Prof. Thomas (History, Brown) has managed to make three interesting
figures dull, without improving our understanding of them or what
they represent. Henry George (1839-97), Edward Bellamy (1850-98),
and the lesser-known Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847-1903) were the
visionary authors of three big books. (Lloyd's is Wealth Against
Commonwealth, an attack on monopolies,) What they had in common, in
addition - a rejection of American materialism and a belief in the
efficacy of spiritual values - they shared with many
contemporaries. To this, Thomas has nothing to add in relating the
(oft-told) stories of their lives. George, a down-and-out
newspaperman in San Francisco, decided that progress and poverty
were two sides of the same dollar: the increasing value of land
went hand-in-hand with the decreasing value of labor. His simple
solution was a single tax on land that would result in abundance
for all. This appealing idea led to creation of the Union Labor
party, which George headed (in 1886 he came in second in a run for
N.Y. mayor, beating out TR). Bellamy was more a fanatic. Tucked
away in Chicopee Falls, Mass., writing editorials for the
Springfield Union, Bellamy envisioned a society espousing his
Religion of Solidarity - thus prefiguring later ideas of scientific
management (and giving rise to self-styled Nationalists who
organized into collectivist clubs but shunned politics). Lloyd, a
Chicago Tribune reporter, first hit it big with a muckraking
article on Standard Oil. Along with Jane Addams, Florence Kelley,
Eugene Debs, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, he was one of the
religiously-inspired Midwesterners who gave birth to Progressivism.
When his book, extending the attack on Standard Oil, didn't result
in public action, Lloyd was puzzled: he was a man who believed in
facts. Curiously, Thomas' interweaving of the lives of the three
accentuates the differences among them. Otherwise, his
interpretations are unremarkable, as is his prose. ("George," he
writes, "was a meticulous craftsman who polished his chiseled
blocks of argument carefully before arranging them on a solid
foundation.") The book has little to offer beyond its title.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Through vivid and searching portraits of these three redoubtable
journalists, prizewinning historian John L. Thomas traces for the
first time the evolving ideologies of the most significant
reformers of their age.
George's "Progress and Poverty," Bellamy's "Looking Backward,"
and Lloyd's "Wealth against Commonwealth" each in its turn became
an international best-seller, championing a course of national
policy and social reform that owed allegiance neither to the
large-scale capitalist model then emerging, nor to the bureaucratic
socialism espoused on the left. Also common to the vast writings of
all three were a deep distrust of partisan machine politics and a
mounting sense of social crisis which neither spoilsmanship nor
materialism seemed able to address.
Seeking instead diversity and cooperation within society, small
economic units, and simplicity in government, the authors of these
works were moved to defend strikes during the heyday of industrial
capitalism. They spoke out for international peace when imperialism
was rampant. They called for the preservation of community values
in the face of urban sprawl. And they urged the goals of
brotherhood and interdependence in an age when survival of the
fittest was seen as holy writ.
They failed magnificently as apostles of a radical culture
based on the ideal of a community, yet their intellectual legacy
was not lost: their heirs include the broad movement that took the
name Progressive, the New Deal, and the hopeful crusades of the
1960s. This magnificent book is their memorial and their
history.
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