In 1890, if you asked someone who the most famous Americans were, you’d hear three names. The first was Mark Twain, the writer. The second was Thomas Edison, the inventor. The third was a man you have likely never heard of.

His name was Henry George. His fame traces back to the one year he lived in Sausalito: 1877.

This tidbit about being the third most famous American perhaps doesn’t even do it justice. So let’s try it this way: the smartest and most world-famous, for the next 50 years, idolized Henry George.

Einstein is a name synonymous with intelligence. He called George’s work a "beautiful combination of intellectual keenness... and fervent love of justice." Winston Churchill used George’s arguments to fight the British aristocracy. Leo Tolstoy believed George’s system was the only way to save Russia from violent revolution. FDR called him a “great thinker” and applied his principles to public infrastructure.

But it wasn’t just the powerful, the common man adored George too! His book, Progress and Poverty, outsold every book except the Bible. He was so popular that he beat future president Theodore Roosevelt in a mayoral election (but never held office). When he died in 1897, over 100,000 people flooded the streets of New York for his funeral, and many newspapers debated if it outpaced the public grief for Lincoln’s death 32 years earlier. The crowds did not mourn a politician, they mourned a "martyr" of "saintly character" whose life had been consumed by the struggle for justice.

Ok, ok, I get it! So tell me already… who was Henry George, what does it have to do with Marin, and why is he so unknown today?

In the summer of 1877, George fled the chaos of San Francisco for the quiet of Marin. He spent years as a struggling journalist, at an interesting time for our country. The transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869, an economic depression started with the Panic of 1873, and San Francisco was rioting against cheap immigrant labor and fed up with the “Big Four” monopolistic railroad barons controlling everything.

So Henry George took an easy job as a gas meter inspector and created space to think in Marin. Looking out at the bay, he solved a riddle that still haunts us: Why does progress create poverty?

The central ideas and outline of his book, Progress and Poverty, were created in Sausalito before he moved back to SF later in the year. The book was self-published in 1879, then he moved to New York to find a publisher for national distribution and promote his ideas.

What was the idea? A new way to look at economics and a single tax to solve it: why does the "wedge" of progress force the rich up and the poor down?

Briefly: all comes back to land. As a society grows, the demand for land increases, but the supply of land is fixed, so rents increase. This rent increase eats into the share of wages (or bank interest). As technology progresses, the financial benefits accrue to the landowner, not the worker (or even business or bank).

George’s solution was simple, which was part of its massive appeal. He did not propose the state seizure of land (nationalization), which he viewed as bureaucratic and conducive to tyranny. Instead, he proposed to tax land values at 100%. He believed a man belongs to himself, therefore, the fruit of his labor (wages) and the tools he creates (capital) are his property. To tax them is theft. But the land was created by no man, it is a gift of nature. Therefore, the value of land belongs to all. Private collection of rent is, in George’s view, the theft of public property.

That’s an extremely brief overview. If curious, I encourage you to read this essay that looks at Progress and Poverty in modern times.

Well if this is so great, why didn’t it work out?

Look, this is another significant question and I am not even sure if anyone has read this far. First, he died at age 58 before even holding elected office to put the ideas to work. Ultimately though, we came to view land as just another form of capital. You buy land with money, you own land. Opponents were successful in tying it to communism in the sense that in George’s system, land was shared by all (but not labor or capital). And once the income tax started in 1913, there was no going back.

Isn’t it crazy to think it all started right here in Marin?

p.s. I was inspired to dive into Henry George due to some recent Fairfax news. There is a fight over the approval of a massive 6-story apartment building that would be right downtown. I don’t usually go for the “infrastructure won’t support it” arguments, however, transit out of Fairfax may be the rare case. Have you been stuck at The Hub / Red Hill light for so many cycles you have lost count? Good luck getting to 101 south during rush hour. I don’t see any path to solving that within a reasonable timeframe. And traffic jams behave on an nonlinear scale, meaning everything flows well up to a certain number of cars. An increase of cars just 10% can result in a complete stop-and-go situation and drops throughput sharply. So hopefully these new people don’t ever want to leave Fairfax!

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15 Tamalpais Avenue

A mansion on a large lot in the hills sounds so isolating. This one is different.

It was built in 1893 in the heart of Mill Valley. You are just a fifth of a mile from Corner Bar / Equator Coffee / Depot Cafe intersection. One long block and one long staircase and you’re there.

Since you are 167 feet higher than the valley floor, there is a great view!

I wonder what the inspection report on a home 130 years old is like. Sounds like an adventure…

Check it out:

Zillow link

Thanks for reading. We will be back with the regular events and activities email Wednesday morning!

— Allison + Brian