GEORGE 



2450 



GEORGE 



adopted his mother's family name as a part of 

 his surname, and has always called himself 

 Lloyd George. He prepared himself for the 

 profession of law, and as early as 1890, when 

 he was only twenty-seven, he had become suf- 

 ficiently well known to win a seat in Parlia- 

 ment. Yet it was ten years before he had 

 opportunity to prove his ability. Late in 

 1899 England began war with the Boers in 

 South Africa, and throughout the conflict that 

 followed Lloyd George opposed the govern- 

 ment with a vehemence and an indignation 

 that made him the most hated man in the 

 country. In fact, in 1900, he was mobbed in 

 Birmingham while attempting to make a 

 speech in the town hall. Then, after the war, 

 public opinion changed, and the people began 

 to estimate at their true value Lloyd George's 

 high courage and uncompromising independ- 

 ence. 



In 1906 he entered the Campbell-Bannerman 

 Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, 

 carried on the work of that office with bril- 

 liant success, and in 1908 succeeded Herbert 

 Asquith (which see) as Chancellor of the Ex- 

 chequer. The next few years witnessed mo- 

 mentous changes in English constitutional his- 

 tory. Taking up the old-age pension bill which 

 Asquith, then Premier, had already begun to 

 advocate, Lloyd George saw it through its final 

 passage, and then introduced into Parliament 

 his famous budget of 1909. This provided for 

 radical increases in the taxes of the well-to-do, 

 as additional revenue was needed to carry out 

 the various social reforms of the government. 

 The rejection of this budget by the House of 

 Lords, its passage by a newly-elected Parlia- 

 ment and the loss of the veto power by the 

 House of Lords are matters of English history 

 that will always be connected with the name 

 of Lloyd George. 



In 1911 this fiery little champion of the 

 people's rights stirred the country with another 

 great reform insurance of the workingman 

 against accident, sickness and unemployment. 

 In 1913 he began a campaign to equalize the 

 land rights in England, but ere the movement 

 was fairly launched its sponsor was interrupted 

 by a catastrophe that overshadowed all do- 

 mestic matters the outbreak of the great war. 

 As was to be expected, the Chancellor of the 

 Exchequer became a commanding figure in 

 this new crisis. In May, 1915, when Premier 

 Asquith formed the coalition Cabinet, Lloyd 

 George was made head of the new Department 

 of Munitions, and it is characteristic of him 



that in this position he told the officials of the 

 War Office that he would multiply their pro- 

 gram for manufacturing munitions by eight. 

 Not only did he keep his promise, but eventu- 

 ally he multiplied it by sixteen, besides bring- 

 ing a chaotic state of affairs to one of system 

 and order. A year later, in June, 1916, when 

 Secretary of War Kitchener was drowned, 

 Lloyd George succeeded him as head of the 

 War Department, and at the end of that year, 

 in December, he took up the duties of the 

 Premiership, relinquished by Asquith. From 

 that date to the end of the war he was Eng- 

 land's dynamic force. He was his country's 

 main representative at the peace conference, in 

 Paris. B.M.W. 



GEORGE, HENRY (1839-1897), author of the 

 economic theory of the single tax (which see), 

 and one of the few Americans who has made 

 notable contributions, to economic science. 

 The underlying doctrine of the single tax, that 

 all men have equal right to the use of land, 

 just as they have of air and sunlight, is not 

 original with George, but he made the first 

 clear statement of a method by which this 

 right could be enforced without increasing the 

 machinery of government. 



From his fourteenth year George worked to 

 support himself, and to the end of his life 

 he was a poor man. He shipped as a foremast 

 boy on a vessel bound for Australia, hunted 

 gold in British Columbia, learned the printer's 

 trade in California, and finally became a news- 

 paper reporter and editor in San Francisco. 

 As he matured he began to meditate on the 

 economic conditions he saw about him, on the 

 riches acquired suddenly by the fortunate own- 

 ers of gold-bearing lands. It was here that he 

 first realized that the individual landowner is 

 seldom, if ever, responsible for the increase in 

 the value of his property. His theories were 

 first stated in a pamphlet, Our Land Policy, 

 published in 1871. A more complete state- 

 ment is found in his famous book, Progress 

 and Poverty, published in 1879. 



This book made George the prophet of a 

 new social and economic creed, and the re- 

 mainder of his life was devoted to lecturing 

 and writing on the land question and other 

 economic and political subjects. While not 

 politically ambitious, he twice accepted an in- 

 dependent nomination for mayor of New York 

 City, which was his home after 1883. He was 

 defeated the first time, and died during his 

 second campaign for this office, when victory 

 seemed almost assured. 



