Posted Sunday morning, July 12, 2020.
Detail from a contemporary political cartoon depicting the progressive economist and author Henry George, who was one of Theodore Roosevelt’s two opponents in the 1886 race for mayor of New York City, strangling the snake or corruption that had its coils wrapped around City Hall. Via Wikipedia.
In 1886, just shy of turning twenty-eight, Theodore Roosevelt returned to New York from his sojourn as a rancher in the Dakota Territory, ready to plunge headlong back into politics. He ran for mayor of New York City in a three-way race that included the progressive economist Henry George as one of his opponents. I think McCullough is understating George’s effect on “propertied people” here:
[TR] was also being asked by the Republicans to run for mayor of New York, almost from the moment he had his bags unpacked, an offer he at once accepted...even though [as he] appreciated, he had little chance of winning...It was to be a three-way race. His opponents were the Democrat Abram Hewitt and a Labor candidate, Henry George. Hewitt, distinguished in manner, admired as an “enlightened” businessman, had been a friend of [Roosevelt’s] father and appeared the likely winner. Henry George was the author of Progress and Poverty, famous as the great exponent of the single-tax scheme, and a fiery speaker who drew huge street corner crowds and gave newspaper editors and propertied people a bad case of the jitters.
---from “Mornings on Horseback” by David McCullough.
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