Protection or free trade

New York: H. George & co., 1886. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/None. Navy blue cloth boards with gilt titling on the spine and star insignia embossed on both boards; lightly rubbed at extremities and corners bumped. Binding is sound. Former owner's inscription penciled on ffep and erasure mark on dedication page; Interior is otherwise unmarked. Page edges dulled. Lacking dustjacket. 5 x 7.5 ins. Our photos depict actual book offered for sale. Books are carefully packaged by hand and shipped from our family-owned bookshop in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA. BOOK INFO: See photos for Table of Contents. 'In this book I have endeavored to determine whether protection or free trade better accords with the interests of labor, and to bring to a common conclusion on this subject those who really desire to raise wages.... I have sought to discover why protection retains such popular strength in spite of all exposures of its fallacies.' (-from the Preface). Henry George (September 2, 1839 ? October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the economic philosophy known as Georgism, the belief that people should own the value they produce themselves, but that the economic value of land (including natural resources) should belong equally to all members of society. George was opposed to tariffs, which were at the time both the major method of protectionist trade policy and an important source of federal revenue, the federal income tax having not yet been introduced. Free trade became a major issue in federal politics and his book Protection or Free Trade was the first book to be read entirely into the Congressional Record. In 1997, Spencer MacCallum wrote that Henry George was 'undeniably the greatest writer and orator on free trade who ever lived.' In 2009, Tyler Cowen wrote that George's 1886 book Protection or Free Trade 'remains perhaps the best-argued tract on free trade to this day.' Jim Powell said it was probably the best book on trade written by anyone in the Americas, comparing it to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Milton Friedman said it was the most rhetorically brilliant work ever written on trade. Includes bibliography and index. viii, 359 p. 19 cm.