Progress and Poverty’ – Henry George
and Land Reform in modern Ireland
Barry Sheppard 24 August, 2014 Irish History
18
Barry Sheppard on the unlikely influence of an American radical on land reform in
Ireland over the 19th and 20th centuries.
The name Henry George is not normally one which is automatically associated with Irish
land reform, indeed he has been all but forgotten, even by those interested in the history
of Irish and international land reform.
Yet at various stages his name crops up in relation to Irish land reform from the period of
the Land War in the 1880s through to the 1930s and beyond, when a new period of Irish
land reform gathered pace under a domestic administration.
There is no doubting the impact George had upon ideas of land reform in his own
lifetime, his seminal work Progress and Poverty ran through innumerable editions and
translated into many different languages worldwide. His lectures throughout America,
Britain and Australia on the idea of a single tax on land drew thousands of converts to his
cause. However, towards the end of his life and in the decades after his international
reputation practically vanished.[1]
Henry George, an advocate of radical land reform is little remembered today, but
his influence in Ireland can be traced across two centuries.
The name of Henry George hovers somewhere in the far distance, unfamiliar to many
inside Ireland. There may be valid reasons for this. George wasn’t Irish, or of Irish
stock. He did not become a martyr to Ireland’s cause. Nor did he spend much time in
Ireland. It has even been suggested that in contrast with the impact he was to make
elsewhere his ‘interlude’ in Ireland, was disappointing.[2] However, particularly in the
years after his death he did make an impact on the country through his theories on
societal and academic levels, as well as through those he had personal influence on.
Henry George, man and agrarian reformer
Quiz in the Irish Independent, 1929.
A native of Philadelphia, George was born in 1839 into a lower-middle class family of
English and Scottish heritage. As many young men of his generation, he left school at an
early age to seek a fortune. He boarded a trading vessel which sailed to India, where his
experiences in Calcutta witnessing large scale overpopulation and poverty would help
form his later theories on the need for international land reform.
His journey terminated in San Francisco at the age of 19. It was in that city he tried his
hand at a number of careers before eventually finding his voice as a journalist for The San
Francisco Post and The San Francisco Times. During his time working on these
newspapers he witnessed the treatment of migrant railroad workers as well as landgrabbing practices of the railroad tycoons themselves, this too contributed to his land
reform ideas.
George held that the ownership of the soil belongs inalienably to the whole
community and that rent was merely robbery
George’s land reform ideas came to the fore with the publication of Progress and Poverty
in 1879 and his Single Tax on Land Theory. George held that the ownership of the soil
belongs inalienably to the whole community, due the fact that it was created for all by
God. With the use of the land under the provision that the tenant (with fixed tenure and
right of transmitting to others) pay a tax on the land he uses to the community (viz., to the
State) representing the natural productivity of that particular piece of land plus the extra
value it may have acquired owing to adventitious causes other than the labour of the
occupier.
George viewed the huge sums of rent annually paid under the conditions of the time were
tantamount to class robbery resulting in the misery of the labouring classes. This rent,
George argued should be taken over by the State, taking the place of all other State taxes,
which would consequently be abolished.[3] He held that “the appropriation, as the
exclusive property of some men, of the land on which and from which all must live,”
constituted a great social wrong.”[4]
The book was slow to catch on in San Francisco, so making a move to the East Coast
George hoped to find a more receptive audience. It was here that his association with
Irish Land Reform began. George had a long-standing interest in international land
reform as he saw land monopoly as knowing no borders.
He had been familiar with the Irish case – where the Land League was agitating on behalf
of tenant farmers in what was known as the ‘Land War’ – for some time. It was during
his time in New York that he followed the course of Irish agitation in relation to the Land
League with keen interest.[5] Through this interest he began to associate with New
York’s influential Irish-American society, particularly with those who championed the
burgeoning Irish Land League in Ireland.
‘If a copy can be put in every library the revolution will
be made’
Michael Davitt, Land League leader and supporter of
Henry George’s ideas.
