Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1559

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Paul Blanshard, c/o The Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts

October 31, 1955

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Blanshard:

     The present writer has a very high regard for your work as an author and particularly for American Freedom and Catholic Power. In this you show a great deal of research and very fine and properly restrained scholarly comment on the facts that you cite. I am sure that you must have studied this subject very thoroughly, for you have certainly written dispassionately and without the heat that usually accompanies lack of knowledge.

     I have just received from the Schalkenbach Foundation a reprint from the NEW FREEMAN of your article, “The Great Land Racket.” It is extraordinary how many intelligent people are ready to criticize, condemn and even abolish our modern system of property in land without even consid­ering what social function this institution performs or even that it performs any function.

     Like all social, non-political institutions, that is, institutions in which no force or coercion is prac­ticed by man upon his fellow man, property in land de­serves to be studied and understood rather than criticized and condemned without study or understanding.

    As a former believer in political and governmental rather than social and contractual distribution of the gifts of nature, but one who for a considerable number of years has examined and tried to better understand the latter, I am sending you herewith two or three booklets of my own which show something of my rather diligent investigation. I hope you will take these with my sin­cere compliments and find them of some value towards a further understanding of private property in land in the light of the social service it more or less unconsciously performs.

     I greatly admire your scholarship and your literary skill and shall be happy to encourage your valuable researches.

     Some time ago, I had a most pleasant acquaintance with your brother, Brand, at Swarthmore in connection with the teaching of philosophy which I enjoy very much.

Sincerely yours,

SH/m

Enc:  “Trojan Horse…”

“Shorter Criticism..”

“Property in Land Explained”