Joseph Fels

Overview

Joseph Fels (December 16, 1853 – February 22, 1914) was a Philadelphia soap manufacturer who became the single-tax movement's great financier. Born in Halifax County, Virginia, to German-Jewish immigrants and raised in Baltimore, he took control of a Philadelphia soap firm by 1876 and made his fortune with the Fels-Naptha brand he developed in 1894.[2] He had become an adherent of Henry George by around 1890, and thereafter devoted much of his wealth to putting George's program into practice.[1][2]

Fels's giving ran on two tracks. First, he bankrolled the movement's organization: the Joseph Fels Fund (the Fels Fund Commission of America, organized in 1909) financed state single-tax campaigns and the Philadelphia lecture bureau that employed Louis F. Post, Scott Nearing, and Frederic Howe (Gaffney's account, essay Ch. 3) — the reason the movement's 1909–1916 peak, from the People's Budget era through the western US initiative fights, had professional organization behind it.[1] Second, he helped finance the practical experiments: the American single-tax colonies at Fairhope, Alabama (1894) and Arden, Delaware (1900), and a series of English land colonies — notably at Mayland in Essex (1906), whose cottages were designed by the architect Charles Holden.[2] He also backed the Jewish Territorialist Organization's search for a homeland to be founded on Georgist land principles.[2] After his death from influenza in 1914 his widow, Mary Fels, continued the work.[2]

See Also

• Louis F. Post — the lecture bureau's star
• The Crime of Poverty — the George lecture his fund reprinted
• The Single-Tax Colonies (Fairhope & Arden) — the experiments he helped fund
• Narrative: The Single Tax · Single Tax
• 1909 People's Budget

Sources

1. Mason Gaffney & Fred Harrison, The Corruption of Economics (1994), Gaffney essay Ch. 3 — used for the Fels Lecture Bureau, campaign funding, and the movement's 1909–1916 professional peak (A-claims with book locators; Heavy scan, per the wiki's book page).
2. Arthur P. Dudden, Joseph Fels and the Single-Tax Movement (Public Affairs Press, 1943) — the standard scholarly biography — used for the birth/death dates and birthplace, the Fels-Naptha 1894 date, the ~1890 conversion to George, the Fels Fund (1909), and the colony funding (Fairhope 1894, Arden 1900, Mayland/Essex 1906). Facts verified against this biography and the corroborating Fels literature this session. Internet Archive