During this period George met Michael Davitt who was in the United States on a
fundraising exercise on behalf of the Land League. Davitt was intensely interested in
George’s ideas and promised to do what he could to push the sale of Progress and
Poverty in Britain, whereas George realised that Ireland was the perfect example on
which to base a sermon in favour of the single tax theory. In a letter to his friend Francis
G Shaw, George told of his first meeting with Davitt.
“Michael Davitt is full of the idea of popularising ‘Progress and Poverty.’ That was the
first thing he said to me. He had read it twice before, and he read it twice again while in
Portland [prison], and as you may see from his speeches and letters, he believes in it
entirely. He says if a copy of that book can be put in every workman’s club and Land
League and library in the three kingdoms the revolution will be made”.[6]
George also produced a magazine article specific to Ireland which gradually swelled into
a sixty-page pamphlet. Published in March 1881 with the title The Irish Land Question:
What It Involves And How Alone It Can Be Settled (later to be shortened to The Land
Question to highlight that Ireland’s land problems were not exclusively Irish).[7]
Michael Davitt was very taken with George’s ideas, saying, “if a copy of that book
can be put in every workman’s club and Land League and library in the three
kingdoms the revolution will be made”
The pamphlet argued ‘that in order to relieve Ireland of the abomination of rack-renting
and to give the Irish people the benefits of their labour, it was necessary to spare industry
and thrift from taxation and to take the rental value of the land alone for the community
needs’. Under this system the labourer would keep what he created leaving the tax on the
land to the landlord class.[8]
His association with Ireland would become more prominent, for in 1881 for a period of a
year George was sent to Ireland to cover the Land War for The Irish World
newspaper.[9] The situation at the time in Ireland had deteriorated quite considerably,
which generated much interest in Irish America. The editor of The Irish World, Patrick
Ford pressed upon George that the strength of land agitation in Ireland would depend
upon the acceptance of the ‘incontrovertible truth that the land of Ireland was not made
for the landlord class, or any other class, but for all Irishmen’. This was an opportunity
which George had ‘long waited for’ and which he accepted readily.[10]
During his period covering the Land War, George was asked to speak at a number of
events. One such event was to endear him to the Irish cause of the time. On 21
November 1881 he spoke on ‘Land and Labour’ for the benefit of the Political Prisoners’
Aid Society at the Round Room, Rotundo, Dublin.
This speech was warmly received, and was reportedly such a success that the committee
of management were able to hand over to the funds of the society ‘a handsome
contribution’.[11] Publicity of this kind had placed George firmly in the inner-circle of
the Irish land debate of the time. His reputation as a friend to the Irish people was further
enhanced when was arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) on his journey from
Dublin to the West of Ireland.
An eviction during the ‘Land War’ of the
1880s.
The arrest generated a considerable amount of publicity on both sides of the Atlantic,
with George penning a letter to the then President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur.
George informed Arthur in the letter (which he had smuggled out of Ireland due to claims
that previous correspondence had been intercepted and even burned) that he had been
travelling from Dublin for the West of Ireland ‘for the purposes of seeing the country and
informing myself as to the condition of the people’, when he was arrested and
temporarily detained on two separate occasions over a two day period.
While covering the Land War in Ireland for an American newspaper, George was
arrested by the RIC, which did his reputation in Ireland no harm at all.
Vociferously protesting the treatment he received at the hands of the Irish constabulary,
as well as that of other American citizens who had ‘been imprisoned here for long
periods without trial, and even special accusation’,[12] he caused considerable
embarrassment to the British establishment. A British civil servant swiftly contacted the
United States Government to express regret that the incident ever occurred. A letter
from the US Government containing the British apology was reproduced in The Nation
on 11th November 1882, and was a publicity boon for the Land League.[13]
During his spell in Portland Jail, Land League leader Michael Davitt got to grips with
George’s theories by reading Progress and Poverty numerous times, so that when he
emerged from prison, he announced that he had been won over to George’s advocacy of
radical land reform ‘in what became the clearest example of the influence Henry George
wielded over the Land League agitation’.[14]
This influence, contrary to some claims, was not ‘alien’, and was according to Davitt
himself a perfect fit in the long struggle of Irish land agitation. Responding to a letter
which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette from ‘An Irish Nationalist’ criticising his
relationship with Henry George, Davitt stated that long before Progress and Poverty was
written, Fintan Lalor agitated on similar lines in the late 1840s. He further argued that
the cry of ‘Land for the People’, synonymous with Georgian theory had went up with the
formation of the Land League before George’s book had even crossed the Atlantic.
