Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1395

Carbon copy of a letter to Mr. C.R. Walker, Editor, Cause and Effect, 127 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois

October 27, 1941

Dear Mr. Walker:

     First, I want to thank you for your many courtesies and your kind offices in getting consideration of the constructive ideas that I was trying to make plain at the Henry George Congress early in the month. I also want to thank you for sending some of my printed matter to Mr. Clement in New Orleans who has sent me an appreciative and appreciated comment.

     I am now wondering what steps you have taken looking to another Chicago Conference similar to but more extended than the one I had with you and some ten or twelve of your colleagues of the “We, The Citizens” organization. I was deeply gratified at the open mindedness of these men and their willingness to gauge wider views by their merits rather than by their divergence from the older views that have met so much resistance and so little acceptance these many years.

     You will recall that we regarded your first thought of calling a general conference to meet in Chicago as perhaps a little premature. We did think, however, that it might be fruitful to have a local Chicago conference for the purpose of thrashing things out among ourselves and seeing what conclusions we could come to and what policies we might then propose, by conference or otherwise, to more widely representative groups.

     I feel strongly that the practice of the Philosophy of Freedom awaits nothing but a higher and deeper understanding of it. When there was not enough right thinking about food and how to produce it few lived long and many starved. When there was not enough right thinking about clothing and shelter men wore skins and lived in caves. Right thinking about the natural world has given almost miraculous power and bounteous results. Even greater blessings await us when we have enough right thinking in the social and political realm. Right thinking is knowledge — understanding. Knowledge dispels darkness and conflict, gives illumination and direction to blind power. And its applications are automatic; its blessings and beauty as irresistibly attract as they bountifully reward. For lack of vision people perish; they do not walk into pits when they have open eyes.

     Liberty was the dream of Henry George, but his vision was not all clear. His voice was a herald, but it was not her dawn. She warned she would accept no half service, she would be wholly trusted or she would not stay.

     But there must be vision and illumination; only right thinking leads to right action; then the action is unresisted; it is free and not forced, automatic and spontaneous; it calls for no laws and no wars, no shackles and no sword. But clear vision guides in free­dom the blind yearnings of men to their bright consummation in heart’s desire and liberty will not dwell with any but the “children of the light.”

     So we must seek understanding, find the truth, learn the facts, as to the existing order and system of things, knowing that this vision, this knowledge, this right thinking will be a power that needs no enforcement, that all will accept gladly, and will bless us with a liberty that cannot flee.

     When the virtues of Henry George’s philosophy of freedom and his principle of public and community services being maintained out of the revenues they create, the same as any other business is maintained, are more fully under­stood there will no longer be occasion to propagandize or force men into either unselfish or unwilling action. When intelligent persons come to understand that every community is so organized that the use of the public capital, of the public property, can be sold only by the community owners and that what they receive as ground rent is the voluntary recompense the community awards them for this service of distributing public benefits and advantages, then many such persons will be or become land owners and, organized together, they will begin to admin­ister the public capital with which their lands are sur­rounded and improved. They will guard their community inhabitants against expropriation of their incomes and properties by taxation and ‘regulation’ and against the political misuse of the public properties and funds.

     These community services by the community (land) owners will release vast latent productivity and out of this new wealth the land owners will be recompensed for their services in enormous new rents and property values. Nor will land owners permit taxation and ‘regulation’ to be reimposed, for to do so would be to forfeit all the new income and value with which they have been recom­pensed for abolishing them. Rather, they will go still further in the service and protection of their customers (tenants and purchasers) and will not hesitate to draw upon their new revenues to meet any proper and necessary cost of the public administration. Their desire for profit out of the public business will prompt them to finance it adequately and to meet all proper costs out of the proceeds, keeping the net revenue for their proper profit and recompense, as in any other honest and productive business.

    Well, Mr. Walker, I must not tire you with too much repetition, however much the simplicity and practicality and profitableness of the arrangement may fascinate my mind. I must again ask you what you and your colleagues think of the proposition to have a Chicago conference, say, some time in late November or early December.

     As I told you, I have much confidence in the value and fruitfulness of such a conference that I will gladly make the trip out there all at my own expense and pleasure. You have in your organization some very able men with fine minds and practical ability. I should like to meet them again and to assist them, if possible in the develop­ment of the sound thinking that will need no laws or com­pulsions to force its practical and profitable application.

     Please remember me kindly to your gracious lady and to your very kindly and intelligent colleagues.

 

Sincerely yours,