That's the slogan on the two-story high advertising mural found recently on a building in Galesburg, Illinois. (Photo here.) It is an ad for Henry George 5 cent cigars. (See also this page of cigar ads.)
The "I am for men" slogan was on a pin I found on ebay a few years ago. The seller made some comment about it being anti-feminist. Well, she or he didn't know much about George.
When I googled the phrase, I found some interesting things. Here's one:
Henry George, a nineteenth-century
American author and political economist, was nominated for the office of mayor
of New York in 1886. He was called to a meeting at the Cooper Institute to speak
to working men. The chairman of the meeting gave him a flowery introduction with
the customary political rhetoric. The chairman concluded by saying, "Henry
George is the friend of the working men." As soon as Mr. George rose to his
feet, slowly and emphatically he said, "I would like to announce that I am
not the friend of the working man." Stunned silence ensued — a strange kind
of bewilderment. He went on, "Nor am I the friend of capital. I am for men
simply as men, regardless of any accidental or superfluous distinctions of race,
creed, color, class, function, or employment."
I found a front-page article in the Scranton (PA) Tribune and Kansas City Journal (among others) of October 30, 1897, the day after Henry George's death, which reported some of the campaign speeches George had given on his last day, a few days before the 1897 mayoral election. Here is one of them:
At College Point there were 1,200 common laborers, a rough crowd, closely packed in the hall. Mr. George was introduced as the friend of the working man.
He began: "I have never claimed to be a friend of the workingmen. I do not now make any such claim (there was a pause of dead silence). I have not and do not intend to advocate anything in the special interest of the laboring man (another dead pause; Mr. George walked the full length of the platform and let out his full voice in a shout:). I am for men! (The crowd set up such a cheering and stamping that the room was filled with a choking dust). I am for men! — the equal rights of all men. Let us be done with asking privileges for the laboring men."
I also found a 1906 book called "Looking Forward," by August Cirkel, which has a chapter by that title which starts with these paragraphs:
"I am for men." This
famous expression, uttered by Henry George, sounds the keynote of the
true spirit in which every public policy should be tested. Does it make
men? Does it make them stronger, or wiser, or better? These are the
all-important questions to be asked, when the effect of any system is
to be noted. If the answer cannot be made affirmatively, sophistical
must be the arguments that support it.
The kind of laws and
institutions any people lives under is the kind of laws and
institutions that that people deserves to live under. Every thing of
life builds the body that it inhabits, and what kind of abode it
constructs for itself, that is the kind of abode it must dwell in.
Every people makes its own government. Where a race is ruled by
tyrants, craven fear smites the hearts of the masses, and rather than
endure the dangers of asserting their divine prerogative of freedom,
they shuffle through life in cowardly submission to a few men no
stronger than themselves.
I found a 1910 speech by Theodore Roosevelt, entitled "New Nationalism" which contains these paragraphs:
I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well
as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same;
but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for
property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating
the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human
character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says
he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is
necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support
his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the
people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the
ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not
brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who
oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is
inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen
fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a
sordid and selfish materialism.
Near the end of the same speech, TR says this:
One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such
as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate
their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not
the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected
or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any
compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and
a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.
The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material
progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as
they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. Just
in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound
judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs; but, first of all,
sound in their home, and the father and mother of healthy children whom
they bring up well; just so far, and no farther, we may count our
civilization a success.
(TR by that time had become quite comfortable with Henry George's ideas. See his party's 1912 platform "A Confession of Faith.")
In 1917, Luke North (James Hartness Griffes) published a book of poetry entitled "Songs of the Great Adventure" which included this:
"I AM FOR MEN"
He stood for Men —
Not for parties, sections, classes;
Not for dogmas, doctrines, isms —
Nor all the minutiae of over-elaborated plans for the future,
Nor for craven caution, dissimulation, equivocation —
Patience that now outrages virtue —
Program'd ways and means which if not followed
The world may stay in hell.
He stood for Men —
For in his soul he knew the line of cleavage
Was not between the robber and the robbed —
Was not marked by external difference,
By rank or class or occupation or wealth or poverty.
He knew that poor men could be very cruel and rich men kind.
He knew the line of cleavage was in the heart — those who care and those
who don't —
This Henry George who wrote "Progress and Poverty."
He stood for Men —
And was he wrong to yield no tithe to classes?
What has now become of all the appeals
To class interest, class consciousness, class solidarity?
The human heart will not respond to them — in every class are tyrants.
The human mass forgets its every interest,
Flings to the wind all self and class advantage
And goes out to die for a word.
He stood for Men —
And showed the world how to unshackle the chains that bind men.
He showed how poverty begins,
Where modern slavery has its roots,
And how to tear them up.
The earth is for all men, he said —
And his word has gone around the world —
And now it's time to act!
