London’s map has been touted as the path-breaking paradigm of subway maps, the object of widespread acclaim and imitation.  Indeed, most major cities’ transit systems have adopted the map’s efficient symmetry, which was created by Harry Beck back in 1931 during the heyday of high modernism.

Here it is (pdf).

It’s easy to see why it has won praise.  It’s beautiful, looking like a two-dimensional version of a uranium molecule or the lattice of some fantastic crystal.  The same could be said for the maps of the underground systems of Paris and Tokyo.

It’s about Usefulness

As you’ve probably already guessed, however, I don’t like it.  And it’s not about aesthetics.  Here’s the problem:

I’m just one person, of course (although here’s another guy who seems to agree with me), but when I’m in London I find myself constantly frustrated when I try to get from place to place using that map.  The problem is that I need two maps: the Underground map to tell me how to get from, say, Paddington to Notting Hill Gate, and a street map to tell me exactly where the heck Notting Hill Gate is in relation to Paddington.  The former abstracts from so much street-level detail that, unless you’re already familiar with the layout of London, the map, rather increasing the efficiency of travel via mass transit, actually makes it more cumbersome.

New York City’s subway map on the other hand, while it’s no substitute for a detailed street map if you’re looking for a particular address, at least gets you in the ball park (and I mean Camden Yards, not Comerica Park).

Have a look.

In other words, you can tell that when you exit the station at Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall in Lower Manhattan, that it’s a reasonable walk (east and a bit south) to “Ground Zero” and the former World Trade Center.  The older version actually had some streets indicated, which would make navigation even easier, but it’s still less perplexing than London’s map.

Unlike the London map with its sharp angles and clean almost geologic geometry, New York’s map looks strikingly like the circulatory system of a living organism with its curves, seemingly arbitrary intersections, and uneven gaps.

The Deeper Point

In a sense, it may seem silly to criticize a map for being abstract, since, well, that’s what maps are supposed to do or else they would be useless.  But there is such a thing as being too abstract.  Maps should not abstract from what is essential to its purpose, which is to facilitate travel.

Part of the difference, of course, is due to the difference in the geography of London versus New York.  The latter is sited on the mainland of the United States plus three islands (Long, Staten, and Manhattan).  But Paris, and certainly Seattle, are also sited on islands, yet their maps are largely symmetric.

Again, it’s not just that some people prefer visual symmetry and elegance more than others, such as myself.  After all, de gustibus non est disputandum.  (Although, of course, the name of this column is Wabi-sabi – see my earlier post explaining the term.)

No, the deeper point is this: The unhelpful emphasis on the geometry of straight parallel lines in the case of the non-New York maps reflects, I believe, an attitude fundamentally at odds with a vigorous, dynamic city.  They sacrifice useful contextual information, in the form of the messy windiness of the actual subway lines beneath the sometimes chaotic-looking streets, in favor of a certain clean Euclidean aesthetic.  But as Jane Jacobs once said, a living city cannot be a work of art, the mere creation of a human mind, even if that mind is a genius.  A living city is, as F. A. Hayek might describe it, “the result of human action but not of human design.”

And in trying to impose a neat, efficient, symmetrical orderliness onto what the architect Rem Koolhaas aptly termed “delirious New York,” you would pay a high price in comprehension lost.  So the maps of London and the others ignore the inevitable but indispensable inefficiency and seeming chaos of a vibrant, creative city — and that’s why I don’t like them.

And, of course, I’m always getting lost when I use them.

In May, President Obama declared war on Americans who shelter their money in low-tax jurisdictions overseas.

Meanwhile, at the behest of politicians from high-tax nations, international bureaucracies are persecuting these tax havens. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for instance, blacklisted 41 such jurisdictions as part of its “harmful tax competition” project earlier this decade and is now trying to bully them into changing their attractive policies. The European Commission has several anti-tax-competition schemes, including a “saving tax directive” that seeks to coerce low-tax jurisdictions into helping Europe’s welfare states track—and tax—flight capital. And the United Nations has a Committee of Experts on International Tax Matters whose objective is to impose global rules to hinder the flow of jobs and capital from high-tax nations to low-tax nations. As though this weren’t enough, the G-20 communiqué last spring singled out tax havens for a crackdown.

The common theme of all these efforts is that politicians want to replace tax competition with tax harmonization. Tax competition exists when politicians feel pressure to improve tax policy so the geese that lay the golden eggs will not fly away. Ever since the Reagan and Thatcher tax-rate reductions began the process of tax competition, nations have been racing to lower rates in hopes of attracting—or retaining—jobs and investment. Since 1980 average top personal income tax rates in the developed world have dropped about 26 percentage points and corporate tax rates more than 21 points. And there are now 27 jurisdictions with flat taxes, an amazing development. No wonder the global economy—notwithstanding current turmoil—is so much stronger today than it was in the 1970s.

According to stereotypes, tax havens are little islands in the Caribbean, and indeed that’s true of some of the world’s premiere offshore centers. But to be more accurate, a tax haven is any jurisdiction that satisfies two criteria: First, its tax laws are attractive to global investors and entrepreneurs, and second, it protects its fiscal sovereignty by choosing not to enforce the bad tax laws of other nations, at least when they are trying to tax economic activity outside their borders. This means, of course, that individuals and businesses from high-tax nations have the option of using those jurisdictions as havens against excessive taxation.

Havens Are in The Nationality of The Beholder

So what are the tax havens? Places such as Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands belong on the list, but so do many “onshore” nations. One of the world’s leading experts on offshore issues, Marshall Langer, wrote in Tax Notes International that “the most important tax haven in the world is . . . Manhattan. . . . [T]he second most important tax haven in the world is London.” The United States and United Kingdom are havens because the law enables foreigners to invest money and not report the income to their tax police. That’s good for the U.S. and U.K. economies, and for foreign taxpayers.

By some counts there are more than 70 tax havens in the world, ranging from big nations like the United States to obscure, tiny jurisdictions such as Melilla, an autonomous part of Spain on the coast of Morocco, and Sark, a tiny British-controlled island off the coast of France. In some cases, such as the United States, the tax-haven policies are designed to attract global capital and are only available to foreigners. In other cases, such as the Bahamas, the beneficial tax rules are open to both residents and nonresidents.

