Quiz: Progress and Poverty

15 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. What fact about Ireland does George use to show that it was not overpopulated?

   Its population was smaller than England’s even at its peak Its landlords lived on their estates Even during the famine it exported food Its potato yields were the highest in Europe
2. 2. What does George say would happen if productive labour in London ceased entirely?

   The city could live for years on its accumulated wealth Capital would flow in from abroad to maintain the workers for years Within months hardly one of its people would be left alive Only the poor would suffer, since the rich live on their capital
3. 3. How were American whaling crews paid, in George’s example?

   By a “lay,” a proportion of the catch By fixed monthly wages advanced before the voyage In shares of the shipping company By a bonus from the owners’ capital at the end of the voyage
4. 4. What difference between people and animals does George illustrate with jay-hawks and chickens?

   Chickens are limited by space, men by food More jay-hawks mean fewer chickens; more men, more chickens Men eat fewer chickens as they grow richer Jay-hawks breed faster than men and outrun their food
5. 5. What follows, for George, from Ricardo’s law of rent?

   Interest determines rent, since land is valued by capitalising its yield Rent forms part of every product’s price, so consumers pay it in the end Rent rises only when wages rise, so landowners and labourers share an interest Wages and interest get only what rent leaves: the produce of the poorest land in use
6. 6. How did the California gold miners treat the gold-bearing land, according to George?

   As state land leased to a single company As the first discoverer’s, his heirs’ forever As common property, held only so long as it was worked As private property sold at public auction
7. 7. According to George, which class above the mere labourer has most to gain from the single tax?

   Railroad shareholders Holders of government bonds Large urban ground landlords Working farmers who own and till small farms
8. 8. What does George’s use of Lamb’s roast-pig story stand for?

   The origin of rent in land cleared by setting fire to the forest The waste caused by protective tariffs on food The cruelty of Chinese landlords to their tenants Believing land must be owned to be improved
9. 9. How, in George’s account, does Darwin describe the struggle for existence?

   As Malthus’s doctrine applied to all animals and plants As a law that does not apply to civilized human beings As a refutation of Malthus’s two ratios of increase As a discovery he owed to Adam Smith
10. 10. Where did George first briefly state the views of Progress and Poverty, according to his preface?

    In the pamphlet “Our Land and Land Policy” (1871) In a speech to the Workingmen’s Party of California In an article in the New York Tribune In a series of lectures at the University of California
11. 11. What illustration does George use to show that greed comes from insecurity, not human nature?

    Miners staking claims in the first rush to the Sacramento Steerage and cabin meals on early California steamers Prisoners sharing scant rations in a state penitentiary Soldiers foraging on campaign
12. 12. What does George say destroyed Rome?

    The superior cavalry and military technique of the Goths and Huns A sudden cooling of climate that ruined Italian harvests Inequality: great estates replacing free husbandmen The spread of Christianity among the legions and the court
13. 13. What did John Stuart Mill propose, according to VII.3?

    That the state buy all land at its market price at once, with bonds That land be confiscated without compensation That the state take future rises in land value not due to the owner That rents be fixed permanently by courts
14. 14. According to George, what is the only real limit to industry?

    The market demand for commodities Access to natural material The number of laborers available The amount of capital accumulated
15. 15. What does George’s example of Mohammed Ali’s tax on date-trees show?

    That luxury taxes fall on the rich, not on the cultivator That indirect taxes are easiest to collect That taxing improvements can destroy production, unlike taxing land That Egypt’s land was held in common