Nature’s Gifts
The Australian Lectures of Henry George on the Ownership of Land and Other Natural Resources
By John Pullen

In 1890, the famous American economist and social reformer, Henry George, arrived in Australia to begin a controversial 98-day public lecture tour. Following the international publicity generated by his book Progress and Poverty, with its challenges to conventional economics, he had made several lecture tours in Britain, attracting immense audiences. In Australia he visited 34 cities and towns and continued to promulgate vigorously and eloquently his radical program for the ownership, management and taxation of natural resources such as land, coal, and minerals.

Nature’s Gifts provides, for the first time, a detailed account of this important and progressive lecture series. Equal rights to land; land taxation; land prices; land rents; land nationalisation; and free trade and protection remain issues which are highly relevant today.

Engaging and insightful, this is a timely and critical study of the reforms proposed by Henry George and the possibility of establishing an efficient and equitable system for the ownership of natural resources.
Source: Publisher.

Review #1
September 2015
By John Holmes, Professor of Geography, University of Queensland 
Australian Journal of Politics and History: Vol 61/3, 2015, pp. 450-483

Excerpt
Pullen's day-to-day chronicle and thoughtful appraisal of Henry George's fourteen-week Australian tour in 1890 provides much-needed further insight into a formative period in Australian political history. In his 1879 classic, Progress and Poverty, George argued: "The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a people." While George's messianic crusade in support of shared equity in land via a tax on its incremental value may have been misplaced, his writings were highly nfluential over several decades.

Pullen argues that George's Australian tour can be attributed to a fortuitious conjunction of time and place. Whilst Georgist-style doctrines on the centrality of land taxes have been an ongoing theme, also advocated by Adam Smith and J. S. Mill and recognised by contemporary economists such as Stigler and Friedman as the "least bad tax", the historical evidence shows that George's revolutionary doctrine briefly gained exceptional prominence in an era of unprecedented intellectual and doctrinal contention on politico-social systems, with emergent doctrines such as communism, socialism and syndicalism contending against mercantilism, protectionism and free-market capitalism. George's ideology can be crudely described as egalitarian "capitalism", based on private property, free trade and limited welfarism, with its distinctive propositon being public revenue to be primarily derived from taxing the entire unearned incremental value of land, given that this increment was derived from external sources.

As still-evolving settler societies, the Australian colonies were receptive to reformist doctrines, notably those unvolving the award of land titles and the rights, duties and revenues attached to these titles. Closer settlement programmes were a type of social engineering. It is not surprising that land settlement was a major preoccupation of a generation of historians and historical geographers. Yet few mentioned George's tour. This lacuna may perhaps be excused given that, notwithstanding its remarkable initial impact, George's ideas have had scarcely any discernible influence on Australian polity. Surprisingly, and possibly in ignorance of the distinctive attributes of Australia's innovative lease tenures and their unique role as policy instruments, George did not fabour leases.

Pullen observes that this tour was actively supported by nonconformist ministers but hardly ever by Anglican or Catholic clergy. George's revivalists crusade was one episode in an ongiing tradition of economic theorists seeking "heaven on earth". George saw his efforts as being in the service of a deeply religious cause.

Of particular value is Pullen's informed scrutiny of the foundational principles and of the common misunderstanding and misrepresentations of Georgism, presented in Part 2 of this book.

John Holmes
The University of Queensland
Read or download the full one-page review (pdf), here.

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Review #2
By Rick DiMare 
Monday, May 11, 2015

My opinion is that John Pullen’s book is the most authoritative analysis of Henry George’s intentions to date.

On page 197 Pullen asked a great question, one that I think keeps us all interested in what George had to say: “Was George correctly predicting the evolution of social consciousness or was he being naively utopian?”

Part 1 (pgs. 29-154) covers Henry George’s 3-month 1890 tour of Austrailia, which involved about 50 lectures covered by over 50 different journalists, all giving their professional opinions about what Henry George said and meant. 

Part 2 (pgs. 155-197) involves Pullen’s analysis of several key Georgist ideas, and based on the opinions of the journalists, helps us understand what George likely meant and didn’t mean, even when he sometimes contradicted himself, or changed his position on an issue.

The only criticism I have is that Pullen is viewing Georgism from an Australian legal/tax system, rather than from the legal system Henry George actually affected.

It should be clear after reading Pullen’s book that:

• George was against the nationalization of land, against government leasing land out to us, and was for retaining the right to fee simple or freehold ownership
• George was against income taxes as a means of fairly distributing wealth, primarily because they taxed wages as “wage income” in the process, not because he was against all income taxes in theory
• “land value” refers to some kind of “free lunch” received by rent-seekers, which today can be referred to as “unearned income gains”
• providing a citizen’s dividend or basic income was a means of making everyone “landowners,” even if they were landless or owned inferior land
• the goal is not equal wealth, but equal opportunity
• “single tax” is a label that serves certain purposes, but should not be taken too literally
• everyone owes a tax on the unearned land gains caused by increases in population and infrastructure, even churches, nonprofits, owner-occupied homeowners, etc., but the tax needs to be levied in a way that does not impair property rights, or rights to the free exercise of religion 

On page 197 Pullen asks: “Was George correctly predicting the evolution of social consciousness or was he being naively utopian?”

