Henry George

Henry George (1839–1897) was an American journalist and political economist. Born in Philadelphia, he went to sea as a teenager, settled in California, and worked as a printer and newspaper editor in San Francisco, where he watched land speculation enrich a few while wages stayed low. Progress and Poverty (1879) argued that a single tax on land values could end poverty, and it sold in vast numbers around the world. He followed it with Social Problems and Protection or Free Trade. In 1886 he ran for mayor of New York, finishing ahead of Theodore Roosevelt, and he died during a second campaign in 1897.