Joshua K. Ingalls, American Individualist: Land Reformer, Opponent of Henry George and Advocate of Land Leasing, Now an Established Mode

. Joshua K. Ingalls was a member of a particularly cohesive group of 19th century intellectual iconoclasts in America, the individualists. Two controversies made him widely known at the time: the land reform vs. abolition argument before the Civil War, and his attacks on Henry George in the 1880s over the issue of land reform through tax reform or land reform through land leasing under an occupancy and use system of tenure. Ingalls held George failed to understand the “true” nature of capitalism; rent goes to the landlord as capitalist as reward for his investment; the landowning capitalist appropriates this by his dominion over the land. Though Ingalls’ argument did not prevail, land leasing, which he advocated, is the form in which some resources are now disposed of, as in grazing rights and mineral exploration on public land, and in oil exploration rights on the continental shelves; and in the disposition of urban sites such as the site of Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building in New York (the former to the benefit of Columbia University, the latter Cooper Union, both by legislative action).