He stood for Men —
Not creeds and doctrines, nor all the lesser details of future
contingencies.
He bared the earth to man.
It is for us to take it.
He tried to gain it, and was beaten back to his death.
Now we will gain it —
At whatever cost!
Check out this fine book of poetry — and if you know of a songwriter looking for inspiration, send them to this starting page.
It is ironic that Henry George's name became associated with cigars. He smoked, and that likely contributed to his premature death at age 58. He wrote about cigar-making and taxation as follows, in Chapter 8 of "Protection or Free Trade?"
It is no wonder that princes and ministers anxious to make their
revenues as large as possible should prefer a method that enables them
to "pluck the goose without making it cry," nor is it wonderful that
this preference should be shared by those who get control of popular
governments; but the reason which renders indirect taxes so agreeable
to those who levy taxes is a sufficient reason why a people jealous of
their liberties should insist that taxes levied for revenue only should
be direct, not indirect.
It is not merely the ease with which indirect taxes can be collected
that urges to their adoption. Indirect taxes always enlist active
private interests in their favor. The first rude device for making the
collection of taxes easier to the governing power is to let them out to
farm. Under this system, which existed in France up to the Revolution,
and still exists in such countries as Turkey, persons called farmers of
the revenue buy the privilege of collecting certain taxes and make
their profits, frequently very large, out of the greater amount which
their vigilance and extortion enable them to collect. The system of
indirect taxation is essentially of the same nature.
The tendency of the restrictions and regulations necessary for the
collection of indirect taxes is to concentrate business and give large
capital an advantage. For instance, with a board, a knife, a kettle of
paste and a few dollars' worth of tobacco, a competent cigar maker
could set up in business for himself, were it not for the revenue
regulations. As it is, in the United States, the stock of tobacco which
he must procure is not only increased in value some two or three times
by a tax upon it; but before the cigar maker can go to work he must buy
a manufacturer's license and find bonds in the sum of five hundred
dollars. Before he can sell the cigars he has made, he must furthermore
pay a tax on them, and even then if he would sell cigars in less
quantities than by the box he must buy a second license. The effect of
all this is to give capital a great advantage, and to concentrate in
the hands of large manufacturers a business in which, if free, workmen
could easily set up for themselves.
But even in the absence of such regulations indirect taxation tends to
concentration. Indirect taxes add to the price of goods not only the
tax itself but also the profit upon the tax. If on goods costing a
dollar a manufacturer or merchant has paid fifty cents in taxation, he
will now expect profit on a dollar and fifty cents instead of upon a
dollar. As, in the course of trade, these taxed goods pass from hand to
hand, the amount which each successive purchaser pays on account of the
tax is constantly augmenting. It is not merely inevitable that
consumers have to pay considerably more than a dollar for every dollar
the government receives, but larger capital is required by dealers. The
need of larger capital for dealing in goods that have been enhanced in
cost by taxation, the restrictions imposed on trade to secure the
collection of the tax, and the better opportunities which those who do
business on a large scale have of managing the payment or evading the
tax, tend to concentrate business, and, by checking competition, to
permit large profits, which must ultimately be paid by consumers. Thus
the first payers of indirect taxes are generally not merely indifferent
to the tax, but regard it with favor.
The other passage about cigars which I recalled turned out to be not from Henry George, but from his friend Louis F. Post, who went on to be President Wilson's Secretary of Labor:
Though land value has no effect upon the price of good,
it is easier to sell goods in some locations than in others. Therefore,
though the price
and the profit of each sale be the same, or even less, in good locations
than in
poorer ones, aggregate receipts and aggregate profits are much greater
at the good location. And it is out of his aggregate, and not out of each
profit,
that rent is paid, For example: A cigar store on a thoroughfare supplies
a certain quality of cigar for fifteen cents. On a side street the same quality
of cigar can be bought no cheaper. Indeed, the cigars there are likely
to be
poorer, and therefore really dearer. Yet ground rent on the thoroughfare
is very high compared with ground rent on the sidestreet. How, then, can
the first dealer, he who pays the high ground rent, afford to sell as good
or better cigars for fifteen cents than his competitor of the low priced
location? Simply because he is able to make so many more sales with a given
outlay of
labor and capital in a given time that his aggregate profit is greater.
This is due to the advantage of his location, and for that advantage he pays
a premium in higher ground rent. But that premium is not charged to smokers;
the competing dealer of the side street protects them. It represents the
greater ease, the lower cost, of doing a given volume of business
upon the site for which it is paid; add if the state should take any of
it, even the
whole of it, in taxation, the loss would be finally borne by the owner
of the advantage which attaches to that site — by the landlord. Any
attempt to shift it
to tenant or buyer would be promptly checked by the competition of neighboring
but cheaper land.
Location, location, location! Or, as a friend in the advertising business put it when I told him about George's ideas, Location, Location, Taxation!
