Reminiscences of an Octogenarian in the Fields of Industrial and Social Reform

New York / London: M.L. Holbrook & Co. / L.N. Fowler, 1897. First Edition. Octavo (22.5cm.); publisher's cloth limb cloth boards, upper cover lettered in gilt; viii,200pp.; photographic portrait frontispiece. Boards a bit rubbed with brief cloth peeling, contemporary ownership signature to front free endpaper, else Very Good, internally sound. Printer's slug at bottom of title page: Elmira, NY: Gazette Company. Memoirs of the individualist land reformer Joshua K. Ingalls (1816-1898), best known for his opposition to Henry George's proposed land reforms, himself believing that government protection of idle land only deprived those of its use "who [are] able and willing to utilize it" (p. [iii]). Ingalls publishedghis own small newspaper, "The Landmark," which garnered enough attention that he was invited to speak on land reform and abolition alongside Frederick Douglass in 1848, an event covered in detail here (pp. 38-42). Unfortunately for Ingalls, his address was followed by Douglass's rebuttal, after which "the audience 'did not want to hear anything more from Mr. Ingalls'" (cf. Bowman N. Hall, "Joshua K. Ingalls, American Individualist," in "American Journal of Economics and Sociology," Vol. 39, no. 4, Oct., 1980, p. 385). Thereafter, Ingalls turned his attentions to taking down Henry George, spending "the rest of his life trying to capitalize on the attention aroused by 'Progress and Poverty'" (ibid, p. 387).