Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1276..

Carbon copy of a letter to Mr. John S. Codman, 222 Summer Street, Boston, Massachusetts

October 10, 1939

Dear Mr. Codman:

Your kind letter of October 9th reaches me today just before my departure for Maryland.

I am particularly gratified that you are giving serious consideration to the ideas concerning land ownership and public services that have been appealing so much to me during the last several years.

I took the liberty of quoting to my friend, Mr. C.K. Kendal, now Editor of Land and Freedom, a portion of your letter in which you express “the idea of abolishing all taxes and defraying all public costs out of ground rent, the surplus ground rent to go to the land owners as compensation for the collection of ground rent by them and for their efforts to maintain ground rent at the highest possible figure.” Mr. Kendal thought this was admirably stated, and I think that I can add most aptly and accurately. I would, however, suggest the propriety of regarding the primary function, as it is indeed the present function, of land owners to merchandise public services and advantages giving regard to merchandising as the only social technique of distribution, in fact, the only manner in which any services can be distributed on the basis of value received without resort to violence or dependence upon arbitrary authority.

As to land owners being prohibited from levying taxes, I believe that the most profitable services land owners can possibly perform for the members of a community would be to procure even a modicum of reduction in the amount of taxes now levied upon the producers of wealth and which, as Henry George says, are now “sucking the life blood of both labor and capital.” Just as police protection of persons and property is the first duty of political government so is it the first duty of the proprietors, who desire to collect rent in a community, to protect their land users from the depredation of political authority. If the administration of land should fall into the hands of political authority, which has no technique for determining occupancies by any merchandising process, it seems inevitable that there can be no possession of land or dispossession from it except by the force or favor of political authority. In this view, it is probably not too much to say that the institution of private property in land is the greatest barrier that in any society exists against the unbridled exercise of arbitrary political force.

You may have noticed my remark in the last paragraph of “Why Does ‘Valuable’ Land Lie Idle” that speculation in land is only speculation in hopes and fears as to the possible payment or increase in the payment of rent on the land so dealt in, and that such speculation is not the doing of any business in the sense of producing or exchanging wealth. I know that business men in general look askance at any proposed new enterprise that savors of speculation. It seems very probable that when production is freed from the incubus of taxation, few men will prefer the risk and chance of making gains at the cost of each other rather than freely to produce goods and services for each other — for exchanging with each other. The mere chance of gain, including the risk, could hardly be more attractive than the virtual certainty of gain through productive activity that would be possible under freedom from taxation.

Enclosed I am sending you carbon copy of some material that I have submitted recently to some real estate authorities in the hope of getting some intelligent appreciation of it. I think you will recognize the theoretical basis and social implications involved in this very frank appeal to the profit motive on the part of real estate owners.

Since receiving your letter I feel more than ever disposed to make another journey and visit to Boston and vicinity. I certainly made the most delightful social and intellectual contacts from both inside and outside of the International Congress for the Unity of Science that I attended.

Please give my most excellent compliments to Dr. Morgan and Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth.

While I was in Cambridge, I went so far as to look up the address and telephone number of Dr. Lewis J. Johnson, but with the other very interesting association I was having at the Congress, I was unable to follow this up. I am glad to send Professor Johnson the pamphlet you suggest.

I will certainly be glad to have an opportunity of meeting with a group such as you suggest when I come to Boston again. At present I have no other occasion for coming, but if you will be kind enough to indicate to me how soon or at what season of the year it would be most suitable for me to come, I will try to arrange it accordingly.

Yours very sincerely,

Spencer Heath

Under separate cover, I am sending you today three (6) each of “Private Property in Land Explained” and “The Inspiration of Beauty.”

Enc. 1. “Questions for the Consideration of Land-Owners”

 2. “Real Estate Administration for Profit”