Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-01-27
GE0RGEIsM.

A Henry George disciple writes to the
Cleveland Leader and Herald:
Take up our primary proposition, for instance,
men, and made the earth for their use and not
Or the speculative purposes of few, shrewder
or more Inscriptions than the rest When
you have disposed of that, other propositions
Will be submitted to the light of your over
towering intellect.
1t will not make the Leader mentally
weary to reply to this clap trap in de-
Tense of Henry Georges absurd PROPOSE
tons. Admit that God is the Father of
all men and made the earth for their use,
and not for the speculative schemes of the
few. What then? He made man
social being also, and of necessity the
creature of law. We may not venture to
contemplate the ultimate end of God in
the creation; but we may view with calm
the operation of the laws to which men
by nature are made subject. One of these
is the desire and right to acquire and
possess property, and another gives to the
provident and careful the right to possess
more than the foolish and idle. Man has
the right to convert nature to his use, and
the limit to this right is one of capacity
only. The command to labor implied the
right to enjoy its rewards. But these too,
are subjects of law, which is the result of
the experience of social beings. The
worlds ages have, under these conditions,
established the law of right of posses
sion of property. Society has rights
belonging to it as unit in the universe.
Georgeism teaches that it has no rights
superior to those of the individual-tha
is the practical outcome of the doctrine.
As society has rights necessary to its pres
ervation, laws are a necessity that those
may be restrained or coerced in whom
such methods alone command respect AS
the desire Of property is, as we have said,
natural, laws are needed to restrain those
who would interfere with the right to
property, and hence the regulations under
which men acquire and hold property AS
man has wants, there must be property to
supply them, and property carries with it
social organization-they. are co-existent,
and hence, again, the laws for the orderly
requirement of property by the individ-
uai. As men find most interest in that
only which they can control, it is wise
policy that commands them to recognize
property rights in each other; and these
commands, through ages of time, have
formulated the laws under which men NAV
individually possess. The earliest ages
give US glimpses of recognition of property
rights, and through all succeeding ones
such rights have been more and more
clearly recognized, and the laws more and
more distinctly stated for their preserva-
ton. There is no logical deduction to be
drawn from the use and history of property
rights, the command to labor and to save.
and the prohibition to covet another's,
that justifies the Georgeites in claiming
that we have arrived at point of time
when all the results of the experience of
the past are to be reversed, all natural de-
sires to possess thwarted, and the tradi-
tons and laws of the worlds history to be
undone, that the individual in the George
ranks may be recognized as superior to the
social organization.