Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1189

Carbon of letter to Charles G. Baldwin from 310 Riverside Drive, New York City

October 31, 1936

Dear Charles:

I appreciate your of the 29th. I am glad you are able to see with me that under an administration of public services by responsible proprietors who must respond with automatic losses and penalties if their administration is not good, their every economic interest would lie in the direction of freedom and independence on the part of those whom they served and to whom they sold the public services performed by themselves and their subordinates in a purely service government. In no other way could good purchasing power be maintained for the services they had to sell.

What men really want is not so much their abstract rights as it is to function freely as social beings; that is, to exchange services with each other, to work for and employ each other, to give each other jobs, both individually and by groups under responsible private administration and supervision, for it is upon this kind of free activity, and upon this alone, that all economic value and all civilized subsistence depends. It is our failure to organize the public services under proprietary administration and supervision and with the same sanctions and rewards as private administration that makes government supported by seizures progressively restrictive and finally destructive of all values and finally of the entire social economy itself.

Once men are permitted to exchange freely with each other and public services are performed in aid of this, I do not understand how any questions of inherent rights could arise at all. Certainly in land value, as in other values, the demand for the public services (to land) is as great a determinant of their value as are the services themselves. In fact, where supply does not equal demand, then demand is the principal determinant. It would seem that demand raises values (meaning unit values or prices) whereas supply always tends to diminish them. Certainly there can be no great demand for (or value in) public services unless private services are being performed in large volume to create the private values that constitute the demand for public services (land). I think it is the creative results of joyous activity that constitutes the entire demand for public services and therefore creates the entire value of land, so far as demand is concerned. Land values depend absolutely upon the creation of other values. Since there are no measurable values except values-in-exchange, every single value depends upon the existence of other values exchangeable for it.

Referring to Miller and Burger, I send you a letter from the latter which came to me entirely unsolicited about three weeks ago. Miller is generally non-committal, although he assents freely to details. However, his principal associate, Clifford Kendal, tells me how very vigorously Miller defends my ideas in discussions that take place in my absence. I do not think either of these men is ready to give open support to the newer ideas either at Cincinnati or elsewhere yet awhile, if ever.

Burger asked me today if I would not go to Cincinnati and present my ideas. He seemed to think I should do so, but I told him the little I could present (or would be allowed to) would only arouse opposition and it would be better for people to remain uninstructed than to have their minds locked.

I have attended a couple of meetings and affairs of the Economics Club at Columbia and have been (for an outsider) quite cordially received. I am especially invited to attend their meeting next Thursday, so I have arranged to have the next meeting at the Town Hall next Wednesday instead of Thursday. This club at Columbia is made up of classes studying under Dr. Wesley Mitchell, but I have not met him so far.

 

I think it would be a good idea to join up with the Academy of Political Science. I have been for many years a member of the American Academy of Social and Poli­tical Science, headquarters at the University of Pennsylvania, but they are a very formal and stodgy lot and I have intended for some time to drop them. I shall be glad to see you on or before the 12th. My daughter and I are getting fixed up in a building that faces the Columbia campus. Perhaps we can entertain you. The Columbia authorities certainly are in need of our ideas. They are honeycombed with communism and all its little pale brothers and sisters and do not seem to know how to meet it or what to do about it.

 

Sincerely,