Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1288

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Richard T. Ely, Old Lyme, Connecticut

August 23, 1939

Dear Doctor Ely:

I recall that when I stopped at your New York office earlier in the summer, you were making arrangements for going up to Old Lyme for the summer. It was a pleasure to have your secretary tell me that your health had greatly improved, and that you would probably have a real recuperation during the vacation time, all of which I hope is being fully realized.

     Your secretary further stated that you had been giving some attention to my printed pamphlet entitled, “Private Property in Land Explained,” and that there was a possibility that you might like to have some personal discussion with me of the particular point of view from which I tried to proceed.

     As you probably observed, I have tried to examine the institution, not especially from the standpoint of its structure but very specially from the standpoint of the social function which that institution is adapted to perform and from which, of course, it must find its justification.

     Since printing my little essay on land, I have had copies made of a more fundamental social analysis which I am calling “The Energy Concept of Population.” In this I have assumed the life-year as the proper basic unit for population measurement. Assuming that the total energy of the average life is proportionate to its average duration, I have found it possible to describe a population as a stream of energy, using the same standard units for this purpose as are employed in the more exact natural sciences. It seems to me that the slow development of the social sciences as compared with the natural sciences, has been due, largely at least, to our failure to find any means of applying standard units of measurement to social phenomena. Science being fundamentally quantitative, it is necessary to apply workable units in any field before its contents can be arranged in any mathematical or otherwise rational order.

     Probably you will observe that the energy concept is implicit and underlying in my functional interpretation of the institution of private property in land. I feel that it may be of considerable utility for the analysis of other social institutions — possibly all of them. I am wondering very much what you think of the possibilities in this line or, rather, what you will think upon careful examination of the mimeographed paper which I, herewith, enclose. It has been suggested by a number of qualified persons, and especially by Professor Brinton, of Harvard, that this “Energy Concept of Population” ought to be publicized and discussed.

     I am planning to be in New York City over the end of the month, and then to attend the Fifth International Congress for the Unity of Science at Harvard University from the 3rd to the 9th of September. My route will, probably, take me somewhere in the vicinity of Old Lyme, and if it should be in accord with your wishes, it would give me great pleasure to stop in and have perhaps an hour of conversation with you. I will be driving either alone or accompanied only by a secretary.

     Please accept my best wishes for your continued good health, and remember me kindly to Mrs. Ely whom it gave me much pleasure to meet on one or two occasions at the Town Hall Club in New York.

                       Very truly yours,

Spencer Heath

Enc.