Davitt stressed that regardless of his background, George and his theories were
appreciated by Irishmen who were still under threat of eviction.[15] However, this
‘alien’ influence would cause some controversy. In his previous letter to Francis G Shaw,
George suggested that he had noted a split between Davitt and other prominent Land
Leaguers over the influence George supposedly wield over Davitt:
“Davitt is all right. He believes just as we do, but he is very much afraid of breaking up
the movement, and is sensitive to the taunt that he has been ‘captured by Henry George
and the “Irish World.”‘ …The fact is that the line is really drawn and the split made, but
not publicly. They [the Parnellites] will not budge beyond extension of the purchase
clause; Davitt is for nationalisation and our programme. And the whole strength of the
Land League management is to be used – in fact, it has all along been used – against the
spread of more radical ideas”.[16]
Henry George’s meetings with Davitt, the Land League and Irish-American agitators
sympathetic to land reform and above all, his arrest ‘on duty’ meant that despite His
criticism of some of the more conservative elements in control of the Land movement at
the time, he was feted by Land League and nationalist activists over his short stay in
Ireland. He was bade a fond farewell with a celebratory banquet at the Gresham Hotel,
Dublin which was attended by Davitt and other Land League figures as well as
‘prominent citizens of Dublin of different creeds, religious and political.’[17]
However, despite his influence on Michael Davitt, who like George favoured land
nationalisation and common ownership, the land league and subsequent agrarian
movements in Ireland were dominated by the goal of achieving individual ownership of
the land by small farmers, a goal that was to a large degree realised in the Land Acts of
1903 and 1908.
Although George left after merely a year spent covering this turbulent period of Irish
history, his influence went on beyond his stay, even after his death in 1897 with those
who had been touched by his zeal for international land reform.
Georgian Influence – the inner city land movement
In the first decade of the twentieth century,
a small inner-city land movement began to take shape which owed much to the influence
of Henry George, and specifically some of his like-minded contemporaries who were
directly influenced by his land reform ideas. One of whom, Joseph Fels prominently took
on the single tax mantle in the years after George’s death. This movement came to be
known as The Vacant Land Cultivation Society in Dublin.
Established in 1910, it was primarily a means of providing subsistence for poor urban
dwellers who worked the land on small inner-city allotments. This organisation was
succeeded by the Land Cultivation Committee in 1917 under the direction of The Local
Government Board for Ireland which helped set up a drive to provide allotments to help
increase food supplies during the First World War. However, the origins of the allotment
movement in Ireland can be found in the United States, and can be viewed as an offshoot
of George’s ideas.
In the early 1890s, in a period of economic depression and increased unemployment, the
Mayor of Detroit, Hazen Pingree began to promote the idea of unemployed people
cultivating food crops on vacant land. Pingree was another advocate of George’s single
tax theory[18], who, along with a number of other mayors and their advisors dominated
early 20th century municipal reform in America.[19]
In the early 20th century an effort was made to implement George’s ideas in Dublin
by giving disused land to unemployed workers to cultivate for food.
Land in the city which had been held by land speculators was made available to the
Pingree for this purpose. In the first year, some 182 ha (450 acres) of donated land was
cultivated by 975 participants in what became known as the Vacant-Lot Cultivation
Association. The project was an enormous success, spreading to thirty other cities in
nineteen states.[20] The American experience under Pingree would be a very important
influence in establishing a similar movement in Ireland.
