Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1347

Carbon of a letter from Heath to John W. Nason, President, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA

February 5, 1941

 

 

Dear Dr. Nason:

     In connection with the articles relating to your inauguration as the youngest president of swarth­more College, I was inspired by reading the different accounts of your ideals and hopes and aspirations for that College, and in connection with the advancing of public and community life in general. At this point, may I take the opportunity of extending to you my heartiest congratulations upon the great honor bestowed upon you, and wishing you success in this great and wonderful undertaking?

     In common with-so many others, I realize that, perhaps, you, too, are seeking for a workable answer to that query so poignantly propounded by Dr. Harold W. Dodds, namely, “How can we arrange our public and community affairs so that they can be conducted without resort to violence and war?” This question has been on my mind from a very early period in my life, and during recent years, has had my almost exclusive thought. I have tried to approach the phenomenon of community association in the same dispassionate manner and with the same methods of examination that have been so fruitfully employed by modern science in the examination of natural phenomena. In this quest, I seem to find only two basic relationships between the units or individuals involved — those which tend to disorganization, disintegration and death, and those which tend towards organization, integration, growth and life. In the former, we find no permanence, no enduring reality; in the latter, we find evolvement, growth, an inherent power of permanency and, therefore, abiding reality. There seems to be no third, or alternative form of relationship as between those which are essentially disintegrative and impermanent and those which are vital and abiding.

 

     At the social level, men must either divide or unite. Every relationship of compulsion or force divides — sends men out of the harmonies of association, lower in the scale of being and, ultimately, to death. Every relationship of consent and agreement, every contractual commitment expresses itself in the form of services voluntarily exchanged, each serving the other as he would be served. This unites men in the social and spiritual bonds of creative service, gives birth to and maintains the vitality of community life.

 

     With respect to private and individual affairs, we value and practice a contractual technique of giving services to many and receiving many services in exchange, and by this spiritual technique, create all the wealth and material values that we have. But with respect to those things which community members must have in common, such as means of communication with each other, and all that is commonly comprised under public services, we ap­pear not to have learned how to extend the contractual technique. Government, in all its forms, appears to be fundamentally coercive both at home and abroad.

 

     So accustomed are we to government based on the Roman concept of rule, we are prone to doubt even the possibility of public services being performed by means of purely contractual and consensual relationships as private services are. It has been my privilege, however, to discover in the organization of every community, a basic contractual relationship by means of which its sites and resources are constantly distributed and redistributed through contractual engagements and without resort to violence or war. I believe this institution has been too little, if at all, understood, its services not at all recognized or appreciated, and its potentialities, therefore, entirely overlooked.

 

     We accept the benefits of proprietorship and proprietary administration and distribution of private properties and services in the interest of clients, patrons and customers from whom all proprietary revenue and re­compense must be voluntarily obtained, but with respect to the public community and property, we have not yet become conscious that the community proprietors are now giving a social and contractual distribution of and access to all these things and being voluntarily recompensed in ground rent and values therefor. We have, therefore, not been

able in our thinking to extend the principle of proprietary administration by contractual and non-coercive engagements, over the common community properties and affairs.

 

    It is my keen desire to engage the interest of a few competent minds, not otherwise entirely engaged, towards an examination of the possibilities residing in an extension of the proprietary relationship and its functions, into the conduct of the common services which are necessary to com­munity life.

 

    Frankly, I am going to ask your aid in discovering such persons and bringing to their attention such information as I have been able to gather and interpret along these lines. To this end, may I have the pleasure of a brief conference with you during one of my rather frequent journeys between Baltimore and New York?   I am at present in New York City but plan to return home via Philadelphia about the middle of next week or so at which time I would like very much to drop in for a brief visit to make your acquaintance if your many activities would permit of this opportunity. A reply advising me of a suitable time will reach me at the Woodstock Hotel, 127 West 43rd Street, New York City where I am now staying, or at the Town Hall Club of which I am a member. Perhaps I may have the pleasure of your company as my guest for a luncheon or dinner engagement at a time suggested and convenient to you?

 

    Please let me assure you that my interest in all of the above matters is wholly esthetic and intellectual, and that I do not seek nor contemplate obtaining from any source any material aid or personal prestige.

Sincerely yours,

Spencer Heath

 

 

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