A FRIEND OF GOOD CAUSES.

Northern Advocate, 7 May 1914, Page 6

A FRIEND OF GOOD CAUSES.

By the death of Mr Joseph Fels many good causes lose a "devoted and generous friend. As' the possessor, of Aery great wealth, derived from.the business of soap manufacture, he was able to give large sums of money.to further movements with which :'. he sympathised. He was best known to the public as & t strenuous and persistent advocate of Henry . George's single tax theory, believing' that the only way to remove the causes of poverty was by throwing open the land. to the use of the people. ■ This end, he argued, could only be achieved by placing a tax upon land.values. Mr Fels supported this propaganda . large gifts ,in ..Europe, Australia, South Africa, North arid South America, and even China. At,his own 1 expense he started several experiments in land colonisation both in England and America. One at Maylands, a village in Essex, succeeded so well that in four years a farm of 700. acres, divided into about twenty small holdings, was supporting a community of 300 people. With money found by him Mr George Lansbury started 4he Hollesley Bay labour colony for the unemployed. Mr Fels was also an ardent supporter of woman suffrage, and at his house in Regent Park Mr J.ansbury stayed upon his release from prison after hunger To Mr Fels, wealth was essentially a*, stewardship. He used his money not primarily as a philanthropist, but. as one who sought in a spirit of-para-doxical nobility to make such accumulations of wealth as his imposslblein the future. It was his habit spend half the year fo the.United?.

tates and'the other half in England w\ the interests of his business, and .: was while on a visit to PhiladeV _.>hia to gather information for his land-tax crusade that he fell ill with pneumonia, and died in his sixtieth year.