Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/330

 Colorado, on to California, the Hawaiian Islands, and Oregon, and back, getting better and worse till 1889–90, when something happened; something for which these wander-years and his whole life and his father's had prepared him.

He read "Progress and Poverty." It is wonderful how many of the men who are working for political reform got their inspiration from Henry George. "I am for men," George said, and he made men. No matter what the world may decide to do about his single tax, some day it will have to acknowledge that Henry George brought into the service of man more men of more different kinds than any other man of his day. U'Ren is not an orthodox single-taxer to-day; U'Ren cannot be classified economically at all; he thinks for himself. He read other books then; he reads other books now. Open-minded in the period when, as he says, the hard conditions and selfish interests of life are ossifying most men," he never has been able to close up his mind. He is wide open to any truth from any source.

The way he started on his career as a legislator shows this. One day toward the end of his wander-years, as he was changing from the train to the boat on the Oakland (California) mole, somebody thrust into his hand a leaflet on