Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1263

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Clifford H. Kendal, Land and Freedom, 150 Nassau Street, New York NY

August 26, 1939.

Dear Mr. Kendal:

 

Thanks for card and letter dated the 23rd, but mailed the 25th. If your card refers to my letter of the 23rd, you must be a little behind in your dates.

Henry George’s preface to the fourth edition of “Progress and Poverty” is an extensive review of the whole scheme of the book. The last sentence of the second paragraph of this preface is as follows:

“What I have most endeavored to do is to establish general principles, trusting to my readers to carry further their applications where this is needed.”

I think this must be the passage you ask me to locate in which “he says something to the effect that he leaves the development to others, or to those who will follow,”

George naturally did not contemplate that there would be any serious or substantial errors in his book. He did not realize the probability of his carrying forward and, perhaps, elaborating upon some of the errors of his predecessors. He, therefore, doubtless, contemplated that his readers would be able to make further application of such of his “general principles” in their entirety. What has happened is that neither he nor his readers have been able to make further application of such of his general principles as cannot be further established and maintained, For example, his attack on the morality of private property in land has never had any further application than he gave it. But his attack on the destructiveness of taxation in general and his proposal to abolish it, has been relegated by his followers to a place of secondary and even of minor importance, whereas the development of governmental affairs has made it, at the present time, imperative to make further application of his general principle against the confisca­tion of wealth by taxation.

In his later writings, Henry George stressed more and more the tremendous importance of maintaining the exchange relationship and the division of labor which it brings forth. He devoted a large part of his last book to illustrating the beauty and beneficence of what he called the unconscious cooperation of society. Probably you will recall his marvelous description of the intricacy and beauty of the unconscious cooperation of millions of men whose labors, through the processes of exchange resulted in the building of a ship. When he came to Chapter II of Book 3 entitled, “The Office of Exchange and Production”, he had not written four pages before he came to this con­clusion: “It is by exchange and through exchange that man obtains and is able to exert the power of cooperation which with the advance of civilization so enormously in­creased his ability to produce wealth.” And then, very significantly, he added:

 

“And in addition to the laws already explained, there is another law or condition of nature related to man which is taken -advantage of to the enormous increase of productive power in exchange.”

Instead of carrying further the application of this principle, he noted at this point on his manuscript, “leave six pages”. It is certainly to be deplored that Henry George never wrote any more of this chapter beyond the first four pages. This is certainly one of the places where Henry George contemplated further application of a general principle, although he contemplated doing it him­self instead of leaving it to his successors. This is an example of what he referred to at the beginning of his preface to “Progress and Poverty” where he says: “. . .it has been impossible to treat with the fullness they deserve many of the questions raised.” Although I cannot immediately cite the passages, my memory is very clear that in many other places Henry George indicated the incomplete­ness of his own thought, and anticipated its further devel­opment and application.

See you soon.

Sincerely,

  Spencer Heath