Laying the groundwork for the establishment of the Vacant Land Cultivation Society in
Ireland efforts were made to inform and educate the public of the benefits of such an
organisation. The Irish Independent publicised a forthcoming public lecture in the
Mansion House on ‘The Cultivation of Land as a Cure for Unemployment’, which was to
highlight not only the nutritious and monetary of the cultivation of these plots, but ‘the
moral, physical, and intellectual advantages of such occupation for men and their
families’ which were deemed to be ‘incalculable’.[21] The meeting was addressed by
one of the most qualified men in the area of urban land reform, Joseph Fels, Honorary
Secretary of the Vacant Land Cultivation Society in Philadelphia.
Fels was a social reformer and philanthropist who used the wealth supplied by the
success of his family’s Philadelphia based soap business to promote various land reform
experiments, most notably the advancement of the ideas of Henry George. George had
been a tremendous influence on Fels, who by 1899 had come to believe ‘without a qualm
of doubt that the master solution to society’s enigmas of unemployment, poverty, and
human degradation lay in the broadest possible utilization of the land and its resources for
the benefit of all’.[22]
This journey was complete by 1906 when he ‘took over the doctrines of Henry George,
lock, stock, and barrel’ in relation to the single tax on land theory.[23] Indeed, The
Freeman’s Journal described Fels as devoting his life to furthering George’s single tax
movement.[24]
Like Davitt, Fels promised to distribute George’s Progress and Poverty widely to advance
the theories he had come to champion.[25] Among his philanthropic exploits he funded
several experimental labour colonies and vacant lot improvement projects in America and
England. Fels contributed generously to this Association as well as supporting the
establishment of school gardens to provide practical training to young people. An
advocate of the need to rework the system of land ownership and he sought out projects
such as the Vacant Lots which challenged contemporary systems of land ownership.
Crucially, he also established the Joseph Fels Fund of America and a commission for its
administration to bring the teachings of Henry George to fruition in North America.[26]
Fels’ introduction to Irish land affairs took place in a warmly received public address in
the Mansion House in Dublin on 25 June 1909. Here he explained the idea that his
scheme was a palliative for the evils of unemployment.[27] He told the audience of his
belief that it was a serious problem in Ireland that there was so much vacant land in a
country with a relatively small population.
Fels firmly believed, like George, that God Almighty had made the land for all the people
and not just a few, and that in Great Britain, the United States and in every city in Europe
large tracts of land were lying derelict which should be turned over to the people. The
success of the Philadelphia experiment was held up as the example to follow, showing
how a simple movement could successfully spread to a number of other cities. His
message was simple, they wanted the same for Dublin ‘nothing more and nothing
less’.[28]
At the following meeting a month later The Freeman’s Journal reported that the
committee had received promises of land for the purposes of The Vacant Land
Cultivation Society. It got a ‘sympathetic reception’ from Dublin Corporation, who
promised to facilitate the loan of a large field for their purposes.[29] They were also
granted £50 from the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (DATI) to
employ a horticultural instructor and plots of land were lent to the Society, which
prepared the ground for cultivation and provided seeds, plants and tools for plot
holders.[30]
Slowly but surely the urban farming project did take shape. By December of that year
twenty five men had been charged with clearing and levelling plots of land in Summer
Street in the Coombe to allow for eight gardens. Further plots were later established
Pigeon House Road in Ringsend[31] and in West Road, North Strand, Broadstone,
Inchicore and Glasnevin. The number of plots increased to almost 500 by 1917. (460485 plots totalling 60 acres)[32]. Despite its modest beginning it was believed that when
the Society ‘extends its work the full achievement will help substantially towards the
solution of one of the problems created by the conditions of modern city life’.[33]
Of course, this scheme had its doubters, particularly among those who owned land. Just
over a year from his inspirational speech in the Mansion House, Fels wrote a letter to the
Freeman’s Journal to allay landlords’ fears.
