by Lindy Davies
An interesting email thread recently has seen a bunch of our colleagues bringing up the Georgist-themed songs on their personal playlists. Continue reading
Category Archives: Art and Poetry
The Poet of the Future
by James Whitcomb Riley
O the Poet of the Future! He will come to us as comes
The beauty of the bugle’s voice above the roar of drums —
The beauty of the bugle’s voice above the roar and din
Of battle-drums that pulse the time the victor marches in. Continue reading
Single Tax Artists: George Inness and James Whitcomb Riley
Our thanks to Josh Vincent for finding a fascinating article* by Leo G. Mazow on the single-tax roots of George Inness, an artist of the Hudson River School, which appeared in American Art, Spring 2004. The article offers a scholarly treatment of the ways in which Inness worked to express Georgist ideals in his work. It also mentioned the single-tax inspired work of the poet James Whitcomb Riley, particularly his lovely poem “The Poet of the Future,” which is reproduced here. — L.D. Continue reading
Progress and Poverty
by Emma Lazarus
Oh splendid age when Science 
lights her lamp
At the brief lightning’s momentary flame.
Fixing it steadfast as a star, man’s name
Upon the very brow of heaven to stamp,
Launched on a ship whose iron-cuirassed sides
Mock storm and wave. Humanity sails free;
Gayly upon a vast untraveled sea,
O’er pathless wastes, to ports undreamed she rides.
Richer than Cleopatra’s barge of gold,
This vessel, manned by demi-gods, with freight
Of priceless marvels. But where yawns the hold
In that deep, reeking hell, what slaves be they
Who feed the ravenous monster, pant and sweat,
Nor know if overhead reign night or day?
Published in the New York Times, October 2, 1881
We Got a Bailout Now
By the Soggy Bottom Boys, and Bradley D. “Buzz” VanDyke
I had a friend named Rambl’in Bob
He used to steal, gamble and rob
He thought he was the smartest guy around
Well I found out last Monday
That Bob got locked up Sunday
They’ve got ’im in the jailhouse way downtown Continue reading
Rent
by Edmund Vance Cooke
from The People’s Advocate, Adelaide, Australia, 1937
You may tinker with the tariff and make some simple gains,
You may put on tolls or take ’em off, inducing party pains;
You may monkey with the money, but the lack of it remains,
For the Mother of monopoly is laughing as she reigns. Continue reading
Omitted from the Spoon River Anthology
by Luke North
Luke North was the pseudonym of James H. Griffes, the prolific Single Tax activist, editor and poet of the first three decades of the 20th century. Spoon River Anthology (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters, is the celebrated collection of short poems in the form of epitaphs of the members of a small midwestern town, delivered by the dead themselves. Continue reading