Progress and poverty: Volumes I and II / Henry George. [print]

BOOK I: WAGES AND CAPITAL.

The current doctrine of wages: its insufficiency -- The meaning of the terms -- Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by wages -- The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital -- The real functions of capital

BOOK II: POPULATION AND SUBSTENCE.

The Malthusian theory: Its genesis and support -- Infrerences from facts -- Inferences from analogy -- Disproof of the Malthusian theory

BOOK III: THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.

The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distrubution: The necessary relation of these laws -- Rent and the law of rent -- Of interest and of the cause of interest -- Of spurious capital and of profits often mistaken for interest -- The law of interest -- Wages and the law of wages -- The correlation and coordination of these laws -- The statics of the proble, thus explained

BOOK IV: EFFECT OF MATERIAL PROGRESS UPON THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

The dynamics of the problem yet to seek -- The effect of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth -- The effect of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of wealth -- Effect of the expectation raised by material progress

BOOK IX: EFFECTS OF THE REMEDY.

Of the effect upon the production of wealth -- Of the effect upon the distribution and thence upon production -- Of the effect upon individuals and classes -- Of the changes that would be wrought in social organization and social life

BOOK V: THE PROBLEM SOLVED.

The primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial depression -- The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth

BOOK VI: THE REMEDY.

Insufficiency of remeies currently advocated -- The true remedy

BOOK VII: JUSTICE OF THE REMEDY.

The injustice of private property in land -- The enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property in land -- Claim of land owners to compensation -- Private property in land historically considered -- Of property in land in the United States

BOOK VIII: APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY.

Private property in land inconsistant with the best use of land -- How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured -- The proposition tried by canons of taxation -- Indorsements and objections

BOOK X: THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS.

The current theory of human progress: Its insufficiency -- Differences in civilization: To what due -- The law of human progress -- How modern civilization may decline -- dtThe central truth -- Conclusion: The problem of individual life.

At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past. Could a man of the last century--a Franklin or a Priestley--have seen, in a vision of the future, the steamship taking the place of the sailing vessel, the railroad train of the wagon, the reaping machine of the scythe, the threshing machine of the flail; could he have heard the throb of the engines that in obedience to human will, and for the satisfaction of human desire, exert a power greater than that of all the men and all the beasts of burden of the earth combined; could he have seen the forest tree transformed into finished lumber--into doors, sashes, blinds, boxes or barrels, with hardly the touch of a human hand; the great workshops where boots and shoes are turned out by the case with less labor than the old-fashioned cobbler could have4 put on a sole; the factories where, under the eye of a girl, cotton becomes cloth faster than hundreds of stalwart weavers could have turned it out with their handlooms; could he have seen steam hammers shaping mammoth shafts and mighty anchors, and delicate machinery making tiny watches; the diamond drill cutting through the heart of the rocks, and coal oil sparing the whale; could he have realized the enormous saving of labor resulting from improved facilities of exchange and communication--sheep killed in Australia eaten fresh in England, and the order given by the London banker in the afternoon executed in San Francisco in the morning of the same day; could he have conceived of the hundred thousand improvements which these only suggest, what would he have inferred as to the social condition of mankind?

The present century has been marked by a prodigious increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization of steam and electricity, the introduction of improved processes and labor-saving machinery, the greater subdivision and grander scale of production, the wonderful facilitation of exchanges, have multiplied enormously the effectiveness of labor

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