That's the slogan on the two-story high advertising mural found recently on a building in Galesburg, Illinois. (Photo here.) It is an ad for Henry George 5 cent cigars. (See also this page of cigar ads.)
The "I am for men" slogan was on a pin I found on ebay a few years ago. The seller made some comment about it being anti-feminist. Well, she or he didn't know much about George.
When I googled the phrase, I found some interesting things. Here's one:
Henry George, a nineteenth-century
American author and political economist, was nominated for the office of mayor
of New York in 1886. He was called to a meeting at the Cooper Institute to speak
to working men. The chairman of the meeting gave him a flowery introduction with
the customary political rhetoric. The chairman concluded by saying, "Henry
George is the friend of the working men." As soon as Mr. George rose to his
feet, slowly and emphatically he said, "I would like to announce that I am
not the friend of the working man." Stunned silence ensued — a strange kind
of bewilderment. He went on, "Nor am I the friend of capital. I am for men
simply as men, regardless of any accidental or superfluous distinctions of race,
creed, color, class, function, or employment."
I found a front-page article in the Scranton (PA) Tribune and Kansas City Journal (among others) of October 30, 1897, the day after Henry George's death, which reported some of the campaign speeches George had given on his last day, a few days before the 1897 mayoral election. Here is one of them:
At College Point there were 1,200 common laborers, a rough crowd, closely packed in the hall. Mr. George was introduced as the friend of the working man.
He began: "I have never claimed to be a friend of the workingmen. I do not now make any such claim (there was a pause of dead silence). I have not and do not intend to advocate anything in the special interest of the laboring man (another dead pause; Mr. George walked the full length of the platform and let out his full voice in a shout:). I am for men! (The crowd set up such a cheering and stamping that the room was filled with a choking dust). I am for men! — the equal rights of all men. Let us be done with asking privileges for the laboring men."
I also found a 1906 book called "Looking Forward," by August Cirkel, which has a chapter by that title which starts with these paragraphs:
"I am for men." This
famous expression, uttered by Henry George, sounds the keynote of the
true spirit in which every public policy should be tested. Does it make
men? Does it make them stronger, or wiser, or better? These are the
all-important questions to be asked, when the effect of any system is
to be noted. If the answer cannot be made affirmatively, sophistical
must be the arguments that support it.
The kind of laws and
institutions any people lives under is the kind of laws and
institutions that that people deserves to live under. Every thing of
life builds the body that it inhabits, and what kind of abode it
constructs for itself, that is the kind of abode it must dwell in.
Every people makes its own government. Where a race is ruled by
tyrants, craven fear smites the hearts of the masses, and rather than
endure the dangers of asserting their divine prerogative of freedom,
they shuffle through life in cowardly submission to a few men no
stronger than themselves.
I found a 1910 speech by Theodore Roosevelt, entitled "New Nationalism" which contains these paragraphs:
I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well
as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same;
but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for
property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating
the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human
character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says
he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is
necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support
his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the
people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the
ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not
brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who
oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is
inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen
fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a
sordid and selfish materialism.
Near the end of the same speech, TR says this:
One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such
as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate
their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not
the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected
or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any
compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and
a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.
The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material
progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as
they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. Just
in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound
judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs; but, first of all,
sound in their home, and the father and mother of healthy children whom
they bring up well; just so far, and no farther, we may count our
civilization a success.
(TR by that time had become quite comfortable with Henry George's ideas. See his party's 1912 platform "A Confession of Faith.")
In 1917, Luke North (James Hartness Griffes) published a book of poetry entitled "Songs of the Great Adventure" which included this:
"I AM FOR MEN"
He stood for Men —
Not for parties, sections, classes;
Not for dogmas, doctrines, isms —
Nor all the minutiae of over-elaborated plans for the future,
Nor for craven caution, dissimulation, equivocation —
Patience that now outrages virtue —
Program'd ways and means which if not followed
The world may stay in hell.
He stood for Men —
For in his soul he knew the line of cleavage
Was not between the robber and the robbed —
Was not marked by external difference,
By rank or class or occupation or wealth or poverty.
He knew that poor men could be very cruel and rich men kind.
He knew the line of cleavage was in the heart — those who care and those
who don't —
This Henry George who wrote "Progress and Poverty."
He stood for Men —
And was he wrong to yield no tithe to classes?
What has now become of all the appeals
To class interest, class consciousness, class solidarity?
The human heart will not respond to them — in every class are tyrants.
The human mass forgets its every interest,
Flings to the wind all self and class advantage
And goes out to die for a word.
He stood for Men —
And showed the world how to unshackle the chains that bind men.
He showed how poverty begins,
Where modern slavery has its roots,
And how to tear them up.
The earth is for all men, he said —
And his word has gone around the world —
And now it's time to act!