Tax havens are good for the global economy primarily for four reasons. First, they promote good policy around the world by pressuring politicians in high-tax nations to lower tax rates. The pro-growth changes noted earlier have been happening mostly because of tax competition, and tax havens are valuable precisely because politicians are less likely to be greedy when they know taxpayers have escape options. Remarkably, even OECD economists understand that tax competition is a pro-growth force in the world economy. They have admitted that “the ability to choose the location of economic activity offsets shortcomings in government budgeting processes, limiting a tendency to spend and tax excessively.”

Tax havens have been especially helpful in convincing politicians to reduce the double taxation of income that is saved and invested. Many nations have lowered or eliminated death taxes and wealth taxes because the politicians have finally figured out that oppressive tax laws simply lead taxpayers to move their money to havens such as Luxembourg or Panama. Likewise, nations have reduced double taxation of dividends, interest, and capital gains. The politicians figure it’s better to have a low rate and collect some money rather than to have a high rate and drive investment to Switzerland or Singapore.

From an economic perspective, these lower tax rates are critical because they reduce the tax bias against saving and investment. This encourages people to set aside more of today’s income to finance tomorrow’s growth—and even socialist economists agree that capital formation is the key to long-run prosperity and rising living standards.

Second, tax havens generate high living standards. According to World Bank data, nine of the world’s 13 richest jurisdictions are tax havens. Not surprisingly, academic researchers have confirmed that tax havens grow faster and create more prosperity for people than higher-tax areas. This is especially important in the developing world, where poor nations that become tax havens enjoy big reductions in poverty.

Third, tax havens promote better governance. One of the problems plaguing the developing world is the lack of sound institutions. Property rights, the rule of law, and sound money are the indispensable building blocks for wealth creation and economic growth. Two academics, James Hines and Dhammika Dharmapala, found that the desire to become a tax haven leads nations to improve their institutions for the simple reason that global investors don’t want to place their money in poorly governed jurisdictions. And the World Bank’s governance indicators find that tax havens rank very high. This is something that should be applauded not assaulted.

Fourth, tax havens promote economic activity in high-tax nations. This seems paradoxical, but most countries, even high-tax nations, generally have more favorable tax rules for inbound investment than for their citizens’ economic activities. Politicians figure their own citizens are captive customers who can be overtaxed, but they understand that they have to compete for global investment. Moreover, academic experts have found that citizens in high-tax nations often take advantage of this preference and use a neighboring tax haven as a platform to invest in their own country. This additional investment, which otherwise would not have taken place, increases the prosperity of the high-tax nation.

The case for tax competition also is bolstered by Nobel laureates who recognize that competition between nations is a critical force for better policy. To cite just three examples, James Buchanan wrote that “tax competition among separate units . . . is an objective to be sought in its own right,” and Milton Friedman noted that “Competition among national governments in the public services they provide and in the taxes they impose is every bit as productive as competition among individuals or enterprises in the goods and services they offer for sale and the prices at which they offer them.” Gary Becker, meanwhile, wrote that “competition among nations tends to produce a race to the top rather than to the bottom by limiting the ability of powerful and voracious groups and politicians in each nation to impose their will at the expense of the interests of the vast majority of their populations.”

Shelter From Persecution

Low-tax jurisdictions also offer a safe haven for people subject to persecution. The vast majority of the world’s population lives in nations where governments fail to provide the basic protections of civilized society. Indeed, in many cases governments are the problem since ruling elites use their power to exploit people. Corruption often is rampant, expropriation common, and crime endemic. There is also widespread persecution. Not surprisingly, people with money are common targets of oppression—particularly if they are members of religious, political, ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.

Tax havens protect people from venal and incompetent governments by providing a secure place to invest their assets. A Jewish entrepreneur, for instance, would be foolish to keep his money in a local bank when the government is controlled by anti-Semites. Indeed, Switzerland’s admirable, centuries-old human-rights policy of protecting financial privacy was strengthened in the 1930s to protect German Jews who wanted to guard their assets from the Nazis.

Many groups in the world face discrimination and hostility, often from government. The ethnic Chinese in nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines frequently are resented by the local population. The same is true for people of Indian descent in East Africa. When people belong to groups that are unpopular and susceptible to being targeted by the government, it makes sense for them to protect their families’ interests by putting money someplace like Hong Kong, where the politicians from their country have no feasible way to find out about it. The same financial-privacy laws that make tax havens so attractive to French families and Swedish entrepreneurs who want to escape oppressive taxation also protect other people from different forms of persecution.

Tax Hypocrisy, Not Harmonization

It is worth noting that even the international bureaucracies acknowledge the valuable role of tax havens and financial privacy. The UN, for instance, admitted in a 1998 report that “For much of the twentieth century, Governments around the world spied on their citizens to maintain political control. Political freedom can depend on the ability to hide purely personal information from a Government.” The leader of the OECD’s anti-tax-competition campaign, Jeffrey Owens, admitted to the U.K.-based Observer that “tax havens are essential for individuals who live in unstable regimes.”

The campaign against tax havens interferes with the right of jurisdictions to pursue pro-growth policies, which is especially discriminatory against poor nations. Having “no or low taxes” is the main criterion for being listed as a tax haven by the OECD. Yet most OECD nations did not have income taxes during the 1700s and 1800s, when they climbed from agricultural poverty to middle-class prosperity. We should all be offended that such nations now want to deny that same opportunity to poor nations. It is rather unseemly for powerful white-governed nations in Europe, which control the OECD and European Commission, to target less powerful nonwhite jurisdictions in places such as the Caribbean.

Another issue is the OECD’s hypocritical treatment of capital compared to labor. The Paris-based bureaucracy is upset that investment funds are flowing to low-tax jurisdictions, many of which are in the developing world. But OECD nations are big beneficiaries of a “brain drain” from developing nations. This flow of talent is beneficial to “labor-inflow” nations, just as global financial flows are beneficial to “capital-inflow” nations. Yet the OECD is not suggesting that developing nations have the right to tax emigrant income earned in OECD nations. So why should OECD nations be allowed to tax flight capital in non-OECD nations?

Another example of hypocrisy is that the United States, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, and Luxembourg are all OECD members and yet were not on the original OECD blacklist even though they are tax havens for foreign investors. (The list was later revised.) Only smaller less-powerful nations were subject to this form of discrimination. And of course the ultimate hypocrisy of all is that the bureaucrats who work at the OECD and UN all get tax-free salaries, yet they run around the world demanding that other nations raise taxes.

