Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2338

Exchange of correspondence between Heath and Arthur W. Madsen, Secretary, United Committee for the Taxation of Land Values, 4 Great Smith Street, Westminster, London, S.W.1 and (second letterhead) Land & Liberty, Journal for Land Value Taxation and Free Trade, same address, October 2, 1952 to June 15, 1953.

 

Dear Mr. Heath                             October 2, 1952

I have just received a copy of your booklet “Progress and Poverty Reviewed” and have begun to read it so that I hope to give you my views thereon. I notice in a footnote that you have also written a pamphlet entitled “Private Property in Land Explained” which you offer gratis. Therefore I beg you to send me a copy. If I have that, I will be better able to review your review of Progress and Poverty.

 It is so long since we had contact with one another. I remember well our association when you were so kind to me in New York in 1935. There is also a sweet recollection of your visit to London long ago in the lifetime of my dear colleague John Paul when you expressed so generously your sympathy for all that the United Committee and “Land & Liberty” were doing. But how is it that you have ceased to have “Land & Liberty”? For one reason or other which I just cannot fathom, your name has disappeared from our address list. Let me please try to resume that contact by sending you now the latest issue of the Journal, a special double number reporting the International Conference recently held in Denmark.

Yours sincerely,

(signed) A. W. Madsen

____________________________________________________________

Dear Mr. Heath:                      December 22, 1952

The enclosed letter and Journal sent to you on October 2, last, did not reach you and was returned by the Post Office. Therefore I send it again to care of “The Freeman” and in the hope that I may have the pleasure of hearing from you.

 A notice of your Review of Progress and Poverty is appearing in the December issue of “Land & Liberty” (a bit late in its pro­duction because of so much else in the way of pressing work) and that will be posted to you for the “Freeman” kindly to forward.

 Again with my respects and Season’s greetings,

 Yours sincerely,

 (signed) A. W. Madsen

________________________________________________________

 

My dear Arthur Madsen:                      June 15, 1953

I thank you very much for your letter of last December 22 in care of The Freeman. I don’t know why yours of October 2 failed to reach me at my home address in Maryland, but I spend a good deal of time in and out of my New York address as above and most of my mail has been coming here of late.

 I infer from your caption over Mr. Gaffney’s article in your December issue that at your last writing you had not read very far into my review of Progress and Poverty and that your impressions of it must have been gained from the first part of Mr. Gaffney’s perfervid remarks upon it.

 It was only a short time ago that Mr. Gaffney’s article first came to my attention. John Chamberlain thought, the misleading quotations and imputations in his first paragraph notwithstanding, that on the whole some rejoinder from me would be in order and well worthy of equally conspicuous even if much smaller space in your columns.

 Accordingly, I have set down my best-considered comments, and John Chamberlain has been kind enough not only to propose but also to forward them to you.

 

 I was very well pleased at the mostly serious temper of Mr. Gaffney’s last two pages. I can only hope (for the sake of truth) that you and other Henry George men will go as far as Mr. Gaffney in entertaining basic conceptions so far contrary from his long cherished ones, and that whatever of the “whole discussion” you may publish may be as among friends holding to the same ideal even though choosing quite contrary roads to reach the common goal.

 

 As far back as the early thirties I began to believe in the providence of a far more realistic than the political and coercive method of seeking the ends towards which Henry George aspired. The enclosed leaflet entitled, “Why the Henry George Idea Does Not Prevail”, written in 1938, is but one evidence of my many urbane attempts towards a more creative (and thus spiritual) mode of approach.

 

 Until this current review my emphasis was always on the construc­tive side of Henry George’s philosophy, in spite of his proposed political methods identical with those of all the Marxians whom he hoped to oppose and defeat.

 

 Needless to say, it was not until I ceased exalting his ultimate aims and challenged his method of enforcement and his logic underlying it, that any such serious attention to constructive ideas could be obtained. It seems just too bad that we must have so much heat in our journey towards the light. If I have in some degree followed Mr. Gaffney’s temper I hope he will soon forgive me, as I have forgiven him.

 

 I cordially reciprocate your kind sentiments and recollections of my visit to you and your dear colleague, John Paul, and the very learned and kindly Mr. Lester, all of whom were so very lovely to me in London some twenty years ago. And I remember also with pleasure your visit here in 1935.

 

 I can assure you my sympathy for the goal of Freedom through rent coming to be recognized as the legitimate recompense for public services, and through the automatic creation of rent by performing services instead of taking taxes by force without reference to any corresponding services.

 

 It is pleasant to be again in communication with you and in the cordiality of friendship, however diverse may be the roads we choose — the means we seek to see employed — to reach the common goal.

 

Sincerely,

Spencer Heath

SH-s

Enclosed:

“Private Property in Land Explained”

“Questions for Land Owners”

“The Administration of Property as Community Services”

“Why the Henry George Idea Does Not Prevail”