Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1384

Carbon of a letter from Heath to R.J. Otto, 1238 Oak Street, Eugene, Oregon

May 5, 1941

Dear Mr. Otto:

This is my acknowledgment and apology for not ans­wering sooner your very courteous and welcome letter of about one month ago. I have been wishing to go into some of the questions that you raised in my mind with some thoroughness, and so I have deferred writing to you because I wanted to complete some other writing, especially my revision of “The Energy Concept of Population” before doing so. However, this has taken more time than I had hoped, so I am just dropping you this brief line to acknowledge your letter and say that I would be very happy to write to your further before the present month has expired.

I will pause, however, long enough to say that I have realized for quite a time that you have been making a most happy and fortunate beginning towards the devel­opment of a working glossary as an aid to economic think­ing and communication. Several of you men on the Pacific Coast, including Mr. Willcox and Mr. Beckwith, have certainly made a grand start in the right direction by working away from some of the threadbare misconceptions that have befogged the matter of our common interest and understand­ing for a long time. The most important consideration is whether you will be able to stand the shock when you find out how much more of the same kind of thing you will have to clear away in order to continue your progress in clear thinking and adequate understanding of the economic relationships as they now exist. Until the existing community structure and its functioning are reasonably well understood in terms of how it actually carries on at the present time, it will not be possible for us to have any rational program of further progress or ameli­oration.

I have long felt the earnestness and sincerity of your attitude towards these matters and of the other Western men whom I have mentioned, and I have often wished that we might have some leisurely and sincere intimate discussions of them strictly in a spirit of earnest-seeking and careful investigation. Like the rest of the world, we are greatly in need of a degree of emancipa­tion from our cherished dogmas, and there is no service the world so seriously needs as the intellectual service of making impartial discoveries in the realm of our social relationships.

With the best of good wishes, I am,

Most cordially yours,

Spencer Heath