Was Theodore Roosevelt a Friend of the Single Taxers?

ABSTRACT Theodore Roosevelt is best known as a rough‐hewn outdoorsman. But as President of the United States, he also saw himself as a servant of the people, all people. Fifteen years before he stepped into that role, he came in third, behind Henry George, in a three‐way race in New York City's mayoral race, at which time he was strongly opposed to the Georgist message that poverty and inequality stem from privileges bestowed by property rights in land. Despite this difference, Roosevelt was sympathetic to the plight of workers and the common folk, and sought to reduce the power of the monopolistic corporations that wanted to extract wealth from workers by operating urban utility franchises that overcharged for basic services and by gaining control of large tracts of wilderness. In his later years, Roosevelt apparently shifted his stance and agreed with Henry George that land value taxation was worthy of support. But no matter how slow he may have been to embrace George's signature policy idea, Roosevelt was aligned in many ways with the cultural Georgism that influenced millions of people from 1890 to 1920.