Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1230

Copy of letter from Heath at Butler Hall, Morningside Drive at 119th Street, New York City, to Lawson /?/ Purdy

November 7, 1937

Dear Mr. Purdy:

I have to thank you for your attention to the matters and ideas I submitted to you recently. I appreciate your taking the trouble to go over them and write me so promptly about it.

I must confess, however, that I am a little disappointed that you seemed to have given consideration only to the quantity of ground rent that would arise under a mere shift in the incidence of public costs without reference to the interest of the proprietary class in bringing this change about and their further interest in giving a high order of business administration in order to increase their gross sales of public services, the same as proprietors in other businesses seek to do.

There are some sharp issues from my own thinking that I would like to test in the crucible of your mind:

Does not present net ground rent represent merely the difference between all that government giveth to its territory and all that government taketh away? Does it not measure what the community has left between the right hand of public service and the left hand of taxation and consequent distress?

Are not the public services of government indispensable to the continuance of society, and therefore society, and likewise ground rent, can continue only so long as government, on the whole, does less harm than it does good?

Are not public servants in need of proprietors to finance and supervise them and sell their services to the public just as much as private servants are?

Is not the public service the only service in the world in which the entire personnel consists of hirelings for wages and salaries and in which the proprietors who sell the services take no willing or active part in either the financing or administering of them?

Is it not the proper interest of the landlords of a community to finance and administer the services they sell the same as it is for the “landlords” of a hotel?

If the owners who collect the sales values of the services performed (rents) either in a community or in a hotel fail to administer the properties and supervise the services and permit the servants to seize the property and regulate the affairs of the occupants will not the one as surely as the other go bankrupt and eventually cease doing business?

Is not ground rent the income from the public business that is left after all labor and capital costs have been defrayed out of taxation, and if so is not ground rent the income produced by the unborrowed part of the public capital?

If land owners do and must receive the income from the unborrowed part of the public capital does not this constitute them the beneficial owners and therefore the real owners of that capital?

Is it not advantageous for all parties that the real owners of the capital engaged in any service or enterprise should direct and administer that service or enterprise?

My own mind inclines to the affirmative of all these and similar questions. If this is correct should not the “real estate” interests be enlightened as to just where they stand in the set-up of the community and its services?

I trust you will not permit me to burden you with these matters (which seem of such tremendous importance) and that you will give them only such of your attention as your time or interest permits or your public spirit

commands.

Sincerely yours,