Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2988

Two typed letters to Heath, a day apart, from Spencer MacCallum at 11 Waverly Place, New York City 3

March 24,25, 1960

Dear Popdaddy:                         March 24, 1960

Ada called last night, asking if I knew the whereabouts of copies of income tax returns for 1958 and 1959. I had the Maryland State form for 1959 here, and so am sending it on to you. I don’t know where any others might be, but told Ada two places where she might look.

     A letter came from Baldy a week or so ago, in which he said a little bit about our Foundation situation. I’ll quote the paragraph, for whatever interest it may hold for you:

^“Popdaddy called me from Santa Ana the other day about the Foundation protest hearings. Dick Cornuelle and I have seen his preliminary materials, in part, and I had given some suggestions. Dick says: ^“Don’t take a lawyer along to that hearing. It is not a legal matter really, but a judgment of indirect evidence that lawyers often foul up.”  Frankly, your case needs all possible evidence to show that it is not just a family foundation to escape the tax; that it is broad in participation and purpose; etc. Much will depend on the impression in this respect that the officers make on the Treasury representatives.”

     I saw Mr. Holden in church last week and had some pleasant words with him. I hope to see him again fairly soon.

     I had a good thought this morning, one I should have thought of sooner but for some reason had not seen as clearly as now. I was mulling over the dividing line between public and private services, which seemed a little obscured by the fact that every business — drugstore, haberdashery, etc. — is performing public services inasmuch as it caters to the entire public. But the difference between these and community services is that the latter are always enjoyed in common with others in the community instead of separately and apart. /Heath pencils in the margin, “Just so”/ With respect to the individual businesses in a community, the availability of all the diverse services they offer is the community service that is here involved. This ^“stand-by” service, as you have called it, is the community service or amenity that all enjoy collectively all the time. It is not important (for our defini­tion) who stands ready to perform these individual services, whether it be the public authority or private persons. But seeing to it that these services are available in the right number and combination for the community is the special province of the owning authority

/“the sellers”/. This is the service of econo­mic planning.

     Conversely, of course, the proprietary authority is desirous of serving its (business) tenants in the best possible way by locating them conveniently to their natural market and to compatible (complementary) businesses, in order to arrive at the most efficient use of the land. So we are brought again to the conclusion that the concern of the proprietary authority is not for one class of tenants or another, but its interest lies in the over-all, balanced functioning of a whole community.

     I was glad of this thought, because I’d come to the point in my writing where I had to discuss public services, and now this ties it in well with other points I’ve been making, especially about modern developments in real estate, particularly in land planning.

     Hope you’re keeping cheerful. Elfriede sends her love. She and Gene took a vacation in Florida (driving) for a few weeks but are back now. Elfriede’s always concerned about being a trouble to somebody, and she’s afraid of taking advantage of your hospitality by staying so long (her ship sails in May). I tell her that’s nonsense, especially with her keeping the apartment so sparkling. It’s good to have regular meals. They both spoil me.

     I have my first draft of the thesis written. Poor as a first draft is, it gives me something more tangible to work with. I wrote it out of the air and am now enriching and amending it by the notes and jottings I’ve collected for so long. It occurs to me this morning that if you got to know Max Wehrly of the Urban Land Institute when you get back, and if there were enough of my thesis completed by then for him to see that it is a worthwhile study, a note to that effect might help in the hearing. It would show that I have serious intentions about the ideas of the Foundation and conversely that the Foundation is more broadly justified. The thesis is in a terribly incomplete and fragmented state now, but there just may be enough of it to get something of its intent across to Mr. Wehrly.

Bestest wishes,

 

Best wishes to Fran, too.

     If you’d like to send the signed tax returns to me with penciled entries, I could type the entries in before mailing and have a chance to visé them — for whatever advantage that might be.

________________________________

March 25, 1960

Dear P.D. — Just a footnote for your thoughts about the social significance of the lengthening of adult years:

Wheeler, William Morton. Social Life Among the Insects.

New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1923. pp 10-11:

     ^“John Fiske and others have claimed that human society has been rendered possible by a lengthening of infancy and childhood, since this obviously involves more elaborate care of the young by parents and a greatly increased opportunity of learning on the part of the child. This is true, but it is equally true that the adult life of the parents must also be prolonged to cover the retarded juvenile development, and the insects show us that the lengthening of the adult stage comes first and makes social life possible. In solitary insects, of course, it is just the brevity of adult life that prevents the development of the social habit, no matter how long the larval period may be. The period may, in fact, extend over months or even years in certain insects which have an adult stage of only a few days or hours.

     “Momentous consequences necessarily follow from the lengthening of the adult life of the parent insect and the development of the family, for the relations between parents and offspring tend to become so increasingly intimate and interdependent that we are confronted with a new organic unit, or biological entity — a super-organism, in fact, in which through physiological division of labor the component individuals specialize in diverse ways and become necessary to one another’s welfare or very existence.”