Joseph Fels
Soap magnate (1853–1914) who bankrolled the international single-tax movement: the Joseph Fels Fund financed campaigns, lecture bureaus, and land-reform experiments on both sides of the Atlantic in the movement's peak decade.
Overview
Joseph Fels (1853–1914), the Philadelphia soap manufacturer (Fels-Naptha), was the single-tax movement's great financier: the Joseph Fels Fund (from 1909) committed his fortune to putting Henry George's program into practice, funding state single-tax campaigns (Oregon's initiative fights), the Philadelphia lecture bureau that employed Louis F. Post, Scott Nearing, and Frederic Howe (Gaffney's account, essay Ch. 3), and land-colony experiments in Britain.[1] His money is why the movement's 1909–1916 peak — the People's Budget era through the California initiative — had professional organization behind it.[1]
See Also
- Louis F. Post — the lecture bureau's star
- Narrative: The Single Tax · Single Tax
- 1909 People's Budget
Sources
- Mason Gaffney & Fred Harrison, The Corruption of Economics (1994), Gaffney essay Ch. 3 (Fels Lecture Bureau and campaign funding) — Heavy scan, per the wiki's book page (A-claims with book locators). [VERIFY: Fels Fund founding year and British land-colony specifics on a direct biographical source — e.g., Mary Fels' 1916 biography.]