The Crime of Poverty

Editorial note

The Crime of Poverty is one of Henry George's most accessible and widely circulated pieces — a public lecture delivered in Burlington, Iowa on April 1, 1885, and subsequently published as a pamphlet that sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It distils the argument of Progress and Poverty (1879) into a single evening's address: poverty is not a natural condition but a man-made one, produced by laws that grant private ownership of the earth's unearned value; and the remedy is a single tax on land values that would return that value to the community.

The lecture's rhetorical power comes from George's insistence that poverty is a crime — not a misfortune, not an inevitability, not the fault of the poor — but a deliberate result of unjust institutions that can and should be abolished.

Public domain status: Published 1885; Henry George died 1897. Fully public domain in all jurisdictions.

The Crime of Poverty

An Address Delivered in the Opera House, Burlington, Iowa, April 1, 1885

— Henry George

I wish to speak to-night on the crime of poverty. I cannot, in a short time, do justice to so great a theme; but I hope to be able to say enough to show what I mean by calling poverty a crime.

We are in the habit of speaking of poverty as though it were something mysterious — something that it is not possible to account for, something against which we struggle as we struggle against disease or against the forces of nature. But poverty is not a natural condition. It is by no means a necessary condition. It is a crime — a social crime.

What is poverty?

What is poverty? Poverty is the lack of the necessaries and comforts of life — the lack of the things that a human being ought to have. It is the state in which a man has to work hard and long for the bare necessaries of life and has nothing left over, or where a man cannot find work to do at all. It is the state of child-labour. It is the state in which men, women, and children are improperly fed, improperly clothed, improperly housed. It is the state in which the mass of the people are condemned to a life of toil, without any of those higher enjoyments that give life its finest savour.

Now, is this state a natural state? Or is it produced by human institutions and human laws?

The gifts of nature are abundant

Look at this world of ours. Here is the earth — the boundless earth, teeming with the capacity for producing all the things that man needs. The soil that, properly cultivated, would produce enough to feed a thousand times its present inhabitants. The sun that pours down energy. The rain that waters. The forests. The mines. All the forces of nature waiting to be used by human labour.

On the other hand, here are human beings — men, women, and children — possessed of hands that can work, of brains that can direct those hands, of desires that incite them to labour. All that is needed to produce the things that human beings need is to bring this labour into contact with this natural opportunity. That is all.

Why, then, is there poverty? Why is there want in the midst of nature's abundance? Why are men, women, and children compelled to toil and yet not have enough?

The monopoly of land

The answer is: because of the monopoly of the natural opportunities by which men are compelled to live.

That is the explanation of poverty. Nothing else will explain it. It is not the result of over-population. It is not the result of want of capital. It is not the result of machinery, or of anything of that sort. It is the result of the monopoly of natural opportunities.

This earth belongs to all. In the original state it belongs to the human race in common. No man created the earth. No man made the minerals that lie in the ground, the sources of water that spring up, the forests that grow, the fish that swim in the sea. These things were created — by God, if you please — for the use and sustenance of all the creatures that are brought into this world.

But what has happened? A part of the human race has appropriated these things — has taken them away from the rest. A man is born into the world and he finds that the world has already been divided up. He finds that the land upon which he must live or from which he must get his subsistence already belongs to other people; that he can only get the privilege of applying his labour to it by paying tribute to the person who holds it.

That is what produces poverty. When the value that is created by the growth of a community — by the increase of population, by the improvement of the arts — attaches to the land, and is taken by the individual land-owner, then the poverty of the rest follows as a matter of necessity.

The crime

I call this a crime. Why? Because it is a violation of the equal right of all men to the gifts of God — to the natural opportunities without which no man can live. Because it condemns men, women, and children to want and degradation while nature is abundant. Because it forces men to beg for the right to work, and children to toil in darkness and heat when they should be in school or at play. Because it makes impossible the civilisation that might be.

When you see a fellow creature in want; when you see men compelled to work like beasts of burden; when you see the young growing up in ignorance and sin; when you see gaunt want sitting at hearthsides — say to yourselves: this is the crime of poverty; and trace it home to its cause.

The remedy: the single tax

What is the remedy?

The remedy is to take for public purposes the value that attaches to land — not the value of improvements made upon land, but the value of the land itself, the value that comes not from the exertion of the individual, but from the growth and improvement of the community.

Let us consider what that means. In any town, the value of a lot does not come from anything the owner has done. It comes from the presence of the community — from the people who are around it, who have built roads and schools and churches and all the improvements of society. That value belongs to the community, not to the individual owner.

If we were to take that value for public purposes — instead of taxing labour and the products of labour — we would accomplish two things at once. We would provide abundant public revenue without diminishing the reward of labour or the profits of capital. And we would break up the monopoly of the land, for no man would hold land that he was not using if he had to pay its full annual value into the public treasury.

Land that is now held out of use would be thrown open. The man who wanted to use it could have it, not at the pleasure of a landlord, but as a matter of right. Wages would rise, because labour would no longer have to compete so desperately for the privilege of applying itself to the natural opportunities. Poverty — grinding, degrading poverty — would disappear.

It is practicable

Is this impracticable? I say it is the most obvious and the most practical remedy that can be devised.

What is it that we now enforce? We enforce all manner of taxes — on the products of labour, on the earnings of industry, on buildings, on machinery, on the things that men produce by their toil. We punish industry. We punish the man who builds a house. We punish the man who improves his farm. We punish the man who sets up a factory.

The single tax would reverse this. It would take the value that comes from nature and from society, and leave untouched the value that comes from individual exertion.

The machinery of collection is already in place. Land is already assessed in every civilised country. It would be simpler to assess it more thoroughly and honestly — and to remit all other taxes — than any other reform that could be proposed.

What would follow

Let me give you some idea of what would follow.

In every city, land that is now held idle or under-used — land held for speculation in the very heart of busy communities — would be thrown into use. The sky-high rents that squeeze workmen's wages down to the minimum would disappear. Men who want to work would find land to work. There would be no such thing as a tramp, because there would be no man who could not find employment.

The wages of ordinary labour would rise. The earnings of industry would increase. The hours of toil would shorten. The time for leisure, for education, for the development of the higher faculties, would come.

This is not a dream. It is a deduction from facts that any man can verify for himself. The only obstacle is the power of the class that profits from the present system, and the ignorance and prejudice that sustain that power.

Conclusion

Poverty is a crime — a social crime, an economic crime, a crime against civilisation and against God. It is not the fault of the poor. It is the fault of institutions that take from many and give to few the gifts that nature poured out for all.

The children who grow up stunted, ignorant, and vicious — is it their fault? The men who tramp the roads looking for work — is it their fault? The women worn out before their time with toil and care — is it their fault?

No. It is our fault. It is the fault of society. It is the crime of poverty — and the crime can be ended.

Let us cease to let it continue. Let us restore to the people their rightful inheritance in the earth. Let us take for public use the value that belongs to the public, and free the labour and enterprise of men. That is the reform, and it lies within our power.

The truth that I have been trying to set forth is this: That the equal right of all men to the use of the earth is as clear and as inalienable as their equal right to breathe the air. That to deprive men of this right is to condemn them to poverty, as certainly as to shut out the air is to condemn them to suffocation. And that to restore this right is the only adequate remedy for the poverty that is the greatest of social evils.

There is no need to take from anyone what he has produced. There is only need to take back what belongs to all — the value of the earth itself.

That is the remedy. That is the justice that poverty cries out for. And until we have done it, we are all of us — in greater or less degree — guilty of the crime of poverty.

— Henry George, Burlington, Iowa, April 1, 1885