s historic proposal for a “single tax” never went far, but it aroused the political hopes of workers everywhere in the U.S. A man of deep learning and compassion, George was the working person’s champion, and he constantly drew attention to the Gilded Age’s stark class divide, with its shame of urban tenements and dangerous working conditions. His principles were what O’Donnell accurately terms “radical republicanism”—a socialism shorn of Karl Marx that acknowledged capitalism’s dynamism as well as its deep faults. Scholarly to the core, the book is nevertheless easy going, and it has the potential to reawaken interest in old-style labor politics. [em](June) [/em]