I'm going with him "correctly predicting the evolution of social consciousness," one reason being because he was not sold on the idea using income taxes to equalize wealth.

Wages received as compensation for productive and useful effort simply should not be taxed, and not mixed in with land rents or other unearned income, no matter how much or how little the wage-earner was compensated.

Given over 100 years experience with the 1913 income tax, we can see that it turned out just as George said it would. Although the tax started out by targeting only high income earners, it now bears most heavily on wages, and lightly on unearned income and income derived from corporate privilege.


The following is typical of the priceless information provided in Pullen’s book, but keep in mind that Henry George is saying this before the 16th Amendment authorized the “Pollock income tax” on unearned land gains in 1913, and before the “Stone Tracy income tax” authorized a tax on corporate privilege in 1911. 

In other words, George’s only experience in 1890 would have been with the currency-regulating “Springer income tax,” which as George notes, throws the baby out with the bath water by taxing wages as income to try to achieve a fair distribution of wealth. 

The funny thing is that many progressives and populists were fighting for this kind of income tax in the late 19th century, despite George’s warnings about it.

On page 123 Pullen writes:

“On Monday, 12 May [1890] George recorded in his diary that he was ‘writing for mail,’ presumably one of the letter sent back for publication in the New York STANDARD, reporting on the events of his Australian tour. At 8 pm he lectured again at Her Majesty’s Opera House in Brisbane. . . . 

In this lecture, entitled ‘The Land for the People,’ George said he would deal with the practical side of the issue, whereas on Saturday, 10 May, he had spoken on ‘what might be called the sentimental or ethical side.’ Among other things, he stressed the simplicity and transparency of a land-value tax, by comparison with an income tax. Land values are easily calculated and openly known, and a land-value tax cannot be evaded or avoided. Also, a land-value tax would not penalize industriousness and thrift and would diffuse land ownership. It would also discourage speculation, which retards the increase of wealth and ‘compels industrious and frugal man to contribute for the benefit of the men who have done nothing’ - a statement that produced ‘loud and prolonged cheers.’ (Queenslander newspaper)

In reply to a question, he said that the land-value tax should be extended to the value of quarries, coal mines, etc., but not to their production.

On the issue of compensation, he said it should be provided to existing owners only if the land were taken for public purposes. He did not think that justice called for compensation under any other circumstances. George was obviously making a distinction here between land and land value. If private LAND itself is taken by the government, he agreed that there should be compensation. But if the VALUE of private land is taken by means of taxation by the government for public purposes — such as roads, railways, welfare services, or even for grants to individuals — he opposed compensation.

He objected to income taxes because they were a denial of ‘the sacred right of property:’

‘The value of things produced by human exertion belong to the individual… Whatever a man made or brought forth from the material of the universe and adapted to the satisfaction of human desires, that was his, and it ought to be his as against all the world.’ (George’s words according to a Queenslander reporter)

An additional reason for objecting to income taxes is that they are easy to evade, especially for the rich: ‘the poorer men’s means were easily discovered, while with other men of large incomes it was impossible to determine what their means were.’ (Queenslander)”

The section near the end of the book "Realized and unrealized increments: The ability-to-pay problem" was one of Pullen's most important sections, from a U.S. legal point of view. 

As Pullen notes, levying LVT on unrealized gains causes hardship, evictions and foreclosures, and acts like an abusive unavoidable property tax, which fortunately, the U.S. Congress can't levy.

Pullen offers the solution that U.S. tax law has already considered. Simply defer the tax until the landowner dies, sells the property, or changes title in any way. (But unfortunately the oligarchs have established certain loopholes that prevent a U.S. land gains tax from having any significant effect.)

Pullen states, in the quote I posted above, "or even for grants to individuals:"

"George was obviously making a distinction here between land and land value. If private LAND itself is taken by the government, he agreed that there should be compensation. But if the VALUE of private land is taken by means of taxation by the government for public purposes — such as roads, railways, welfare services, or even for grants to individuals — he opposed compensation."

But note how he avoids the words "income" or "basic income guarantee." It's a "grant," and not tied into the income tax system that converts wages into "wage income."

According to Pullen's book, George usually talked about grants or social services in response to people who thought he wanted to divide up land equally and hand out land titles to all. 

But, in effect, sharing the land rents made everyone a sort of landowner even if they had no land, or held low value or worthless land. But when you call the grant "income" you play into the hands of the oligarchs, who want their unearned "income" gains to be treated like, or less harshly than, "wage income."
In other words, a human who does not own enough quality land upon which to thrive is owed a citizen's dividend or grant simply because s/he has been closed off from that kind of quality land, irregardless as to whether s/he works, and irregardless as to whether s/he has other income.

John Pullen describes a lecture given by Henry George on March 17, 1890: "The land he [Henry George] argued is the property of the people, and 'the rightful possession of land is the basis of a nation's prosperity.' A landless man is an unnatural thing, 'like an airless bird, or a waterless fish.' People cannot see that the slums and miseries of the cities are the evil effects of the wrongful distribution of land." pg. 49

In the same paragraph, "If the land is held by a few, 'the mass must work for those few for the barest living.' Until men had an equal right to the land, there must be 'a rich class and a poor class, a class of masters and a class of slaves.'"