Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1473

Letter to Dr. Stanwood Cobb, 17 Grafton Street, Chevy Chase, Maryland

November 8, 1953

Dear Dr. Cobb:

     I do not know just why I am writing you at the present time, except that I have been thinking of you and wondering how you and Mrs. Cobb have been prospering intellectually and in all other ways. Perhaps also because I have been wishing you to have a copy of my review of Progress and Poverty which I have been circulating of late in connection with that celebrated dialectic in support of Land Communism founded chiefly on the popular fallacies of David Ricardo and J.S. Mill. It seems to me one of the great tragedies of the modern era that these fallacies have taken such wide and deep /root/ that even our own government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars for the encouragement of land communism in many parts of the world.

     The good life, as I see it, both private and public, depends upon our rational understanding of the environ­ment, social or physical, in which we live. The natural sciences have never examined anything but the physical environment and their results have been marvelous. What greater marvels are to be achieved when we have a similar understanding of our social environment — our social insti­tutions — and most of all, our institution of property in land in its functional aspect of saving us from mere political control over the very sources of subsistence and life.

     I trust you and Mrs. Cobb had an excellent Summer in Maine and that all is going well with you in Washington since you returned.

     With many pleasant personal recollections I remain,

Sincerely yours,

SH:sm Enc.