George Raymond Geiger : a rich life - 1903-1998 - founding member of the 'American Journal of Economics and Sociology' and the 'Antioch Review'

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 1999  by Christopher K. Ryan,  Helen B. Ryan

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I

Oscar Geiger

Dr. Geiger was born May 8, 1903, to Oscar H. and Nina C. Daly Geiger. He was their only child. Oscar's father, a Viennese tailor, was related to Abraham Geiger (1810-1874), an outstanding scholar of Judaism and the leading proponent of Reform Judaism in Germany. Oscar was an unconventional person. He was a voracious reader who studied for the rabbinate and was ordained at age nineteen. Robert Clancy has preserved his history in A Seed Was Sown: The Life, Philosophy and Writings of Oscar Geiger (1952). The elder Geiger held the position of principal of a Jewish orphanage but abandoned it after a year, apparently at the request of his parents, in order to aid them financially. He abandoned his faith as well, although he sustained a belief in the importance of religious studies. He married a Roman Catholic, but George was raised with no church or synagogue affiliation.

Clancy relates Oscar Geiger's conversion to Georgism. In 1895, a friend of the family had recommended that Oscar read Progress and Poverty. He did so in one night and woke the friend early the next morning with the query, "What are we going to do about it?" Geiger came to know George for a year or so until George's death in 1897. He became a single-tax activist and remained so for the rest of his life. One activity in which he excelled was street-corner crusading. He was joined in this soapbox oration and debate by a young Harry Golden (Goldhurst). Geiger came to meet Golden through his profession as a furrier, at which he was a success. Geiger invited him to join the "Round Table Literary Club," a study group started by George Geiger and his childhood friends and overseen by his father. All ten in the group were to become prominent citizens. They studied a wide range of subjects. For example, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and Henry George's writings were assigned and examinations had to be passed. All of the group have expressed appreciation for Oscar Geiger and his contribution to their education.

By 1932, Oscar decided to use his limited savings to establish what he believed to be a stable and productive manner of propagating the message of Henry George - a school dedicated to teaching George's writings. With very little additional financial support he organized, taught, and ran the Henry George School of Social Science.

II

George Geiger: Columbia to Antioch

Harry Golden commented on his lifelong friend's proficiency in winning school medals. George Geiger won scholarly competitions to finance his education at Columbia, where he earned four degrees in journalism and philosophy. His father had encouraged him to study journalism with the hope that he would become an editor of a newspaper or a magazine; however, George found he had little taste for journalism: one summer he found himself working for the New York Times with two fledgling reporters, A. J. Liebling and Ted Bernstein. Geiger compared his efforts with those of these to-be-legendary journalists and went back to complete his doctorate in philosophy. At Columbia he had faced another competitive challenge which he could not win; although he was a notable athlete, his position in baseball - that of first base - was the property of his classmate, Lou Gehrig. Several years later, Gehrig invited him to a game in St. Louis, where Geiger was privileged to eat breakfast with the team and Babe Ruth dubbed him "the professor."

As Geiger commenced work on his dissertation under the supervision of John Dewey. Sidney Hook informed him that as a new student, his responsibility would be to sit close to Dewey during his seminars in order to prevent the chain-smoking Dewey from burning his bushy mustache. Incredulous at first, Geiger found that it was, indeed, a necessary task. Oscar Geiger wished that his son would write his dissertation on the philosophy of Henry George (for whom he was named - his mother balked at Oscar's desire to name him Henry George Geiger). George was skeptical about this possibility, as a typical dissertation of the day involved translations of medieval texts. As Clancy relates, Dewey agreed not only to support the thesis, but also to provide a preface should the thesis be published. (Biographers of Dewey generally neglect his connections to Georgists and his general acceptance of the single-tax idea, as well as his high estimation of George's status as a social philosopher.) For three years Geiger labored on his topic only to find that the sole copy of his work of some 350 pages had been lost by his eminent professor! Geiger eventually found his thesis wedged behind a desk in Dewey's home. Dewey's chagrin, Geiger has speculated, may have helped him in his long search for permanent employment during the difficult years of the Great Depression. He taught philosophy and a number of other subjects at Bradley Polytechnic Institute and the Universities of North Dakota, Illinois, and Missouri before arriving at Antioch College in 1937, again at the instigation of Dewey. Geiger found the atmosphere at Antioch informal and congenial; moreover, as his colleagues have indicated, he found intellectual stimulation and discourse there as well.