It appears he believed that logic and benevolence would motivate land owners to donate
waste or unused land; ‘I’m sure those owners of land, when once they come to see what
an enormous amount of good can be done in relieving and easing the conditions of the
very poor by lending their hand, will come forward and give this gracious help which can
cost them nothing except permission and go a long way towards relieving distress where
it is most heartrending in the cities and towns.’
‘The landlords’ in London he continued, ‘somehow feared that the poor devils would
carry away the land with them when they were called on to vacate…The benevolent
public had some idea they were giving money uselessly, and helping to add to the
unemployed ranks. [But] our public here have quickly come to a recognition of this by
the sight of nearly 500 vacant lot gardens in different districts in London only, producing
food for nearly 500 families by the labour of these people themselves.[34]
The rules of the scheme required plot-holders to be in casual labour, with families
depending on the produce of the plots, although, crucially, surplus produce could be sold
untaxed leaving the plot-holder with any profit of his labours. Plots were granted for a
year and were maintained by the plot-holder and his family. In 1916 the rent of a plot
varied from 6s to 16s.
Those with an eighth of an acre plot, who produced crops to the value of 2s per week had
a gross return was £13 13 s 6d per year. Their Expenses were £2 5s exclusive of labour
and surplus crops were sold for £9 11s 6d. However, by 1916 the scheme had deviated
from the original intent of providing work for unemployed people, as many in professions
had entered the expanding scheme.[35] Nevertheless, with his initial intervention, Joseph
Fels had brought in a small-scale land reform scheme partly inspired by Henry George’s
land reform ideals.
Henry George’s ideas and land reform in independent
Ireland
A Fianna Fail rally in the 1930s, the banner
reads ‘Tir agus Teanga’ (Land and language). Courtesy of Irish History Links website.
Two decades on from Fels’ introduction, Henry George’s ideas reappeared in
independent Ireland, particularly during the era of Fianna Fáil from the early 1930s
onwards. Land issues were high on the political agenda. Issues of land redistribution
were on Fianna Fáil’s radar since the publication of their first manifesto in 1926.
Fianna Fail’s opponents tried to tar them with the brush of communism, but Eamon de
Valera’s party stressed that their social and land reform policies were based on Catholic
Church teaching, particularly the encyclicals Rerum Novarum (1891) and its successor
Quadragesimo Anno (1931). Henry George had in fact been critical of Papal documents.
From the early 1930s a battle of words was played out in the letters pages of Irish
newspapers relating to George’s theories, due to the social, religious and political
atmosphere of the time. Fuel was added with Henry George’s Science of Political
Economy being republished in 1933. A review of the book was published in The Irish
Press on 30 January 1933, in which it predictably tied in George’s association with the
Land League.[36]
Fianna Fail embarked on a new round of agrarian reform in the 1930s but denied
George’s influence, preferring to reference the Catholic Church’s teachings.
It would perhaps been easy for the press to ignore George altogether in this period were it
not for his previous association with Michael Davitt. In fact, whenever George’s name
appeared in print it was almost exclusively mentioned in relation to his association with
Davitt and the Land League.
There followed in the Irish media a debate on George, his association with Irish history
and his critique of Papal teaching. Even those who identified themselves as completely
ignorant of the Science of Political Economy [37] felt the need to pen their opinions to a
national audience on George’s theories, indicating the extent to which Catholic social
teaching permeated Irish daily life. No one who had criticised a Papal Encyclical, even
two generations previously, could avoid criticism in Irish public life in this period.
The Irish Catholic hierarchy also debated the rights and wrongs of private ownership,
invariably evoking the name of Henry George. The Catholic Truth Society Congress of
1935 in Kilkenny heard that: ‘If private property were abolished, personality could never
be actively developed, and man would be little better than an animal’, before going on to
extol the virtues of the two predominant Encyclicals to such an extent that it was claimed
that the efforts of George and Davitt in nationalisation of the land only resulted in what
Pope Leo XIII had championed all along, peasant proprietorship.[38]
While the language is self-congratulatory, the mere mention of Henry George would
indicate that even long after his death, his theories still resonated with some, and
unsettled others in positions of power and influence. Fianna Fail for their part did engage
in further land reform but, as with previous land acts it was aimed at creating viable small
farm owning class. One of the senior figures in Fianna Fáil in the 1930s, Sean Lemass,
told the Dáil some years later, ‘I nearly fell at one time, with Henry George, for the idea
of a single tax’.[39] He did not elaborate on why changed his mind.
