Henry George 1885: An analysis of the crime of poverty

Henry George wrote in 1885 about poverty and his concerns about poverty.  George made it clear that he believed that poverty was a crime.  Not because people who are poor deserve to be poor and do many things that make themselves this way.  No, George wrote that he felt that poverty was a crime because it was the result of social problems that force those people into poverty.  He believed whole heatedly that most people were poor because of society and not due to their own faults and that was the major crime.   George made it clear that if God had made poverty necessary then it would not be a crime but it was society and people who decided that their needed to be rich and their needed to be people who they ruled over.  It was a crime because there were are so many people who have an abundance of the resources and then others that were starving or freezing to death right down the street.  Having wealth is not really just for a minority and George believed that it was possible for all men to be rich and  to have everything that they needed.

George was an activists who believed that it was not necessary for the rich to have everything and the poor to have nothing.  He believed that it was a crime for people to have to suffer and that it was actually a from of slavery.  George made a very convincing and passionate argument about the role that the poor played in our system and just how unnecessary it was.  Owning land was the key to wealth is what he believed because if you owned the land you owned all of the resources on it including the human beings that resided on it.  This is a matter of injustice and George believed that this was an evil that continued to thrive.  Then George went on to explain that the poor working class was actually the class that should rule because they did all of the hard work and brought the earth and humans together by building things and developing new items while the rich just paid for it to happen.  George also talks about the land and how it is almost absurd that humans try to control the land and own it.  Land is not there to be owned and it should be respected by everyone.  This reminded me of a speech that we read least week from Chief Joseph which concerned land and how it should be viewed.

George points out many things to get people to believe his argument and those main things were that everyone should be rich and there should not be a poor working class.  I know that this would be something that was discussed over and over again by people and it would be available to the poor and give them something to believe in.  When the poor perceive that there are other people who understand where they are and are trying to make their lives better they seek ways to advance themselves.  He also pointed out that poverty was not necessary and made it clear why not.  God was brought into the writings to make it clear that it was not diving will that made people poor and thus utilized logos and pathos to win his argument.  The logic was very clear in this speech and George used many examples to get people to believe his arguments.  The emotional aspect took place later on in the writing but he pointed out that if people owned the land then they owned everything on the land and that included all the people on it, which in turn made them all slaves to the owner.  This was something that was still a huge emotional issue because the Civil War was still fresh in their minds and had a huge impact on the United States.

I think that this was a very important historical document because it was a time where the United States was changing and new things were being developed.  If the poor did not just accept their lot in life but fought for better wages and for better employment conditions it would change the world.  This is something that had a long term effect on out country and it left us with a much better country with the poorer class being treated slightly better by the rich.  This also eventually led to the middle class of individuals.

I thought that his arguments were very convincing because he pointed out ways in which the rich and poor were different and in all reality there was not much of a differences.  George made sure to give examples with all of his arguments and they really seemed to make sense and were accurate.  Like I said above he was very passionate and seemed to be on the side of justice not just on the side of the rich or the poor.  Justice was really on that he was seeking and if their was injustice on our world it was not necessary.  Crusaders like this really made a lot of change happen because they could get people to believe everything that was spoken or written.  Tone and having a way with words is necessary to get a large group of people behind you and this speech clearly showed me that.

Jessica Lucas