Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth . . . The Remedy. This item is unavailable.Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth . . . The Remedy

First published in 1879, this was 19th-century America's bestselling book (aside from the Bible), and it was the most popular work on economics ever published anywhere. Author Henry George proposes a "single tax" that would tax the value of land as a source of public revenue. His ideas were fundamental to America's Progressive Era from the 1890s through the 1920s, and they influenced many major political figures.

Henry George (1839-97) went to sea on a merchant ship at age 15 and by the end of the 1850s was working in San Francisco as a typesetter. A career in journalism followed, and George gradually become a successful popular speaker on the issues of his day as well as an effective writer. He moved to New York around the time Progress and Poverty was published and ran for mayor, losing in an election that may have been marred by fraud. His second campaign for mayor ended with a fatal stroke. Thousands turned out for his funeral, which was described as the largest in New York's history (or at least the largest since the death of Abraham Lincoln); even George's bitterest opponents at Tammany Hall flew their flag at half-staff on that day.