Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1248

Carbon of a letter from Heath at Roadsend Gardens, Elkridge, Maryland, to son-in-law Merton McConkey

June 10, 1939

Dear Merton:

I am just getting around to answering yours of May 17th. The twenty copies of Politics vs. Proprietorship arrived in due course, and I thank you for sending them.

Your reaction to my population monograph is not only briefly stated, but I fear somewhat hastily or carelessly taken. I would be glad to have you read it again, and think of it more leisurely. However, I do not doubt it is subject to qualification — if you mean qualification in the sense of it being possible to find an occasional exception to anything that has been so broadly and almost universally stated. But the exceptions you point out I suspect upon closer consideration you will find not to be true exceptions. Let it be granted that there are instances of advance in complexity without any decrease in fertility. I do not think you will find that I have linked complexity inversely with fertility. What I have linked inversely with fertility is security — biological and, in the human world, sociological security. No doubt an animal born with two heads would be more complex than the normal, but not necessarily more secure. In fact, I am not at all sure that in a biological sense two heads are better than one, however true this might be psychologically. I am also of the opinion that such a complexity as the one above cited would be rather inimical than otherwise to fertility. I think such a complexity would be almost certainly associated with a fertility decrease.

If you think my above defense has been a captious one, perhaps you are right, at least so far as the illustration is concerned. The basic defense is that you appear to have overlooked my postulation of a constant “W” throughout the various vicissitudes of a population — this for purposes of just comparison of various population states or manifestation as regards the number of lives as well as the duration of lives. I do not think that I have anywhere suggested that under favorable conditions, the total number of life years, “W” might not very greatly increase. I have only pointed what might happen to a given quantity of life energy, and this is what I believe does happen to a given quantity of life energy, that is, reproductivity is inverse to such security as promotes normal longevity. Where the environmental conditions are favorable for the flow of increasing quantities of cosmic energy into its manifestation as a particular life form, there is no reason why the population in such case might not increase in numbers under the same conditions that contribute to its length of days, for instance, plants occupying a portion of a field which is favorable to their growth could be expected to occupy the whole field before there would arise any insecurity which through shortening their days, would tend to increase the number of plants while they diminished in size. I have no doubt this same principle holds with animal and human populations. Within a given area that is favorable to it, the population may increase in numbers at the same time, and despite the fact of an increase in the members’ length of years. This, of course, would involve an increase of cosmic energy manifesting itself in the particular life form. If this were not so, it would not be possible for a population ever to arrive at a definite quantitative manifestation, “W,” such as I have taken as the basis of my analysis of its qualitative evolution by increase in the length and abundance (fullness) of the individual lives.

You are certainly correct in stating that “the number of individuals must always be sufficient to carry on the mental and physical patterns demanded by the evolution of the race,” and from what I have already said, you can easily infer my endorsement of your remark that “a certain degree of fertility might be part of an ever progressing pattern.”

By the way, I do not seem to grasp that my “conclusion appears to be contrary to standard Georgism,” as regards population. Perhaps you can show me this.

There is no doubt that the tract on idle land does “run full tilt against Georgism as generally taught” or, at least, against the Georgian idea that so-called land value taxation (which is necessarily a taxing or a taking of wealth), could force more land into use. This is equivalent to saying that production can be increased by penalizing it, and I think you will agree that somebody should run full tilt against this, or, rather, will have to run full tilt against it if he runs very far. When we consider the anti-social nature of taxation, it should not be hard to regard it as a completely efficient cause of otherwise desirable land being idle. When it is once seen as an efficient cause, it should not be necessary to seek other causes, especially when no other causes logically obtrude themselves. Few people have distinguished purely speculative transactions from transactions that involve some production or, at least, some exchange of wealth. Where land is idle, no wealth is produced or exchanged. A purchaser of this idle land gives up wealth, but he does not receive any wealth in exchange. In such a transaction, therefore, there is neither production nor exchange of wealth. If the purchaser holds that land vacant for a rise, he will not do so beyond the point where the demand is greater than the supply, and in land as in everything else, there can be no value (market value or exchange value, meaning at-present-existing value) until the market demand is at least equal to the market supply. I agree with you perfectly that whether speculation in land creates wealth is less important than that “those willing to use land are to be kept out of use,” but this is not to say that speculation is what keeps it out of use. You say you know that it is true now that land for which there is a true demand is held vacant for a rise. From this you “draw the thought that periodic rent payments actually made for a site, are not the true measure of social value there delivered.” I do not quite see how periodic rent payments actually made for a site have anything whatever to do with land “held vacant for a rise.” I do not think we can imagine any people in any place using any previously vacant land until the conditions are such that they can afford to use it, and gain a recompense or profit for so doing.

     Those persons who have never realized the social importance of having secure possession of land and its services merchandised to a tenant, instead of having the tenant hold his possession and public services precariously by the favor or caprice of political authority coercively applied, those persons, I say, are disposed to look biliously upon the substantial recompense which a community by the operation of its open market, specifically and without coercion awards to the land owner, who performs that socially essential merchandising function, from the point where the need of this merchandising first springs up. The people of a community do not need this service until and unless they can engage in a larger amount of private services and production for which they require further security of possession and public services. When, however, this improved condition arises, the democracy of the open market determines precisely what portion of this increased private wealth and services shall be the social recompense to him who performs the public merchandising service of the security and public advantages without which none of the new private services and production could be performed. You will find this point somewhat further developed on page fifteen of the monograph on property in land, an additional copy of which I enclose.

Referring again to the “Energy Concept of Population,” I have sent a few copies of this out to several people more or less authoritative in the sociological world. Dr. Raymond Pearl says that he has read this with a great deal of interest, and that my idea of a coefficient of social efficiency is a suggestive one. Dr. K. J. Aronson, Editor of the Journal of Social Philosophy, a Quarterly devoted to a Philosophic Synthesis of the Social Sciences, says he has read it with great interest and that it should fall within the scope of a periodical devoted primarily to population problems.” The Atlantic Monthly Editor writes that they are already publishing two articles on population and “we think that your piece belongs by rights in a learned journal, such as one of the quarterlies.” Professor Crane Brinton, Department of History, Harvard University, writes: “This is a bad season of year for me, as doctoral examinations and other duties pile up, so that I have had chance to do little more than read rapidly through the interesting pamphlets which you sent me. The paper on “The Energy Concept of Population” seems to me one of the promising bits of social analysis I have seen recently, and I hope very much you will have it printed in one of the learned journals where it will be of readier access. I thoroughly appreciated your crack at Spencer on page nineteen of your land pamphlet. Perhaps if you are ever in Cambridge you will let me know, and we could have lunch together. There is a good deal I should enjoy discussing with you.”

I sent your good correspondent, Joseph R. Carrol, of Norfolk, Connecticut, my Population, Land and Inspiration pamphlets, all of which he says he found deeply interesting and instructive. He says he would like very much to meet me, but may not be able to get to New York before the George Centenary late in August, and that he hopes to get a copy of my next book as soon as it is published.

Please do not think that my omission thus far in this letter to make any mention of family or personal affairs, indicates any lesser interest in them, but, rather, my very great interest in matters of sociological import. Please give my best love to Marguerite and Enid, and do not hold anything back from the sterner side of the family. I hope when you write, you will not confine yourself to abstract matters to as great an extent as I have done, but that you will write a separate letter, if need be, to let me know the state of all your affairs, your present joys or sorrows, and your anticipations for the future. This be the request whereupon I now bring this very lengthy and, I hope, not uninteresting epistle to a close.

As ever,