His work as a printer
led to casual employment as a journalist. This was the first step in
his subsequently life-long career as an independent thinker, writer,
and speaker.
An apparent failure in life, he was obliged when twenty-six years of
age to beg money from a stranger on the street to keep his wife and
babies from actual starvation. But his misery may have been of
incalculable value to the human race, for his bitter personal
experience convinced him that the times were out of joint, and his
brain began to seek the remedy. The doctrine of _single tax_, already
on trial in some parts of the world, is his chief contribution to
economic theory.
From "The Life of Henry George, by His Son." Doubleday, Page &
Company, 1900.
Thus heavily weighted at the outset, the three men opened their office.
But hard times had come. A drought had shortened the grain crop,
killed great numbers of cattle and lessened the gold supply, and the
losses that the farming, ranching, and mineral regions suffered
affected all the commercial and industrial activities of the State, so
that there was a general depression. Business not coming into their
office, the three partners went out to hunt for it; and yet it was
elusive, so that they had very little to do and soon were in
extremities for living necessities, even for wood for the kitchen fire.
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