Politicians from high-tax nations and their agents at the international bureaucracies often admit that the moral issues are pertinent. But then they say that they are worried that havens enable some of their residents to avoid the tax net. But why is that the fault of jurisdictions with better tax policy? If high-tax nations want better compliance, shouldn’t they fix their tax systems instead of trying to bully other nations into surrendering their fiscal sovereignty and becoming vassal tax collectors? In any event, the notion that there are huge amounts of unpaid tax is just one of several myths disseminated by opponents of tax competition. Let’s have a look at these myths.

Myths of Anti-Competition

Myth 1: Tax havens result in $100 billion of unpaid taxes. President Obama wants to dramatically increase the power of the Internal Revenue Service, claiming that this is the only way to collect the money that supposedly is hiding in low-tax jurisdictions. The number is phony. The IRS—which certainly cannot be considered a fan of tax havens—estimates that the overwhelming share of the so-called tax gap is the result of what happens in the United States. Part of the make-believe $100 billion apparently comes from a former John Kerry staffer, who concocted an estimate of $70 billion in unpaid individual income tax. But when the Congressional Research Service (CRS) asked for the method used to generate the number, the staffer confessed, for all intents and purposes, that he made it up. According to the CRS memo, he “was not able to send us a written discussion of his estimating procedure” and he “indicated that the estimate was an uncertain one.” That’s the understatement of the century.

Myth 2: Cracking down on tax havens is the best way to improve compliance. Politicians from high-tax nations and bureaucrats at the OECD claim that “offshore” jurisdictions deprive politicians of much-needed tax revenue. This assertion is rather strange since tax receipts were at record levels in OECD nations until the current downturn. But how best to improve tax compliance? Academic research strongly indicates that the biggest factor in tax compliance is tax rates. When tax rates are excessive, people are less likely to obey the law. And if they can’t protect their income using tax havens, they’ll use the domestic underground economy. Or they’ll be less productive. The world’s leading expert on the issue, Friedrich Schneider at the Johannes Kepler University in Austria, explains that income and payroll taxes are “the main causes for the existence of the shadow economy” and higher tax rates increase “the incentive . . . to work in the shadow economy.”

Myth 3: Tax Havens Lead to Higher Taxes for ordinary people. One of the worst myths is that low-tax jurisdictions reduce taxes on sneaky people and this causes politicians to raise taxes on others to make up the difference. But if this were true, increasing amounts of money flowing to tax havens should be accompanied by higher tax rates in the outflow countries. Yet, as noted, the opposite has occurred. Politicians are lowering tax rates because of the competition from tax havens. This means that all taxpayers benefit because of the risks taken by those who invest in low-tax jurisdictions.

Myth 4: Tax havens are money-laundering centers. Contrary to this routine smear, all the objective evidence shows that they have the toughest rules against dirty money. Not a single tax haven is on the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force. A few tax havens are considered money-laundering centers by the CIA, but there are far more non-havens on its list. The State Department says the same thing. It’s also worth noting that every major tax haven has been cleared by the IRS for having good know-your-customer laws to hinder dirty money, and all of the major havens also are members of the Egmont Group, which is open only to jurisdictions that have effective financial intelligence units to fight dirty money. No wonder an Australian academic found it was much easier to launder money in onshore nations than in offshore jurisdictions.

When he was a senator President Obama sponsored legislation designed to persecute tax havens, and his chairman of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, is a harshly ideological opponent of low-tax jurisdictions. Now Obama has made good on his word. That places the U.S. on the side of countries like France and Germany, giving the OECD’s previously stymied tax-harmonization efforts new life.

Advocates of economic liberty need to resist these efforts. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which was founded in 2000 to help protect tax competition, has done an excellent job (I’m a board member, so perhaps I am biased). But preserving tax competition in the new political environment is going to be a major challenge.

The theory fueling congestion pricing is the one spanning our automotive lives: driving is a “privilege” government dispenses. Driving at rush hour is an even bigger privilege. So far, the state has granted this privilege for free (the dozens of highway, gas, sales, license, and car taxes we pay don’t count). But the gravy train is ending. There’s no reason we should expect to drive cars we’ve bought on roads we’ve paid for when everyone else does. That’s not how the market works, say politicians who’ve ridiculed, regulated, and mooched off the market their entire careers. Willfully confusing supply and demand with control and command, they insist that mere citizens who want to use the roads at rush hour will have to pay. A lot. Hopefully, that will force commuters onto mass transit, clearing the streets for the limousines of Leviathan’s anointed.

Congestion pricing does thin traffic a bit, anywhere from 13 or 17 percent (in Singapore and London, though the anti-car Transportation Alternatives claims the latter’s traffic dropped by a whopping third) to 20 percent (Stockholm). Nor is traffic the only thing congestion pricing reduces: London’s retailers report trade has also plunged 10–15 percent, shuttering 750 businesses in one year. It’s likely that neither reduction matters to the governments pushing congestion pricing. The state’s real interest lies in the cameras and cash.

London’s socialist mayor, Ken Livingstone, imposed congestion pricing on his hapless subjects in 2003. Drivers who entered “the zone between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. [notice the definition of “rush hour”], except on weekends and holidays” paid about $16 per day then; they’re billed when computers match their addresses to the “multiple images of [their] license plates” captured by “700 video cameras,” as the New York Times explained in 2005. The cameras have since multiplied because congestion pricing, like all government programs, continually expands. Meanwhile, “there is nowhere in London you can avoid getting photographed and recorded,” according to Yosef Sheffi. As director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sheffi advocates congestion pricing for Boston. He dismisses those who object to starring in surveillance films as hopelessly outdated: “There is also fear of privacy issues. According to the CEO of Sun Microsystems, ‘You have no privacy in today’s age. Get over it.’ ” Accurate if tragic advice for Londoners, whose city has a camera watching every 55 people, the most per capita in the world.

New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, longingly eyes those cameras while patronizing anyone who “think[s] this is a civil liberties issue [as] terribly unrealistic.” But cameras film everything in their purview, not just license plates. They record drivers trying to beat the light, expired inspection tags—even bumper stickers and pedestrians protesting the latest government outrage.

Safer Streets?

You might think that because they also record crime, they ensure safer streets. You would be wrong. Cameras have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with surveillance. Even New York City’s Council noted the disconnect between cameras and crime when considering a “local law . . . requiring that commercial shopping establishments . . . install, maintain and operate surveillance cameras in order to deter crime.” The council cited the British experience with omnipresent cameras: the “10,524 CCTV [closed-circuit television] cameras in 32 London boroughs” were famously used “after the London subway bombings on July 7, 2005”—not before. “CCTV systems [may] actually have a minimal effect on preventing crime,” the council added. “A British report published in 2002 found that in 14 British cities that utilized a CCTV system, the cameras had no effect on six of the cities, and that while six of these cities reported a decrease in crime, two reported an increase.”

