Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2920

A letter to Eddie Rickenbacker inviting him to the Plaza party for CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR, June 4, 1957, was mislaid between dictation and transcription and never sent. Prompted by Spencer MacCallum, some attempts were made over the summer to make up for this, none of which seemed quite right to MacCallum. A letter finally was composed and sent on September 24, 1957. The several attempts are preserved here for reference.

 

 

 

Dear Eddie Rickenbacker:

Here’s a note that died a-borning. My secretary mislaid his notes before transcribing them. When we discovered this, I phoned your office and your secretary told me that you were in Florida anyhow.

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Dear Eddie Rickenbacker:

Here is a note from your old-time co-worker in the days when flying was at the crawling stage. You, of course, for many reasons besides owing to your career, have been in my recollections many times through the years. I imagine also that you have not entirely forgotten me, notwithstanding that I have been for a long time obscurely pioneering in another brand new field.

Here it is. My publishers were anxious to have you attend a coming-out party — a cocktail party — to meet the author of what they regard as an exceedingly important new kind of thinking about public affairs. The title of the book is “Citadel, Market and Altar: Emerging Society,” the author your humble servant. I am happy to inscribe a copy with my compliments to you. I think the middle section on sound principles in business administration will be sure to interest you, whatever you may think of Parts One and Three. You were in at the birth of a new era in transportation. I wanted you to get in on what may be the birth of a new and better era (non-political) in public affairs. It will be good to see you sometime for old times sake.

Cordially,

 

Encl: Biographic sketch

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Dear Eddie Rickenbacker:

I was right sorry I could not have you as one of the guests at the coming-out party of my “CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR”, which is the fruit of quite a number of pioneering years in social thinking very much in parallel with what was once radically new — and prophetic — in the old aviation days.

 So I am just sending you an inscribed copy of my “engineer’s report”, anticipating that you may have as much of the pioneering spirit now as you had then. I think the middle one of the three sections of the book will be sure to interest you as a businessman, even if you should not happen to care much for the somewhat abstractly scientific first part.

 I received only today a nice letter from Donald Douglas, who congratulates me on my “very fresh approach to the examination of our society’s development”. He remembers well the days when we were all active together in aviation.

 With many best wishes,

 Cordially,

 

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Dear Eddie Rickenbacker:

You and I who were in at the beginning of perhaps the most tremendous technological development of modern times, we had a vision and a perception that very few were capable of. Just a few of us dreamers each did his bit with a sense of the certainty of tremendous things to come. Yet it was impossible for even the wildest of us to imagine more than a fraction of what it was going to be.

 I dropped out of it about 1932. You carried on, and your achievement has been magnificent. For me, the great advance was then well under way. I dropped out because there came to me a new wild dream of the shape of things to come — a new kind of industry to be born and serve mankind worldwide with greater power and profit than had ever been conceived.

 I spent some years working out the fundamental principles of free enterprise capitalism, and saw how these, when once understood, could be employed by men of property and affairs in the conduct of the public business with results magnificent beyond anything that now can be conceived. Through the years I accumulated the existing evidence of the new great public administration that would be bound to grow into the place of the political organizations that now imperil civilization and even the continued existence of mankind. Eventually, I made up my “engineer’s report.” It was published last June by the Science of Society Foundation under the title, “CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR: EMERGING SOCIETY.” I sent you an invitation to attend a cocktail party for the press and reviewers at the Plaza in New York.

 This book has been offered for review and comment to more or less private persons who it was thought could grasp its significance. Some of the returns are quoted from on the pages attached. I’m happy to include you among those who are able to see far into the future of things. So I’m sending you a copy as the creator and administrator of an enormous business. I count on your having moments of relaxation for a vision of far greater wonders yet to be. It is my tribute to you as the dreamer who can also do.