Into the 21st century
Disused land in central Dublin after the financial crash of 2008..
While Henry George as a person and as an economic theorist may have been largely
forgotten by the latter part of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, (when his theory is
mentioned it is dismissed as redundant),[40] an echo of Georgian-inspired thought
returned to Ireland during the worldwide financial crash of the late 2000’s.
Independent Senator David Norris proposed remedies to combat the recession from 2008
onwards in inner-city Dublin, which strongly echoed Fels and Pingree. Advocating the
seizure of land held by speculators for the purpose of turning them over to the ordinary
citizen to use for allotments to grow and cultivate their own food in an urban
environment.[41]
In 2009, Senator David Norris proposed that vacant land banks in post recession
Dublin be given to the unemployed to cultivate, just as Henry George had suggested
over 130 years before.
Norris raised the possibility of converting unused inner-city land into allotments during a
Seanad debate on 26 May 2009 on the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA)[42]
and suggested that half-finished buildings should be completed in order to get the
workforce back to work and to provide homes for those most in need of them. Putting
forth his remedy to the house he said: “We should also provide allotments for people who
are out of work to grow vegetables and do something positive and constructive with their
lives. That is my radical suggestion.”[43] He further pushed this idea during a
subsequent debate months later:
Some of this country’s major centres of population are surrounded by huge land banks.
At a time of high unemployment, I suggest that some of those lands should be divided
into allotments for the use of the unemployed. Such people could be given a small range
of seeds, implements and manuals. If we get them out of the house in this way, we might
lead them out of depression. If we employ them productively in the growing of food, they
may be able to supplement their incomes and improve their diets.[44]
This was not far away from what was being proposed by Fels in the early 1900s, and
while urban allotments have become a feature in cities around Europe and beyond, the
message of Fels, Pingree and by association, Henry George, has almost been forgotten.
Ireland was but one of the countries where Henry George found a willing audience for his
radical theories. Indeed, it was the first. Yet many say his time in Ireland was
disappointing. It is true that he was only there for a year when he was covering the Land
War. However, in this short time he made a significant impact.
He relayed the efforts of the Land League to a receptive and influential audience in IrishAmerica, while at the same time selling his theories to those within the movement who
favoured land nationalisation. Of course, not all within the Land League were receptive
to George’s theories nor his influence on certain key members. His theories were
essentially anti-elitist, and destined to upset the more conservative elements of the
League.
In his lifetime his theories caused a split between the radical and conservative elements of
one of Ireland’s most important popular movements. In death, his theories still had the
power to upset different set of Irish elite decades later. The elites of independent Ireland,
under a degree of clerical influence could not simply ignore him due his association with
the hero Davitt decades before. Nevertheless, it would have been virtually impossible for
him to promote George’s ideas in a Government which had such a close relationship with
the Encyclical George had so publicly criticised.
Georgian theory did make a comeback in Irish academic circles, thanks to the ‘rebel and
economic visionary’[45] Raymond Crotty, who compared the experience of finding
George’s work with discovering a new planet.[46] However, as somewhat of a rebel
academic himself, Crotty never made a significant impact outside of academic circles in
relation to Henry George’s theories.
While his influence naturally waned after he physically left the scene, his periodic
reappearances through his theories, the elites he ruffled, and those associates who
pledged to carry on the spirit of his work, Henry George had an impact on land reform
decades after his death. That he was for all intents and purposes and outsider makes his
impact even more impressive. It is also his status as an outsider which has also kept him
on the periphery of Irish history.
References
[1] A. Birnie, Single Tax George, (New York, 1939), p.9
[2] Michael Silagi and Susan N. Faulkner, Henry George and Europe: Ireland, the First
Target of His Efforts to Spread His DoctrinesInternationally, Disappointed Him, in,
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct., 1987), pp. 495-501.