American security guru Bruce Schneier inveighs frequently against “the inefficacy of security cameras” in fighting crime. That inefficacy has become old news in Britain, yet the government refuses to cleanse the streets of its omnipresent cameras. As Surrey Health Borough councilor Ian Bell wrote in Scotland’s Sunday Herald, “Crime’s ultimate victim—that would be liberty of the person—is twice abused thanks to CCTV. . . . To be law-abiding is no longer an excuse [to be free of surveillance].” Worse, videotape is notoriously easy to manipulate, especially when the government trying to convict a man produces and stores the footage that allegedly proves his guilt. All in all, perhaps it’s Bloomberg, rather than those fearing his surveillance, who is “terribly unrealistic.”

New York’s mayor ignores not only the police state that cameras produce but also the congestion government causes. For starters, let’s remember who monopolizes both the limited supply and the design of roadways with their intersections, traffic lights, and speed limits. Then add zoning laws. Segregating “business districts” from the employees and customers who rely on them, locating shops and factories at several and often dozens of miles from residential neighborhoods, is a sure route to congestion. The zoning czars in many suburbs of Manhattan indirectly force their residents to work and shop in the city. (Zoning curses Manhattan, too, but the island’s compactness helps mitigate the misery. Many New Yorkers walk or bike to work, and they can always find bookstores, groceries, and restaurants within a few blocks of home.)

Tolls rob drivers at most entrances to the island of Manhattan, backing up traffic for miles each day at morning and evening rush hours. Those fidgeting in line aren’t paying to construct more lanes and diminish their delay, either; they are instead subsidizing the city’s busses and subways, according to the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) New York office: “One-third of the more than one billion dollars collected in tolls on MTA Bridges and Tunnels facilities is shifted to mass transit.” The tolls’ amounts differ from entrance to entrance, depending on the politics of the years they were instituted. Here’s the unintended consequence, as explained by Samuel I. Schwartz, a “traffic and transportation engineer” who has tried to impose congestion pricing on his fellow citizens since 1980: “[A] trucker going from Brooklyn to New Jersey faces about $40 in tolls if he sticks with the expressways and crosses the Verrazano Bridge. But, if he chooses to creep down” local streets in both Brooklyn and Manhattan, thereby adding to their traffic, “he faces no toll at the outbound Holland Tunnel.”

He’ll pay in lost time, however: blocking those local streets are the city’s garbage trucks. Skyscrapers with apartments by the score generate mountains of trash, and the city monopolizes its collection. Several times each week, a couple of workers slowly pitch sack after sack into the hopper while cars pile up behind them. These civil servants are never ticketed, however leisurely their pace or enormous the logjams they cause. Ditto for fire engines and other emergency vehicles on practice runs. Barreling out of their stations, they snarl traffic while their screaming sirens deafen passers-by. Thank God there aren’t nearly as many fires as there are engines shrieking down the avenues or the whole place would have burnt to the ground by now.

The city regularly closes roads for everything from 9/11 commemorations to United Nations ceremonies to “community fairs.” Taking even a single side street out of play on this densely populated island gridlocks whole neighborhoods. But the city doesn’t care because it’s raking in the revenue and publicity.

Then there are the permits for free parking the city dispenses to its employees. Not surprisingly, the permits entice their holders to “drive to work in the Manhattan central business district at just about twice the rate (27% versus 14%) of private-sector employees,” according to the Manhattan Institute.

Congestion pricing tackles none of these problems. Anyone somewhat serious about curing them would have to confront powerful unions and upset profitable apple carts—difficult, mundane, and even dangerous work that would ease much of New York’s congestion. Anyone completely serious would undertake the infinitely more difficult and dangerous work of privatizing all things automotive, including roads.

No wonder politicians prefer the drama and headlines of congestion pricing, despite its negligible effect on traffic. That’s right: congestion pricing will destroy the remnants of freedom and privacy, fundamentally alter commuting, hinder commerce, waste enormous sums of money on its cameras while transferring even more money from drivers to the state—all for single-digit reductions in Manhattan’s traffic. The city’s “administration expects congestion pricing to decrease vehicles entering Manhattan by 6% and increase speeds within the charging zone by 7%. In other words, the traffic improvement in Manhattan would be modest.” This from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank and one of congestion pricing’s biggest cheerleaders.

So why bother? Because this system benefits government generally and politicians personally. It’s no accident that a mayor hinting at a presidential campaign prominently featured congestion pricing in his ballyhooed “PlaNYC,” the blueprint he unveiled last April. Altogether, PlaNYC contains a staggering 127 “initiatives.” These include pushing commuters onto the subways via an $8 tax on each car entering certain parts of Manhattan. Both the price and the area covered by this double-dipping will rise faster than baking bagels; they already have, even in the planning stages. Congestion pricing and PlaNYC’s other hokum generated lots of publicity, as the New York Sun observed, “It could also help the mayor appear to be a leader on a global issue that could be a key topic in the 2008 presidential race, which Mr. Bloomberg could enter as an independent candidate.”

Bloomberg peddles congestion pricing as zealously as snake-oil. He even taught bureaucrats from other cities—Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Trenton—how to foist it on their denizens at a conference last May.

Crystal-Ball Predictions

Bloomberg excuses his mischief because of a study predicting the state of the city over the next 23 years. Supposedly, a million new residents will enrich New York—though that’s a bugaboo rather than a blessing to the Malthusian mayor. Either way, crystal balls are notoriously wacky and wrong. In the 1960s, pundits predicted we’d be living underground and on the ocean’s floor by now. And then there was the dire—but false—alarm in the late ’90s about an event only a few years off: Y2K. Yet PlaNYC dictates “sweeping” changes in New Yorkers’ lives because of predictions for a quarter-century in the future.

Our taxes bought this forecast from McKinsey & Co., a firm that employs a bevy of very expensive “problem solvers” but not a single seer. No doubt, its “study”—the term court charlatans use for a guess gussied-up in jargon—is as wrong as the advice it gave AT&T in 1983, when its “problem solvers” allegedly pooh-poohed cell-phones as a niche market.