He stood for Men —
Not creeds and doctrines, nor all the lesser details of future
contingencies.
He bared the earth to man.
It is for us to take it.
He tried to gain it, and was beaten back to his death.
Now we will gain it —
At whatever cost!
Check out this fine book of poetry — and if you know of a songwriter looking for inspiration, send them to this starting page.
It is ironic that Henry George's name became associated with cigars. He smoked, and that likely contributed to his premature death at age 58. He wrote about cigar-making and taxation as follows, in Chapter 8 of "Protection or Free Trade?"
It is no wonder that princes and ministers anxious to make their
revenues as large as possible should prefer a method that enables them
to "pluck the goose without making it cry," nor is it wonderful that
this preference should be shared by those who get control of popular
governments; but the reason which renders indirect taxes so agreeable
to those who levy taxes is a sufficient reason why a people jealous of
their liberties should insist that taxes levied for revenue only should
be direct, not indirect.
It is not merely the ease with which indirect taxes can be collected
that urges to their adoption. Indirect taxes always enlist active
private interests in their favor. The first rude device for making the
collection of taxes easier to the governing power is to let them out to
farm. Under this system, which existed in France up to the Revolution,
and still exists in such countries as Turkey, persons called farmers of
the revenue buy the privilege of collecting certain taxes and make
their profits, frequently very large, out of the greater amount which
their vigilance and extortion enable them to collect. The system of
indirect taxation is essentially of the same nature.
The tendency of the restrictions and regulations necessary for the
collection of indirect taxes is to concentrate business and give large
capital an advantage. For instance, with a board, a knife, a kettle of
paste and a few dollars' worth of tobacco, a competent cigar maker
could set up in business for himself, were it not for the revenue
regulations. As it is, in the United States, the stock of tobacco which
he must procure is not only increased in value some two or three times
by a tax upon it; but before the cigar maker can go to work he must buy
a manufacturer's license and find bonds in the sum of five hundred
dollars. Before he can sell the cigars he has made, he must furthermore
pay a tax on them, and even then if he would sell cigars in less
quantities than by the box he must buy a second license. The effect of
all this is to give capital a great advantage, and to concentrate in
the hands of large manufacturers a business in which, if free, workmen
could easily set up for themselves.
But even in the absence of such regulations indirect taxation tends to
concentration. Indirect taxes add to the price of goods not only the
tax itself but also the profit upon the tax. If on goods costing a
dollar a manufacturer or merchant has paid fifty cents in taxation, he
will now expect profit on a dollar and fifty cents instead of upon a
dollar. As, in the course of trade, these taxed goods pass from hand to
hand, the amount which each successive purchaser pays on account of the
tax is constantly augmenting. It is not merely inevitable that
consumers have to pay considerably more than a dollar for every dollar
the government receives, but larger capital is required by dealers. The
need of larger capital for dealing in goods that have been enhanced in
cost by taxation, the restrictions imposed on trade to secure the
collection of the tax, and the better opportunities which those who do
business on a large scale have of managing the payment or evading the
tax, tend to concentrate business, and, by checking competition, to
permit large profits, which must ultimately be paid by consumers. Thus
the first payers of indirect taxes are generally not merely indifferent
to the tax, but regard it with favor.
The other passage about cigars which I recalled turned out to be not from Henry George, but from his friend Louis F. Post, who went on to be President Wilson's Secretary of Labor:
Though land value has no effect upon the price of good,
it is easier to sell goods in some locations than in others. Therefore,
though the price
and the profit of each sale be the same, or even less, in good locations
than in
poorer ones, aggregate receipts and aggregate profits are much greater
at the good location. And it is out of his aggregate, and not out of each
profit,
that rent is paid, For example: A cigar store on a thoroughfare supplies
a certain quality of cigar for fifteen cents. On a side street the same quality
of cigar can be bought no cheaper. Indeed, the cigars there are likely
to be
poorer, and therefore really dearer. Yet ground rent on the thoroughfare
is very high compared with ground rent on the sidestreet. How, then, can
the first dealer, he who pays the high ground rent, afford to sell as good
or better cigars for fifteen cents than his competitor of the low priced
location? Simply because he is able to make so many more sales with a given
outlay of
labor and capital in a given time that his aggregate profit is greater.
This is due to the advantage of his location, and for that advantage he pays
a premium in higher ground rent. But that premium is not charged to smokers;
the competing dealer of the side street protects them. It represents the
greater ease, the lower cost, of doing a given volume of business
upon the site for which it is paid; add if the state should take any of
it, even the
whole of it, in taxation, the loss would be finally borne by the owner
of the advantage which attaches to that site — by the landlord. Any
attempt to shift it
to tenant or buyer would be promptly checked by the competition of neighboring
but cheaper land.
Location, location, location! Or, as a friend in the advertising business put it when I told him about George's ideas, Location, Location, Taxation!
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