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This year we mark the one hundreth anniversary of the publication of Henry George's Progress and Poverty. Henry George dedicated the work "To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment."

What is the 'higher social state' envisioned by that young California newspaperman and occasional politician? It is a state that he described as "Association in equality". Think about it. Association in equality-human beings coming together freely to cooperate in the gathering of good, the making of clothes, the building of houses, to play, to sing, to dance, to court and marry, to beget and rear children, to share joys and sorrows, to worship and pray.

Association in equality. Another expression of the idea of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. The theme that runs through the Law and the Prophets. The law of life repeated and refined by a young rabbi from Galilee in the words "Love thy neighbor as yourself.

Let me read for you these words from Progress and Poverty: "... association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice, or freedom -- for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral law-prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles. ...Men tend to progress just as they come closer together, and by cooperation with each other increase the mental power that may be devoted to improvement, but just as conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of condition and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked, and finally reversed."

Even as Henry George was writing, he saw the forces of regression and decline. Listen again to the words he wrote: "There is no mistaking it -- the very foundations of society are being sapped before our eyes, while we ask, how is it possible that such a civilization as this, with its railroads, and daily newspapers and electric telegraphs, should ever be destroyed? While literature breathes but the belief that we have been, are, and for the future must be, leaving the savage state further and further behind us, there are indication; that we are actually turning bad toward barbarism."

That was a hundred years age And for the next eighteen years the rest of his life, Henry George worked to spread his ideas. He did not despair, nor should we.