No matter: congestion pricers treat McKinsey’s guestimate as fact. “[F]rankly,” says Hope Cohen, a former bureaucrat who now works for the Manhattan Institute, “our transportation system is strained almost to the breaking point in many places and clearly will not be able to handle the additional million people anticipated to be here in the next generation.” Cohen brings a bureaucrat’s point of view to this “problem”: “we,” she says, meaning herself and her friends in government rather than the drivers and taxpayers on whom they will experiment, “have to start figuring out how to make our transportation system work better and be more efficient. That includes discouraging unnecessary and inefficient car trips—especially, but not only, in Manhattan.”

Against all reason and experience, the Manhattan Institute and other boosters of congestion pricing insist that it is a “market-based” solution to traffic. But what entrepreneur can get away with charging customers multiple times for the same service?

The free market is a poor man’s best friend, supplying his needs and even some of his wants at prices he can afford, however small his budget. Then government invades. It piles on taxes, tariffs, licenses, fees, and presto: the poor man once again barely subsists. This alone brands congestion pricing as government-based, not market-based, because it preys on the poor, hitting them hardest. U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) told the New York Sun, “It’s going to be a rather substantial tax on people already struggling to make it.” And Richard Brodsky, a Democrat in New York’s State Assembly, summarized the social engineering inherent in congestion pricing: “Access to things that are traditional New York City are being handed out on a class basis.” Accordingly, the city’s rulers are scrambling to ensure that congestion pricing robs only the serfs, not them: the New York Post reported, “A debate has broken out within the City Council over whether legislators—who’ll soon have to weigh in on congestion pricing—should be reimbursed for tolls when they drive to City Hall.”

The Elderly

And what of elderly folks? The Christian Science Monitor quoted “Queens Village resident Gabriella Krill [who] thought the proposed tax would be unfair on seniors who already pay heavy taxes to live in [New York C]ity. ‘Subways are hard—to go up and down stairs. Buses are hard to get out of,’ she said.” Thanks to Social Security, many folks subsist on fixed pittances, which won’t allow them to pay another $8—to start—when they must visit their doctors in Manhattan.

Congestion pricers misrepresent the market when they blame it for the higher prices their ploy will inflict. They swipe one of the market’s aspects—charging more for a scarce good, in this case space on a crowded road—and sever it from competition, the unfailing safeguard against artificially high prices. Their swindle operates in a vacuum, without the feedback and control of competition and pricing. We have no recourse but to use roadways as the state decrees.

A vocal advocate of congestion pricing is The Partnership for New York City. Founded by David Rockefeller in 1979, the Partnership is “a select group of two hundred CEOs (‘Partners’) from New York City’s top corporate, investment and entrepreneurial firms. Partners are committed to working closely with government, labor and the nonprofit sector to enhance the economy and maintain New York City’s position as the global center of commerce, culture and innovation.” In plain English, they seek to effect the most unnatural of acts: interlacing Adam Smith’s invisible hand with government’s iron fist.

Representing these select Partners at an “event” the Manhattan Institute sponsored to promote congestion pricing was president Kathryn Wylde: “We at the Partnership ask ourselves all the time: What is contributing to the cost of doing business in New York?” That’s easy, and I’m not even a Partner, let alone their president: high taxes, strangling regulations, and endless bureaucracy. But no, in the Partnership’s cushy world, government is never at fault: “Higher salaries, in a way, directly relate to the length of commute and the difficulty of commute in terms of attracting talent.”

The Partners also “wonder why construction costs are going up one percent a month in New York.” Another easy one: taxes, regulations, and bureaucracy, specifically the city’s months of withholding the permits it requires contractors to buy from it. Wrong again, says our expert: “A major contributor to construction problems and delays is traffic congestion. Congestion also has a negative impact on manufacturing, which is an industry we’ve been hemorrhaging for the last decade.”

Ms. Wylde rejoiced when the feds handed New York $345 million of your taxes: “Federal funding provides the carrot that will help pay for new buses, faster subways and the other measures required to incentivize people to get out of their cars and on to public transportation.” But New York City has already “incentivized” plenty, from frequent and exorbitant tolls to roads with more potholes than paving to cops who snarl traffic while snarling at drivers. Anyone still sitting behind the wheel is there because public transit’s disadvantages outweigh driving’s, considerable though they are.

Busybodies both political and private have hectored us for decades now, trying to push us onto mass transit. And we don’t want to go. We overwhelmingly prefer the comfort, convenience, and privacy of our cars. Congestion pricing is the latest salvo in this war. “Many US mayors have eyed London’s success since 2003 in charging about $16 for drivers to enter the city at peak times,” the Christian Science Monitor reported. “Traffic delay in the British capital is down about 17 percent and the use of mass transit is up about 16 percent. One expert calls this a ‘virtuous cycle.’ ”

How arrogant and condescending! Most of the virtuous are the poorer commuters who can’t afford yet another automotive tax. Those secretaries and busboys, clerks and janitors will be reluctant customers of New York’s public transit, too, under congestion pricing. The city’s antiquated subways are dangerous, deafening, dirty, crowded, unreliable, uncomfortable, and inconvenient. They also frequently stink, thanks to New York’s dearth of public facilities. No wonder even the impecunious will brave 30-minute delays at bridges and tunnels and some of the nation’s highest tolls. Buses are marginally better: they aren’t usually as dangerous, deafening, and dirty, but they are every bit as crowded and unreliable. Waiting 15 or 20 minutes for the next one is not unusual. Because taxes compensate the missing revenue when ridership plummets, the city is unlikely to improve the system, however much of our money the feds throw at it.

Chilling Objective

Meanwhile, the Partnership has a chilling objective that may explain the elite fascination with mass transit—for other people: the Partners seek to “allow business leaders to work more directly with government and other civic groups to address broader social and economic problems in a ‘hands on’ way.” Who knew that CEOs stranded in traffic is a “broader social and economic problem”? Powerbrokers and politicians with their chauffeurs and police escorts will no doubt glide about town far more pleasantly when everyone else is banished to the subways.

A serf’s place is on a bus or train: he shouldn’t be clogging the roads for his betters. Under congestion pricing, taxpayers who refuse to submit to the subway’s indignities (which now include random and warrantless searches), who prefer the freedom and independence a car brings, will pay for their uppity attitude.

Yet again.

