Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1198

Carbon of letter from Roadsend, Lawyers Hill, Elkridge, Maryland to James R. Brown, Manhattan Single Tax Club, 1860 Broadway, New York City

August 15, 1931

Dear Mr. Brown:

I heard about the action of the Schalkenbach Foundation some weeks ago and intended writing you about it. However, I have been obliged to spend some weeks in hospital with operation and so forth from which I am now recovering.

It is almost incredible to me that a majority of twenty-one honest Single Taxers having at heart the interests of mankind could at any time, least of all in the present economic crisis, take any action to embarrass such work as that of the Manhattan Single Tax Club and Single Tax Publishing Company.

A thousand reasons cry out where the appropriations for your work should be more than doubled and if such work as yours does not receive increasing support it is hard to see how the trust which Robert Schalkenbach placed in his Foundation is not being betrayed.

Through personal contact with your work I have marveled at it. In two years I have heard about fifty of your addresses and have never failed to be astonished at the keen interest and almost volcanic enthusiasm you have never failed to arouse. I have been with you to new and strange places where the higher authorities were clearly a little suspicious and even here you never failed to warm their hearts and earn their cordial invitation with your return.

Your presentation has been such that even in the most conservative universities student bodies and faculty members alike have received the message with gladness and acclaim, and with the “solid” business organizations it has been the same.

I know that this work is cumulative and that all we need is enough of it and the programme of Henry George will be an accomplished fact.

You know of my anxiety to increase the scope of your work and my hopes that additional speakers could be put on who could carry the message with a manner and persuasiveness similar to your own. There is hope this may yet be realized.

If the Members of the Foundation could but observe your work and its efficiency as I have seen it, it seems to me that almost inevitably they would by spontaneous impulse greatly increase their support. They ought not to remain in the dark. It is tragic to think that here we are again in the midst of a great economic depression, the cause and cure for which Henry George so completely demonstrated. As never before the whole nation seems bent into an ? as to why men should starve amid plenty and the vast mechanism of production and exchange should be paralyzed and broken down. This, above all, is the situation in which Robert Schalkenbach and every honest Single Taxer has most of all desired the message of Henry George to be put forth, and put forth with mildness, kindness, persuasiveness and good humor which makes men not only feel and know the truth but love it in their hearts as well.

Here is my hope that the Foundation will reconsider its recent action. I have long felt that I would like to leave something for the advancement of Single Tax work after I am gone and have had at one time or another somewhat rosy hopes in that direction.

As I feel now and doubtless will continue to feel unless the action of the Foundation shall be reversed, I would not entrust the use of a single thousand dollars to the tender mercies of any kind of committee or foundation. I am resolved that what little I can do I shall do while I live.

To add force to this I enclose my check for an additional $200 for the current work of the Manhattan Single Tax Club, this to be taken as a special donation and no part of my regular yearly contribution to the Club.

Early in September I expect to spend some time in New York City and hope I shall have the opportunity of meeting and discussing ways and means of many earnest Single Taxers and especially those closely associated with your work.

Yours sincerely,