She tried giving talks on the subject but felt she was reaching too few people. Undeterred, Magie searched for ways to revive interest in a single-tax system. When George died in October 1897, Magie, like many single taxers, vowed to keep fighting for his ideals, but without its charismatic leader the movement quickly lost momentum. After reading it she became a single-tax disciple and joined the movement, eventually becoming secretary of the Women's Single Tax Club of Washington, DC. Her introduction to George's theories came when her father gave her a copy of P rogr ess and Poverty. Aged 26, she created a device that allowed paper to be fed into typewriters more easily and got it patented at a time when fewer than one percent of patents were owned by women. She worked, wrote poems about love and unfairness, penned short stories, and impressed her theatrical friends with convincing portrayals of boy characters. Born in Macomb, Illinois, in 1866, Magie was a modern-minded woman trapped in an un-modern age, an independent spirit who sought to make her own way rather than rely on a husband to provide for her. This, he concluded, would narrow the gap between rich and poor by encouraging more productive use of land, raising the income of workers, and preventing landowners from parasitically accumulating wealth without having to do anything to earn it.Įlizabeth Magie was one of those who joined the fight for a single-tax society. The income from this tax, George believed, would be so vast that all other taxes could then be abolished, a move that would let people keep all the proceeds from their own labor. As such, the money landlords made simply from owning land really belonged to everyone and the government should take all of that money back on behalf of society by imposing a land value tax. George argued that undeveloped land was God given and any increase in its value was due to the work done by people. The economist Henry George believed he had a better answer to the inequality tearing the country apart, and in 1879 he set out his plan in a book called P rog res s and Poverty. People began talking about class struggle and forming trade unions to take the power back. As these industrialists and financiers amassed millions, the cracks in society split open. Others branded them robber barons who used their power and riches to snuff out competition, exploit workers, and undermine democracy by bribing corrupt politicians. Some saw these men as captains of industry who were making Americans wealthier and lauded their philanthropy. Morgan embodied the popular image of the 19th-century capitalist: a cane-carrying banker with a white handlebar mustache who dressed in a tuxedo and top hat. Morgan, the financier who used his wealth and connections to create industrial Goliaths like US Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation. No one embodied these Gilded Age tycoons more than J. Men who in the decades that followed would only increase their stranglehold on American industry. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil company was busy building a monopoly on oil refining, and the railroad king Cornelius Vanderbilt. Most employees worked punishing hours in dire conditions for abysmal pay while the men they worked for amassed almost unimaginable fortunes. The United States of 1877 was a nation divided.
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