But Britain in the 19th century was a special place, the legendary “workshop of the world.” London had become the capital of capital, with private investment in agriculture and manufacturing burgeoning at a record-breaking pace in the latter half of the century. The year Victoria ascended to the throne, 1837, saw fewer than 300 patent applications for new inventions, but by the end of the century the number exceeded 25,000 annually. Per capita income on the eve of World War I was three times what it was a century before and life expectancy had risen by 25 percent. There were many more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, but British entrepreneurship was feeding and clothing them better than the world had ever experienced. It was the greatest flowering of problem-solving creativity, ingenuity, and innovation in history.

Colin Pullinger, a carpenter’s son from Selsea, typified the 19th century British entrepreneur. He designed a “perpetual mousetrap” that could humanely catch a couple dozen mice per trap in a single night, and then sold 2 million of them. Perhaps Emerson had Pullinger in mind when he famously wrote, “If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

As the 1800s drew to a close, the framework that made possible these extraordinary achievements — capitalism — fell under assault. As poverty declined massively for the first time, the very presence of the poverty that remained prompted impatient calls for forcible redistribution of wealth. Around the world, Marxists painted capitalists as exploiters and monopolists. In Britain, Charles Kingsley argued that Christianity demanded a socialist order, and the Fabian Society was formed to help bring it about. Many unscrupulous businessmen turned to the state for favors and protections unavailable to them in competitive markets. Would anyone come to the defense of capitalism with as much vigor and passion as those who opposed it?

At least one group did: the Liberty and Property Defence League. Though its work has been largely forgotten, what the world learned about socialism in the following century surely vindicates its message. Its name derived from the members’ belief that liberty and property were inseparable and that unless successfully defended, both could be swept away by the beguiling temptations of a coercive state.

The founder of the League in 1882 was a pugnacious Scot by the name of Lord Elcho, later the 10th earl of Wemyss as a member of the House of Lords and thereafter known simply as “Wemyss.” Originally elected to parliament in 1841 as a protectionist Tory, he eventually embraced free trade and repeal of the Corn Laws by 1846. He later evolved into a full-throated advocate for what we today would call “classical liberal” ideas. At the organization’s third annual meeting in 1885, he expressed his hope that its efforts to educate the public would “cause such a flood as will sweep away, in the course of time, all attempts at state interference in the business transactions of life in the case of every Briton of every class . . . . No nation can prosper with undue state interference, and unless its people are allowed to manage their own affairs in their own way . . . .”

Wemyss and his friends rounded up spokespersons and financial support. They enlisted writers and public speakers. They published and circulated essays and leaflets. The organization operated as an activist think tank with a lobbying arm. The League attempted to mobilize public opinion against specific bills, functioning as a “day-to-day legislative watchdog” in the view of historian Edward Bristow. It even arranged testimony before parliamentary hearings. One League pamphlet attacked the introduction of “grandmotherly legislation” as a transgression against the freedom of contract. Armed with arguments provided by League members and sympathizers, Wemyss’ allies in Parliament killed hundreds of interventionist bills in the 1880s and 1890s.

Opponents often accused the League of being motivated by its members’ bottom line drive for profits, but in actuality its philosophical ideals were paramount. Among its members were some of the brightest intellects of the era, Herbert Spencer being perhaps the most notable. Author of the libertarian classic, “The Man Versus the State,” Spencer was the best-selling philosopher of his day and was nominated for a Nobel in literature. Spencer saw liberty as the absence of coercion and as the most indispensable prerequisite for human progress. The ownership of property was an individual right that could not be morally infringed unless an individual first threatened the property of another. Spencer has been demonized as an apostle of a heartless “survival of the fittest” Darwinism by those who choose to ignore or distort his central message, namely that individual self-improvement can accomplish more progress than political action. One creates wealth, the other merely takes and reapportions it.

Auberon Herbert was a Spencer acolyte whose championship of voluntarism found fertile soil among fellow League members. His now century-old warning about the danger of state intervention is positively prophetic: “No amount of state education will make a really intelligent nation; no amount of Poor Laws will place a nation above want; no amount of Factory Acts will make us better parents . . . . To have our wants supplied from without by a huge state machinery, to be regulated and inspected by great armies of officials, who are themselves slaves to the system which they administer, will in the long run teach us nothing, (and) will profit us nothing.”

In a 1975 essay in The Historical Journal from Cambridge University Press, historian Bristow contended that the Liberty and Property Defence League changed the language in one important, lasting way. Prior to the 1880s, “individualism” was a term of opprobrium in most quarters, referring to “the atomism and selfishness of liberal society.” The League appropriated the word and elevated its general meaning to one of respect for the rights and uniqueness of each person.

But was the League successful in its mission to thwart the socialist impulse? In the short run, lamentably, no. By 1914, socialists had convinced large numbers of Britons that they could (and should) vote themselves a share of other people’s property. Two world wars and a depression in between seemed to cement the socialists’ claim that their vision for society was inevitable.

Good ideas, however, have a way of resisting attempts to quash them. Bad ideas sooner or later fail and teach a valuable lesson or two in the process. Britain and most of the world gave socialism in all its varieties one hell of a run in the 20th century. The disastrous results now widely acknowledged underscore the warnings of those who said that we could depart from liberty and property only at our peril.

The warriors of the Liberty and Property Defence League may have lost the battle in their lifetimes, but a hundred years later they offer prophetic wisdom to those who will listen.

In the late nineteenth century, despite fabulous wealth, gracious living, and an industrial revolution that had reached the far corners of her empire, Britain was also an island of social unrest. Working-class discontent with poverty and disease was fueling the rise of socialism, and new doctrines were calling for revolution and an end to the monarchy. Parliamentary controversy over the age-old “Irish Question” was bitter as rioting from the Emerald Isle spread to the not-so-United Kingdom. Its capital, London, was a city of great commerce, high fashion, and sophisticated culture—a city of wealthy gentlemen and gentle ladies, their children attended by nannies as they played in Hyde Park.

London was also a city of unfathomable poverty. Its East End housed nearly a million hungry and impoverished souls living in cramped filth. Although working conditions had improved in Britain since the early days of the Industrial Revolution, working-class discontent in London had been building up since the late 1870s. Inspired by Karl Marx, who lived and wrote in London, the growing voices of socialism were eager to boost this discontent, and by 1886 things turned violent. In early 1886, one of the coldest winters on record caused such hardship that, despite the subnormal temperatures, thousands of out-of-work men and women from the East End docks gathered in Trafalgar Square to hear violent speeches from eminent socialists. Meanwhile, thousands more protesters went on a rampage of property damage and looting as rioting spilled over into the residential environs of upper-class Mayfair and the upscale West End shopping districts of Oxford Street, Regent Street, and Piccadilly.

