The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-10-30
RIVER AT 8 A. NJ.
HENRY GEORGE.

tragic and awful silence descended
upon the struggling factions in New
York yesterday, when enc Of the great
leaders fell dead at his post. The
news Of the death of Henry George
flashed like an electric shock over the
country: and few men could command
a higher tribute than the sorrow and
willing respect and admiration express
ed by those who were most sharply at
odds with him in his political policies
and economic views. The glamour and
the cloud that hide from us the real
man when the fight is hand to hand,
and governments and institutions are
at stake, both fell away; and the peo-
pie stood with uncovered head while
they remembered the sincerity the
courage, the singleness of purpose of
this man who had passed from among
them like a whispered breath.
Henry George was great man. Sc
we're and comparatively narrow as
were his limitations, within them he
achieved a stature that lowered above
his fellows. He was not statesman or
philosopher, but reformer and vision
airy. 1t was his fortune to have been
touched by that sublime pity and sub
Inner aspiration for the race which
leaves no man as 1t finds him. Pene-
trated with the force of a new idea,
carried away by the mighty, rushing
torrent of conviction that the way was
open for the world to be made anew,
he bent himself to the task with all
the fervor, all the concentration, all
the devotion that lead men to the bat
tie and the death. For he was abso-
lutely sincere. His opponents believed
him to be mistaken man, an cratic
man, a man dangerous to the peace
and existence of society. But his dis
interestedness was as patent as his
courage; and before these two quail
tiles the world has always bent it's
head in reverence, and forever they
will be it's masters.
With the fire and genius of a Rous-
seau, but with more Difference to the
practical, Mr.. George sprang into sud
den notoriety with the publication of
his Progress and Poverty" He had
caught at the idea of the inequity, the
impossibility of any moral right to
private property in land. The whole
nature of the man was fired with a
sense of the vastness of his discovery.
To him came the intoxication Of stand
ing on the shores of a continent won
from the unknown; and what wonder
If before the eyes of the enthusiast
there blossomed the strange forms of
beauty which through the ages have
consoled the idealist for the present
reign of fire and blood. 1t was but one
leap for him into the full sunlight. His
method became the subject of an
apotheosis; and out of the operation
of the single tax he saw rise visions
which even those who agreed with his
broad general proposition acknowledg-
ed to exist only in a dream. Yet it
was a great and noble dream, what
ever the stuff of which it was made.
For it was impersonal. The biting
sorrow of the worlds pain, the Won
drous vista of the worlds possibilities,
from which it ever turned perversely
came and abode with him. For this
the poor loved and the rich believed
in him. They might deny the virtue
of his remedy and affirm his unftness
for executive or administrative work
but they were not insensible to the
daring virtue of the iconoclast whose
love for and faith in humanity were
an inspiring force.
The world needs such men, and ii
has never wanted them. Not for them
are the honors and duties of COM
nland Not for their hands are the
reins of power. that need a steady
nerve and a distant view rather than
the wild shout of triumph and the
eye fixed on one point that has swell
cd to the proportions Of the universe