[3] E. Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, (Dublin, 1932), pp 302-303.
[4] R. Bionaz, Streetcar Politics and Reform Government in Cleveland 1880-1909, in
Ohio History Vol. 119, 2012, pp 5-29.
[5] Birnie, Single Tax George, p. 84.
[6]H. George Jr.The Life of Henry George, CHAPTER IV: STARTING THE
REVOLUTION IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1882 AGE, 43
http://www.henrygeorge.org/LIFEofHG/LHG3/lhg304.htm
[7] Ibid, p84-85
[8] A.G de Mille, Henry George: Citizen of the World, (North Carolina, 1950), p. 93-94
[9] Ibid, p. 412
[10] Ibid, p. 97.
[11] The Nation, 26 Nov 1881, p. 5.
[12] Nation, 7 October 1882, p. 6.
[13] Nation, 11 Nov 1882, p. 7.
[14] “Though Not an Irishman”: Henry George and the American Irish, American Journal
of Economics and Sociology Volume 56, Issue 4, pages 407–419, October 1997
[15] Nation, 26 Jan 1884, pp 6-7
[16] H. George Jr, Henry George:
http://www.henrygeorge.org/LIFEofHG/LHG3/lhg304.htm
[17] Nation, 7 Oct 1882, p. 2
[18] M. Gaffney, Repopulating New Orleans, Economic Education Bulletin, Vol. XLVI,
No.6, June 2006, p. 3.
[19] E. M. Tobin, The Progressive as Single Taxer: Mark Fagan and the Jersey City
Experience, 1900-1917
in American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 287297
[20] M. Forrest (2011) Allotments in Dublin 1900–1950, Irish Geography, 44:2-3,pp265290.
[21] Irish Independent, 22 June 1909, p. 6
[22] A.P. Dudden, Joseph Fels of Philadelphia and London, in The Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography p .9
[23] Ibid, p. 19
[24] Freemans Journal, 2 March 1914, p. 6
[25] Irish Independent, 7 Sept 1912, p. 3
[26]Joseph and Mary Fels Papers 1840-1966, Collection 1953, The Historical Society of
Pennsylvania
[27] Irish Independent, 26 June 1909, p. 5
[28] Freemans Journal, 26 June 1909, p. 7
[29] Freemans Journal, 26 July 1909, p, 5
[30]M. Forrest (2011) Allotments in Dublin 1900–1950, Irish Geography, 44:2-3,
265-290,
[31] Freemans Journal, 20 December 1909, p. 9
[32] M. Forrest (2011) Allotments in Dublin, p. 267
[33] Freemans Journal, 12 July 1910, p. 6
[34] Open letter from Joseph Fels in the Freemans Journal 04 August 1910, p. 4
[35] Mary Forrest, Allotments in Dublin, pp12-13.
[36] Irish Press, 30 Jan, 1933, p. 5
[37] The Irish Press 31 Jan, 1933, p. 6
[38] Irish Press, 28 Jun 1935, p. 7
[39] Tourist Traffic Bill, 1951. Dáil Éireann Debate Vol. 132 No. 1
[40] A.W. Evans, Land Taxation: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone:
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2013_272&r=his
[41] D. Norris, A Kick Against The Pricks, ( Dublin, 2012), p. 257
[42] NAMA was established in December 2009 as one of a number of initiatives taken by
the Irish Government to address the serious problems which arose in Ireland’s banking
sector as the result of excessive property lending.
[43] National Asset Management Agency: Statements. Tuesday, 26 May 2009 Seanad
Éireann Debate
Vol. 195 No. 12
[44] National Asset Management Agency Business Plan: Statements. Thursday, 29
October 2009 Seanad Éireann Debate Vol. 197 No. 10
[45] Irish Press, 1 Jan 1994, p. 22
[46] R. Crotty, A Radical’s Response, (Dublin, 1988) p. 16