On November 13, 1887, Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year, a battle known as “Bloody Sunday” erupted in Trafalgar Square when 100,000 demonstrators, including George Bernard Shaw and the poet William Morris, fought with four thousand police constables. Three months later, another Trafalgar Square riot prompted Queen Victoria to write to the prime minister, William Gladstone: “The Queen cannot sufficiently express her indignation at the monstrous riot which took place the other day in London, and which risked people’s lives and was a momentary triumph of socialism and disgrace to the capital.”

London’s East End was vilified and ignored, yet despite the anger and disruption, Britons of all classes possessed an inbred distaste for revolutionary ideas designed to overthrow the established order. No matter how poor and impoverished, British working men and women cherished their freedom of speech and right of assembly. Continental-style government regimentation was anathema to this island race. Violence, when it did take place, was not seen by the Left as enhancing the road to reform. They realized that fear of the mob would never inspire the middle and upper classes to comprehend the plight of the poor. The socialist-minded and their brethren in the press knew that education via speeches and the written word was the only viable means of impingement. By 1888, London’s radical press, aware of its growing power to focus attention on the capital’s social problems, was constantly on the lookout for a new socio-political drama, preferably one guaranteed to increase circulation and vindicate their left-wing rhetoric. Little did their editorial offices know that before the year was out, a gruesome saga was to present them with the campaign opportunity of a lifetime.

It began as the hot English summer of 1888 drew to a close. Police Constable John Neil, a London policeman with badge number 97 and tired feet, trudged his night beat along Buck Row, a dirty little side street in Whitechapel in the East End of London. Most of the drunks, drifters, and ladies of the night had disappeared as dawn approached on this last day of August, and the only sound along Bucks Row was the slow, steady gait of Police Constable Neil. The assurance of a London bobby’s footsteps gave way to an eerie silence as he stumbled on the body of a woman. She had been murdered, but this was no ordinary killing. Mary Ann Nichols had been savagely disemboweled. Poor Annie Chapman met a similar fate on the night of September 8 and three weeks later, on the night of September 29-30, two more wretched souls, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were added to the chain of death, horribly mutilated and displaying similarities to the previous victims.

On October 1, the newspapers ran the story together with the complete text of two letters which had been posted to the London Central News Agency. Both were written in deep red ink and signed under a name that activated the strangest left-wing campaign of all time.

“Dear Boss”

The first letter was addressed to “The Boss, Central News Office, London City,” and opened with: “Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won’t fix me just yet.” The text continues to boast and taunt, ending off with: “Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife is nice and sharp. I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.” Part of a postscript read: “Don’t mind me giving the trade name.” The letter is well written and a careful study of words like “won’t” and capital letters after a period show proficiency in punctuation. The phrase “give it out straight,” an Americanism used by newsmen on both sides of the Atlantic, is the first hint that the writer might have been a journalist. Both letters used the word “Boss,” another Americanism familiar to those with close ties to the United States and the internationally minded London press, but not to the broad population and working classes of nineteenth-century England.

The second letter (sent as a postcard) was particularly daunting because it referred to the September 30 double murder in great detail, apparently before these details were fully known to the police and released to the press: “I was not codding [sic] dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about Saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit. Couldn’t finish straight off. Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. JACK THE RIPPER.” Once again, observe the correct punctuation as in “You’ll” and in the possessive “Jacky’s.” Note the capital S and J in “Saucy Jacky.” And note the clipped newspaper-style giveaway in “Had not time to get ears for police.” It was written in the same handwriting as the first letter, and because it recounted the contents of that letter, both were obviously penned by the same person. Yet details of these crimes were not publicly known until October 1, when newspapers published them. So, it was argued, both letters were not only from the same person (which was true), but must have come from the real killer.

What was not published was the fact that a barely visible “OC 1” postmark existed on the address of the second letter. (The postal service in Central London was very fast, and a letter mailed early in the morning was guaranteed delivery by lunch or early afternoon.) In other words, it was posted after details of the double murder were already in the newsrooms. It also suggests that the writer might have worked at the Central News Agency since the letters themselves were not handed around for other publishers to inspect physically, with the possible exception of the radical Star.

Furthermore, the function of the news agency was to deliver news items to newspapers and magazines who subscribed to its service (rather like today’s Associated Press), and it is highly unlikely that a serial killer in a working-class district would have known of this function, or even have heard of the agency. Like most serial killers, he would probably have written to one paper only, or taunted the police with notes which might never be made public. On the other hand, a journalist would understand that spicy information addressed to the news agency would generate maximum publicity. Once the name had appeared in print, hundreds of crank “Jack the Ripper” letters were sent to the press and police, and all were rejected as genuine with the possible exception of a note addressed to a Mr. George Lusk, the Marxist head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. It was written “From Hell” and, interestingly, not signed with a Ripper signature, but simply as “Catch me when you can Mishter [sic] Lusk.”

More than any previous endeavor, creating the trade name “Jack the Ripper” forced a spotlight on London’s destitute and poor, and what a creation! Two of London’s top-selling radical newspapers, the Star and Pall Mall Gazette, realized that dramatizing the murders would focus the story directly towards the squalor of “Outcast London.” The first two murders had certainly generated publicity, and the next two murders, both on the same night, would normally have proven even more newsworthy, but publishing news of the “double event” with the macabre and threatening text of two “Jack the Ripper” letters was nothing short of masterful public relations. And it worked.

Within hours of the papers hitting the streets on October 1, 1888, Jack the Ripper—and the social conditions in which his victims lived—stole the show for months on end as a conversation piece. From the stately homes of the aristocracy down to bawdy working-class pubs; from London’s Alhambra Theater and Gaiety Music Halls to New York’s vaudeville, this unknown killer even spawned mirth over murder. Ripper-mania drifted far from the pathetic rat-infested hovels of Whitechapel and landed on page one of the world’s press. The day the double murder story was released in London, “Dismay in Whitechapel” headlines ran on the front page of the New York Times. Queen Victoria herself cultivated an unusual interest in what were more politely referred to as the “Whitechapel Murders,” and she demanded action. In an age when the Queen’s orders were dutifully obeyed, nothing happened. The Ripper was not apprehended, and Victoria was not amused.

