Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1498

Letter to Alban C. Widgery, 100 Woodside Avenue, Amherst, Massachusetts

November 20, 1953

Dear Dr. Widgery:

    I thank you for your kind and prompt reply to my recent letter and your kind comments on my analysis of Henry George’s great masterpiece.

     Noting your interest in this idea of land communism which now seems rampant over most of the world, usually under the name of “Land Reform,” I am sending you a recent further critique based on articles appearing in the Freeman Magazine upon the authority of Professors Glen Hoover and Frank Knight. I wonder at your not being more familiar with the land socialization movement that claimed so much public attention around the turn of the century and is being kept alive today by highly organized schools, both evening and daytime and by correspondence, in most of our principal cities and in many countries abroad. This whole idea of land communism, so-called Land Reform, serves as an entering wedge for communism in toto, few people realizing that political administration of the sources of wealth and life necessarily includes government control of all products and of life itself. I think it would be highly fitting for persons of authority in the academic world to become better acquainted with this menace and to better expose its fallacies than Professor Knight appears to have done.

     I must compliment you on the success of your writing ventures, which I hope will continue and grow. Your topic is a very large one, within the large confines of which I have no doubt you have been able to contribute something out of the fertility of your mind. My grandson who is writing this letter is going to look up your book in the library tomorrow, and I hope to peruse it during the next few days.

     My bookseller tells me that Joseph Needham’s Time, The Refreshing River is not available in this country. Perhaps you know of this book and can direct me to a copy of it. It is mentioned a number of times in Dr. Edmund Sinnott’s little masterpiece, Cell & Psyche, of which you probably know.

     I am pleased to hear of the present life of your daughter. I hope you will be kind enough to remember me to her as well as to Mrs. Widgery when you can.

     Again with best wishes I am,

Sincerely yours,

SH:sm Enc – 1