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A CRITICAL EXAMINATION

OF

MR. GEORGE'S

"PROGRESS & POVERTY"

AND

MR. MILL'S THEORY OF WAGES.

BY

FRANCIS D. LONGE,

AUTHOR OF A REFUTATION OF THE WAGE FUND THEORY OF

MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY," 1866.

LONDON: SIMPKIN & MARSHALL.

MANCHESTER JAMES E. CORNISH.

BIRMINGHAM: Messrs. CORNISH BROTHERS.

CHELTENHAM : Messrs. MARSHALL, NORMAN, & Co.

PRICE SIXPENCE.

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PART I.

PROGRESS AND POVERTY."

It is often said that anything may be proved by statistics. It may be said with equal truth, that anything may be proved by Political Economy. Problems in Political Economy, like problems in chess, may be solved in a variety of ways, when the game is played by a single player.

The facts embraced in the theory of wages, although for the most part common-place and familiar, are multitudinous and many-sided, and the sequences of cause and effect are so mixed and entangled, that they are easily misread even by the impartial observer, and still more easily misrepresented in the pages of science, where they appear only as abstract or general conceptions, to which the value attributed by the writer may be very different to that belonging to them in the actualities of life. How far I have succeeded in pointing out errors in the reasoning of others, without falling into greater myself, I must leave to the judgment of the

reader.

In the work entitled "Progress and Poverty," Mr. George undertakes to solve a problem in the solution of which the theory of wages plays the principal part. In working out this solution, Mr. George has produced an elaborate and powerfully written treatise, embracing a review of the most important elements of social and economic science, in which he claims to have proved the existence of the evil suggested by his title, and demonstrated the appropriateness of the remedy which he proposes for its cure.

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