Several years back I spent a great deal of time creating a version of Progress & Poverty that included summary notes in the margin. The main objective was that HGS students, who might not have had time to complete the suggested reading prior to class, could fairly quickly absorb the main points. It was subsequently pointed out that this also helped readers to understand what the main points are, at least according to one guy who happens to be me.
At about the same time, Bob Drake started work on his abridged modernization of the same text, reducing its bulk by about 65% and aligning its vocabulary and syntax better with typical 21st-century readers. This was published in 2006 by Schalkenbach. Altho HGS/Chicago printed a limited run of the P&P with my summary notes, some of which I used in my classes, the emphasis moved to the 5- or 6-session course and the abridged modernization.
Subsequently, I revised and corrected my summary, and put it into pdf format for web posting. This, of course, isn’t the first synopsis that’s ever been done, (see this, or find the excellent work of Mike Curtis which apparently hasn’t ever been posted) nor is it necessarily the best. However, it’s the only one I know of where each phrase can be displayed on the page with the text that it summarizes.
Technologically, printed copies could be readily produced, but economically I don’t consider that likely.
The entire synopsis, including a brief introduction but without the original text, is this 39-page pdf. The individual chapters and other pieces are separate pdf’s, linked below. All the files are zipped into a single download here.
Front matter including Preface and Introductory
Book I: Wages and Capital
- Chapter 1: The current doctrine of wages-its insufficiency
- Chapter 2: The meaning of the terms
- Chapter 3: Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by the labor
- Chapter 4: The maintenance of laborers not drawn from capital
- Chapter 5: The real functions of capital
Book II: Population and Subsistence
- Chapter 1: The Malthusian theory, its genesis and support
- Chapter 2: Inferences from facts
- Chapter 3: Inferences from analogy
- Chapter 4: Disproof of the Malthusian theory
Book III: The Laws of Distribution
- Chapter 1: The inquiry narrowed to the laws of distribution – necessary relation of these laws
- Chapter 2: Rent and the law of rent
- Chapter 3: Interest and the cause of interest
- Chapter 4: Of spurious capital and of profits often mistaken for interest
- Chapter 5: The law of interest
- Chapter 6: Wages and the law of wages
- Chapter 7: Correlation and co-ordination of these laws
- Chapter 8: The statics of the problem thus explained
Book IV: Effect of Material Progress upon the Distribution of Wealth
- Chapter 1: The dynamics of the problem yet to seek
- Chapter 2: Effects of increase of population upon the distribution of wealth
- Chapter 3: Effects of improvements in the arts upon the distribution of wealth
- Chapter 4: Effect of the expectation raised by material progress
Book V: The Problem Solved
- Chapter 1: The primary cause of recurring paroxysms of industrial depression
- Chapter 2: The persistence of poverty amid advancing wealth
Book VI: The Remedy
Book VII: Justice of the Remedy
- Chapter 1: Injustice of private property in land
- Chapter 2: Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private property in land
- Chapter 3: Claim of landowners to compensation
- Chapter 4: Property in land historically considered
- Chapter 5: Property in land in the United States
Book VIII: Application of the Remedy
- Chapter 1: Private property in land inconsistent with the best use of land
- Chapter 2: How equal rights to the land may be asserted and secured
- Chapter 3: The proposition tried by the canons of taxation
- Chapter 4: Indorsements and objections
Book IX: Effects of the Remedy
- Chapter 1: Of the effect upon the production of wealth
- Chapter 2: Of the effect upon distribution and thence upon production
- Chapter 3: Of the effect upon individuals and classes
- Chapter 4: Of the changes that would be wrought in social organization and social life
Book X: The Law of Human Progress
- Chapter 1: The current theory of human progress– its insufficiency
- Chapter 2: Differences in civilization– to what due
- Chapter 3: The law of human progress
- Chapter 4: How modern civilization may decline
- Chapter 5: The central truth
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