Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality : Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age / Edward O'Donnell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Donnell, Edward, author.

Series:

Columbia history of urban life.

Columbia History of Urban Life

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

George, Henry, 1839-1897.

George, Henry.

Equality--New York (State)--New York.

Equality.

Poverty--New York (State)--New York.

Poverty.

Labor movement--New York (State)--New York.

Labor movement.

New York (N.Y.)--Social conditions--19th century.

New York (N.Y.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"America's remarkable explosion of industrial output and national wealth at the end of the nineteenth century was matched by a troubling rise in poverty and worker unrest. As politicians and intellectuals fought over the causes of this crisis, Henry George (1839-1897) published a radical critique of laissez-faire capitalism and its threat to the nation's republican traditions. Progress and Poverty (1879), which became a surprise best-seller, offered a provocative solution for preserving these traditions while preventing the amassing of wealth in the hands of the few: a single tax on land values. George's writings and years of social activism almost won him the mayor's seat in New York City in 1886. Though he lost the election, his ideas proved instrumental to shaping a popular progressivism that remains essential to tackling inequality today. Edward T. O'Donnell's exploration of George's life and times merges labor, ethnic, intellectual, and political history to illuminate the early militant labor movement in New York during the Gilded Age. He locates in George's rise to prominence the beginning of a larger effort by American workers to regain control of the workplace and obtain economic security and opportunity. The Gilded Age was the first but by no means the last era in which Americans confronted the mixed outcomes of modern capitalism. George's accessible, forward-thinking ideas on democracy, equality, and freedom have tremendous value for contemporary debates over the future of unions, corporate power, Wall Street recklessness, government regulation, and political polarization." -- provided by the Publisher

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART I. The Making of a Radical, 1839-1879

1. "To Be Something and Somebody in the World"

2. "Poverty Enslaves Men We Boast Are Political Sovereigns": Progress and Poverty and Henry George's Republicanism

PART II. The Emergence of "New Political Forces," 1880-1885

3. "New York Is an Immense City": The Empire City in the Early 1880s

4. "Radically and Essentially the Same": Irish American Nationalism and American Labor

5. "Labor Built This Republic, Labor Shall Rule It"

PART III. The Great Upheaval, 1886-1887

6. "The Country Is Drifting into Danger"

7. "To Save Ourselves from Ruin"

8. "Your Party Will Go Into Pieces"

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780231539265

0231539266

OCLC:

979751970