A Vehicle for Socialist Propaganda

The “double event” now brought the total number of victims to four, and from this point on, the murders became an important vehicle for socialist propaganda, replacing homicide as the central issue. For instance, a petition with 5,000 signatures was sent to the Queen, but it didn’t mention the need to apprehend the killer. It dwelled instead on women “living sad and degraded lives” in the slums of Whitechapel. The Star in particular gave extensive coverage of the murders and unashamedly blamed them on “such economic systems as that of unrestricted competition, backed by the devil’s gospel of laissez-faire.” This London daily was well known for its biased socialist crusades, its inflexibility on “Home Rule” for Ireland, and its denunciation of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren and his allegedly inept, heavy-handed police force.

The Star‘s large circulation covered a wide cross-section of readers, including those of a more conservative outlook, and this induced other less radical papers, who were also criticizing Warren, to echo the Star‘s rhetoric, albeit with less rebellious versions. The result was a multi-media push for both the Ripper’s arrest and an exposé of the environment in which he operated. Even the staid gentlemen of the Fourth Estate relished the Ripper saga when, almost by default, the highly respected Times of London drew attention to the social conditions where the killings took place. As for sensationalism, few could compete with either the Illustrated Police News or the Penny Illustrated Paper, as issue after issue ran lurid descriptions and artist sketches of the killings.

However, nothing surpassed the publicity that followed the murder of Mary Kelly, the fifth victim. Reports about “Another Whitechapel Horror, More Revolting Mutilation Than Ever” shocked the civilized world and prompted the Queen to telegram her prime minister: “This new most ghastly murder shows the absolute necessity for some very decided action.” Led by the socialists, press attacks on the harassed and despondent Sir Charles Warren became so intolerable that he was forced to resign as head of Scotland Yard. It so happened that the attractive Mary Kelly was the last of the Ripper murders, but this was not known at the time and Ripper fervor continued for months on end after her death.

A Radical Campaign?

That the brilliantly conceived “trade name” was part of a socialist campaign against the established social and economic order seems all the more likely when we inspect other aspects of this drama. For instance, Sir Melville Macnaughten, Assistant Chief Constable at Scotland Yard in 1889 (whose notes are the best known of all documents on the case) wrote in his memoirs: “In this ghastly production I have always thought I could discern the stained forefinger of the journalist—indeed, a year later I had shrewd suspicions as to the actual author! But whoever did pen the gruesome stuff, it is certain to my mind that it was not the mad miscreant who had committed the murders.” And in his book, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, Sir Robert Anderson, head of Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Division during the investigation of the murders, commented specifically on the second letter when he wrote: “So I will only add here that the `Jack the Ripper’ letter which is preserved in the Police Museum at New Scotland Yard is the creation of an enterprising journalist.”

Quick to spot what was going on, George Bernard Shaw wrote: “Whilst we conventional Social Democrats were wasting our time on education, agitation and organization, some independent genius has taken the matter in hand.” In a series of interviews with this writer, former police chief and pioneer of the FBI’s serial crime profiling unit, Pierce R. Brooks, said that, in his opinion, the two letters were almost certainly the work of someone in the media with a social axe to grind. (Brooks also felt that the “From Hell” note might have been genuine in view of the killer’s handwriting style, which displayed domination fantasies, cruelty, and inner rage.) One of today’s noted historians, Martin Fido, said that the murders became famous because the very first elections to the new London County Council were taking place, and the extreme leftists saw their chance of winning the East End—a tailor-made opening for the radicals.

Until 1888, unified administration of the rapidly growing areas beyond the old City of London was completely neglected. Known as Greater London, its population of five million was governed by a complexity of overlapping authorities and the result was administrative chaos. A long overdue solution to this dilemma was set in motion by the Local Government Act of 1888, for it not only created the London County Council, but established urban self-government throughout England. (The Council did not cover the ancient city itself—the financial district known to this day simply as “The City.”) At the time, left-wing proposals and convictions were more or less represented by the so-called “Progressives” who had very close ties with the Liberal Party and the emerging Labour Party. The Progressives were represented at council elections, but not at parliamentary elections, and although most voters in 1888 voted for Conservative Members of Parliament, many London conservatives were so keen on democratic reforms for their city that they voted Progressive in the Council elections. (It was in this spirit of “Progressive London” that the Fabian Society flourished.)

As for the radicals and socialists, their Jack-the-Ripper newspaper campaign worked like a dream. The Progressives won a 73-seat majority out of a total of 118 seats on the new council, including radical theosophist Annie Besant, who won a seat for the East End. In one Council election after another, the Progressives gained a majority of seats, and from its onset the new council burst into life and quickly introduced new programs involving welfare, sanitation, baths, education, and, to a lesser extent, housing. Their influence on the council also curtailed the operations of unrestricted laissez-faire.

In many ways, the Progressive Movement added an aura of “respectability” to the radical cause. Ominous revelations about urban conditions necessitated the involvement of the ruling classes, notably those with vast estates and holdings which were being leased out to meet the demands of urbanization. The newly assertive London County Council demanded and achieved a large increase in such leasehold enfranchisement, and, as the century drew to its close, more and more of the social elite found themselves in demand as urban celebrities. In fact, the London County Council was the prime example of this “titular association of the aristocracy with the new civic democracy” when the Earl of Rosebery was elected as its first chairman in 1889.

We may never know the author of the first two “Jack the Ripper” letters—some documents relating to the Ripper case are missing, and may have been destroyed in the air raids of 1940-41. Nevertheless, these serial murders would never have generated such enormous publicity if the nightmarish name had not been invented. As for the new Council, its enacted reforms became a symbol for continuing social reform, both in London and the rest of the country. The stirring of “Liberal Socialism” fully surfaced in the 1880s and 1890s and gave birth to the new Independent Labour Party, founded in 1893 by Keir Hardie, and renamed the Labour Party in 1906 when 29 of its candidates won seats in the general election of that year. Its backbone was the growing trade union movement and, together with the Fabian Society founded in 1884, Labour became one of the two major political parties from 1922 onward.

Britain’s recurring love affair with socialism has extended well into the twentieth century. Although the British Left was never taken by Soviet Communism, notable exceptions in the 1930s such as the “Bloomsbury Set” and the secret Cambridge society, The Apostles, and its spymaster Kim Philby, certainly left their mark. British socialists were more than impressed when the American journalist Lincoln Steffens returned from Russia in 1919 and told Bernard Baruch that, “I have been over into the future, and it works.” These words certainly resounded in British (and American) politics, but neither the Labour Party or those who voted for them wanted a revolution against the prevailing British way of life. Not even he who created the trade name “Jack the Ripper” could have foreseen how thoroughly the old Victorian order would be overthrown.