60 The Environmental Debate
the thickly settled parts of the United States there
is enough land to maintain three or four times our
present population, lying unused, because its own-
ers are holding it for higher prices, and immigrants
are forced past this unused land to seek homes
where their labor will be far less productive. In
every city valuable lots may be seen lying vacant
for the same reason. If the best use of land be the
test, then private property in land is condemned, as
it is condemned by every other consideration. It is
as wasteful and uncertain a mode of securing the
proper use of land as the burning down of houses
is of roasting pigs.
Source: Henry George, Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry
into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase
of Want with Increase of Wealth (New York: Robert
Schalkenbach Foundation, 1979), pp. 401-2.Document 53: Henry George on Land Development (1879)
The social reformer and economist Henry George was working in San Francisco as a printer and editor during
a period when the expansion of the railroads was stimulating a land boom in California. George vehemently
objected to policies for land development being determined by landowners and speculators. His writings helped
to spark interest in the need for land use planning.So far from the recognition of private property
in land being necessary to the proper use of land,
the contrary is the case. Treating land as private
property stands in the way of its proper use. Were
land treated as public property it would be used
and improved as soon as there was need for its use
or improvement, but being treated as private prop-
erty, the individual owner is permitted to prevent
others from using or improving what he cannot or
will not use or improve himself. When the title is
in dispute, the most valuable land lies unimproved
for years; in many parts of England improvement
is stopped because, the estates being entailed, no
security to improvers can be given; and large tracts
of ground which, were they treated as public prop-
erty, would be covered with buildings and crops,
are kept idle to gratify the caprice of the owner. In
Document 54: Act Establishing the Adirondack Forest Preserve Act (1885)...................
“An act to establish a forest commission, and to define its powers and duties and for the preservation of forests”
was passed by the New York State legislature on May 15, 1885. In 1894, the “forever wild” clause of the law,
section 8, was incorporated into the New York State Constitution as Article XIV, section 7: “[T]he lands of the
State now owned or hereafter acquired constituting the Forest Preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever
kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or
private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.” More then half a century later, in the 1950s,
this clause^7 provided the impetus for Howard Zahnizer, then the director of the Wilderness Society, to prepare a
legislative draft and for a coalition of environmental groups to run a ten-year campaign [see Document 96] that
resulted in the passage of the Federal Wilderness Act of 1964. The “forever wild” clause, however, has always had
numerous opponents and has been the focal point of several efforts to amend the New York State Constitution.
George Bird Grinnell, the editor and owner of Forest and Stream, an influential periodical with a broad readership
that ranged from outdoorsmen to politicians, was the champion of a variety of conservation causes. He feared that
commercial timber interests would be allowed to denude the Adirondacks before the land came under state control.A. The Act
Sec. 1. There shall be a forest commission
which shall consist of three persons who shall be
styled forest commissioners....
Sec. 7. All the lands now owned or which
may hereafter be acquired by the state of New
York, within the counties of Clinton, excepting
the towns of Altona and Dannemora, Essex,