Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1516

Carbon of letter from Heath to Gilbert M. Tucker, President, Economic Education League, Inc. 128 State Street, Albany, New York.

June 20, 1954

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Tucker:

     I appreciate more than I can tell you your dili­gence in writing me at great length and so many times. I have been on the point of replying to your kind let­ters a number of times but could not quite make up my mind what to say to you; so, I have let the matter drift. What your letters seem to say most to me is this, that you are not able to understand the things I have written about the vitally important public func­tion automatically performed by the institution of private ownership of land.

     The reason you have so much difficulty in under­standing this, as I see it, is your absolute belief that the land lord performs no service to society, and that what he receives by way of rent or increment is not in recompense for any services performed. These two dogmas, (1) that the land lord performs no services, and, (2) that he is the recipient of an unearned in­crement, being held as faith and of psychological fixa­tion make it psychologically impossible for you to entertain even for the time being any conceptions that seem to run counter to these.

     I know by my own experience that it is quite pos­sible for us to become so saturated with a fallacious conception that we not only are unable but are unwilling even to the point of resentment to entertain any con­trary conceptions.

     In the present instance I think if you could enter­tain in your mind and heart even a possibility that the land lord does perform a service to society for which his rent or increment is an automatic recompense, you would have much less difficulty in understanding just what this service is and how it is performed, even though the landowner himself is no more conscious of it than anybody else who has not looked into it.

     Please do not suppose that I wish you to accept any different point of view. I only think it would be most fortunate if you could hold your present con­victions in abeyance long enough to give some impartial and dispassionate examination to the things I have sent you. You would then be able to choose between two points of view, both of which you would understand, instead of being bound to the one which you so long ago accepted and have cherished ever since.

     I think Dr. McGlynn’s “Doctrinal Statement” is the finest short exposition of Henry George’s argument for expropriation that was ever made. I find that almost everyone who reads it follows the example of the Pope’s representatives who in 1892 ruled that it contained nothing contrary to the Christian Faith or to Catholic Doctrine. Before very long I hope to send to you my own critique of Dr. McGlynn’s statement.

     For just one point or two at the present time, think how he dogmatizes that God ordained the political government to expropriate the landowner by confiscating his rent, and how he dogmatizes that the rent, or land value, or increment, as he calls it, is no part of the current production where the land is, but is a “value dis­tinct from and irrespective of the products of private industry existing thereon.” He overlooks that this very rent or unearned increment is itself necessarily a part of “the products of private industry” and has to be produced by the possessor of the land in order to give it up to the landowner in exchange for his services of distributing the land and thereby eliminating the politi­cian – or the local government as you might prefer to say.

     Please let me express my appreciation of your personal friendliness and my high esteem of your moral sensibilities and sense of obligation to advance the wel­fare of mankind.

Very cordially yours,

 

SH:sm