Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1194

Carbon of letter to Spencer Heath at 434 West 120th St., New York City, from Charles G. Baldwin, consisting of a set of questions with space left between for Heath’s answers

September 16, 1937

Dear Spencer:

In the Heathized State, when I rent a room for my own occupancy, I also rent the public hereditaments and public services appertaining to the land on which the room is situated and the private hereditaments and private services furnished to me by the landlord.

Yes, exactly the same as in the pre-Heathized State.

My democratic rights are protected by the open market, because if I do not like the room, I can move elsewhere.

Yes, democratic. The offerers of rooms vote the occupancy price down; the bidders vote it up. The price you pay is the price fixed by a democratic election.

However, if my choice of locations is limited by reason of my occupation, or for any reason, the landlord may have monopolistic rights and put up my rent above the fair market value of the tenement, thereby depriving me of my democratic status.

He is no longer acting as a land lord taking rent by the democratic process of exchange. He has become a tribute taker seizing property by force — a tax gatherer.

If I become incapacitated and unable to pay the rent, I then go to the City Hospital, where I have a large measure of public services and access to public hereditaments, without measure and without charge.

You are cared for either voluntarily by private persons at their own expense or by public persons (servants) at other persons’ expense without their consent.

 

All my expenses are then paid by my landlord.

So far as the public hospital is a public service (and no further) the site occupants will offer and pay higher rents because of this service, and this will induce the landlords to supply it.

So that the population is divided into three classes: Landlords, tenants, and public charges or dependents.

All dependents are tenants at somebody’s expense. A purchaser may consume what he buys either directly or by giving it away to dependents or others. All occupants of a territory are tenants, directly or indirectly. All tenants are either administrators or subordinates. All administrators are owners of either private capital or public capital (the capital that serves locations). All subordinates are the hired servants of private administrators or the unhired and unsupervised servants of public proprietors owning such amount of the public capital as is measured to them by their ownership of land. It is because they are unsupervised that public servants seize property and become rulers and destroyers.

Tenants — whole population including dependents Administrative

Private administrators

Public administrators (land owners)

Subordinate

Hired servants of private administrators

and owners

Unhired and unsupervised servants

of public proprietors

Should the occupant of a rented room have any parliamentary voice in regard to the administration of the building, the employment and discharge of the servants who care for the building, etc?

He voices only the value of the services. This makes him the unconscious dictator of what the others shall do for him. But he gives conscious dictation only to his own business of serving his own customers who buy his services just as he buys the services of the room.

After each paragraph, I leave a space and wish you would briefly criticize on the copy which I enclose and return same to me.

Yours sincerely,

CGB:VH