Comments on: Sir Henry Wellcome

By: Connect Business Magazine » Off-The-Cuff » Off-The-Cuff

Connect Business Magazine » Off-The-Cuff » Off-The-Cuff — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:06:07 +0000

[...] whatever reason, we received more positive feedback from our feature on Sir Henry Wellcome (July ’09) than on any other cover story in recent memory. Several people even mentioned it at the fair. One [...]

By: Mignon Adams

Mignon Adams — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:14:29 +0000

As the retired library director of the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia (formerly the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy), I read your article with interest. Over the years I answered a number of questions about Henry Wellcome–the library of course contained his thesis (not really a dissertation) as well as the only photo of him as a young man. Researchers from the Wellcome Foundation occasionally appeared.

But I knew little about his early life or his ties to Mankato, where I have friends living.

Thanks for your well-written article.

Mignon Adams
Librarian Emeritus

By: Edward J. Dodson

Edward J. Dodson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:02:33 +0000

Regarding Henry George, you write: “Today you would call George a leftist radical.” Historians would disagree. George was a champion of free trade and was against monopolies, particularly the landed form of monopoly that Winston Churchill later described in a campaign speech as “the mother of all monopolies.” Henry George argued the case for what is best described as a labor and capital goods theory of individual property. Nature he viewed as our commons, access to which was a human right not easily achieved or enforced under law that allocated deeds over portions of the earth for private exploitation without full payment to society of what political economists of his day referred to as “ground rent.”

I use the term “cooperative individualism” to describe Henry George’s principles. Among those who embraced his moral principles where key individualists — Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov and even (to a less comprehensive extent) William F. Buckley, Jr. The list is long of those on the left, on the right or in the center who have found reason to side with Henry George of issues both theoretical and pragmatic.

By: LVTfan

LVTfan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:03:47 +0000

This was well written — but I must note one error. Silas would not be considered a communist. The ideas of Henry George were, and are, radical in the finest sense of the word. They recognize the root of the problem, and can be used to eradicate it!

Many industrialists saw the wisdom, justice and efficiency — the sheer decency! — of George’s ideas, and worked to promote them, so Silas Burroughs was in good company. Tom Johnson, later to become Mayor of Cleveland; Joseph Fels, of the Fels soap company; Robert Schalkenbach; John Lincoln and George Foster Peabody, to name a few. His ideas drew on Locke, Paine, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, David Ricardo, and were consistent with the ideas of the Physiocrats, Old Testament land economics, Chief Seattle, and many others. (search on “quotable notables” for more.)

Among the websites you might explore to learn more about Henry George’s ideas are the School of Cooperative Individualism at cooperativeindividualism.org, the Henry George Institute at henrygeorge.org, and WealthandWant at wealthandwant.com. The LVTfan blog, at lvtfan.typepad.com will give you some very contemporary applications of his ideas.