Seeking the One Great Remedy

Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform

Lorien Foote

[An excerpt from the Introduction to the book published by Ohio University Press, 2003]



Ever searching for the revolution that would eliminate poverty and inequality, [Shaw] found that those twin evils persisted in abundance in the postwar world. When Northern society experienced economic depression and labor revolt in the 1870s, Shaw believed the flawed structure of capitalism was to blame for both problems. He participated in many different reform movements after the war, but none of them satisfied the man who still quested for the "one great remedy." ...

Just a few years before he died, Shaw's quest ended. He read Henry George's Progress and Poverty, and, as he would later put it, "the light broke" upon him. The book proclaimed that poverty and other social ills were the result of the private ownership of land and other resources. By abolishing private property in land or by confiscating rent through land taxes, George argued, the government could usher in a new state of society in which common ownership of land would lead to communal administration of benefits for the entire society. Shaw provided financial and moral support to the struggling reformer and author, and the tow men began a partnership that made Progress and Poverty into one of the best-selling books in American history and launched the Single Tax phenomenon. The Single Tax movement, one of the most important reforms in late-nineteeneth-century America, was based on George's proposal to abolish all government taxes except that on land values; the concept, proponents argued, represented a viable alternative to eliminating private property in land. The movement attracted hundreds of thousands of followers and united industrial laborers, farmers, and old elite reformers such as Shaw. ...

[A] study of Shaw's activities after the war challenges the interpretation that apart from the race issue, elite abolitionists and their immediate successors abandoned antebellum radicalism, uptopianism, and social justice. What historians such as Ginzberg and Fredrickson ignore is that advocacy for utopian social reform continued among abolitionists such as Frank Shaw, who never veered from his quest for the moral transformation of society. He joined younger reformers who came of age during the war in movements that had explicit ties to antebellum reform.

The prime example was Henry George's Single Tax movement, a much misunderstood phenomenon of the late nineteenth century. Previous historians have missed the significance of the partnership between Shaw and George because they have misunderstood George. Although scholars such as John L. Thomas recognize that George tapped into antebellum reform traditions when he wrote Progress and Poverty, most historians do not see much radicalism in his work. According to the most accepted interpretation, George embraced individualism, the free market, and limited government; his ideas recycled those of the workers and artisans who had challenged monopoly and social inequality before the Civil War, and like them, he remained within the ideological framework of preindustrial capitalism.

The partnership between Frank Shaw and Henry George raises questions that cast doubt on these scholars' conclusions. It is important that Shaw, who maintained the principles of Association throughout his life, found resonance with Henry George. Since George frequently spoke to Shaw of "our ideas," Shaw must have understood better than anyone else the true nature of George's "Revolution." Ostensibly the Single Tax movement aimed to abolish private property in land by confiscating land values. But George believed this seemingly simple step would eventually usher in a utopian communal society. The last sections of his book describe an ideal society characterized by social cooperation, equality of condition, and collective ownership. Shaw understood this eventual goal and worked for the movement with all the gusto his advancing age permitted. Through the Single Tax effort, he and other elites from the abolition generation joined with industrial laborers in a reform that challenged the foundations of industrial capitalism.

A more complete understanding of Progress and Poverty places George as a link between antebellum reforms and the radical social movements of the 1880s and 1890s. In his Single Tax proposal, he manifested the same proclivity toward social redemption that abolitionists had shown decades earlier. He articulated a communal alternative to capitalism that was reminiscent of Association before the Civil War. Thus, George carried on the spirit of antebellum reform expressed in the life of his dear friend Frank Shaw. In turn, Shaw's support of George demonstrated that radical reforms did not dissipate after the Civil War, nor were workers and farmers the only Americans to embrace them, as Ginzberg and Fredrickson claim. Historians must not ignore elites such as Shaw who provided experienced leadership and ideological support for the new generation of social reformers. His story reveals the thread that wove together what previous scholars have mistakenly seen as disparate movements.