Daily Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1876-1884, 1883-07-25

Travelling In a Circle.
Harry George has Just concluded &C.
fies Of articles. devoted to his special
views Of the absorbing problems OF the
day, in Frank Lesiie's Illustrated.
Thoughtful and interesting as these con-
tributions are, the opinions outlined In
them will not meet with any very gener.
al acceptance. They are pitched in the
key OF his quite phenomenal book, PRO
gress and Poverty" and again and again
return to tho authors favorite hobby Of
making land common property by an
unsparing system Of taxation, whose
usufruct should be devoted to the needs
Of the community at large. He not only
advocates raising all taxation on land,
but he believes these imposts should be
made so stringent as to practically make
the condition of the landholder and the
uon.landholder the same. II is impossi-
BILE to disguise the fact that there is
sort Of logical consistency in Mr.. Georges
intellectual processes, just as there is
remarkable glow OF Imagination in tho
Utopias and Arcadias OF other authors.
Probably the nearest approach to the
carrying out of his ideas was made in
France, in the period stretching from
1889 to 1894. Even more ra dical pro-
GEES than that advocated by the author
OF Progress and Poverty" was made by
the Republicans Of France while they
were getting rid Of the old Feudal
regime. Yet, strange as II may seem,
while their radical measures resulted in
subdivision Of land In France which
has, in some degree, held good to the
present day, within ten years from the
marching of the sans-cullottes to Yer
sailles there was an iron despotism OF
capital in that country which had never
heretofore been known. With all the
cruel devices to regulate and hamper
capital, the Jews emerged from the
Ghettos Of Europe tho bankers of the
world. 1t is one thing to fix upon pa
per n scheme to rule mankind, and quite
another thing to enforce it. On the sup
position that, tomorrow, there should
be general subdivision OF the
lands OF the world, resulting from
excessive taxation or less regular meth
dds, within ten years one of two things
would happen: Either scheme would
be devised by which land-holding would
subject the owners to onerous payment
OF imposts to the capitalist class, or land
would again gravitate into large hold
ings. As result OF the most drastic
system of experiments, we should find
that we were, in truth, travelling in n
circle. The most dispiriting thing about
projects for the amelioration of mankind
is that the philosophers who can CON
struct the most beautiful theories are
the most helpless in the practical details
OF life. Every one remembers how sim
pile and childlike. in all the everyday
needs of life, was Sir Isaac Newton.
The probability is that the more modern
author of the Mechaaique Celeste could
not have drafted code which would
have held township together in con-
cord, though he could map out the
heavens with matchless skill. All who are
interested in literature remember what
an excessively impracticlble person was
Jean Jacques Rousseau, the author of
the 'Soeial Contract" although he for
INFLATED ideas which. in the hands of
practical men, like Thomas Jefferson
and his associates in America, and
Mirabeau, Danton, Robespierre, and the
rest, all practical mon, though fanatics,
in France, terminated in world-adjust-
ing energies. Mr.. George will undoubt.
eddy leave his impress upon the thought
OF the last quarter of the present CEN
tury. Conscientious and sagacious sum-
maries of the existing evils of the age
always have lasting influence;
although, always, they do their work in
channels not dreamed of by those who
devoted patient thought to their expli- |
cation. In the concerns of the present
work-a-day world the laborious cxcogi- |
tations of Harry Georges brain will have
little practical outcome. Far more could
be hoped for from the efforts of "a man
Of inferior ability who had devoted him
self to the sentimental aspects of man
kind, as embodied in races and nations.
These are perhaps vulgar topics, but
they have behind them resistless, selfish
and national forces, which the abstract
theorist, who applies himself to the
affairs of mankind at large, cannot hope
to command