Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1526

Exchange between Jacob L. Hain, 5th and Penn Streets, Reading PA and Heath

September 11, 1954

Dear Mr. Heath:                             August 16, 1964

     I am enclosing a pamphlet which we published with the hope that it may be of some aid in stopping our drift into Socialism.

     Your letter in The Wall Street Journal goes to the heart of our difficulties. Until Congress reasserts itself and stops signing blank checks, we will be living under a form of dictatorship, and the press, radio, and T V will continue to slant, distort, and suppress unpleasant news.

     With best regards, I am,

                   Very truly yours,

                            Jacob L. Hain

 

Dear Mr. Hain:                             September 11, 1954

     Somewhat belatedly but no less sincerely I wish to thank you for your letter of August 16 and your very interesting and valuable booklet on “Voluntary Communism in the United States.” I think you have done a very fine job of research and have given the facts about voluntary communism in a fair and dispassionate manner.

     I am glad you liked my letter to the Wall Street Journal and am in hopes that many persons will come to view our public affairs in the way that you do.

     It is my profound belief that our entire political philosophy contains much of the same virus that characterizes the whole communist movement. Prominent in this is our almost universal acceptance of the idea that rent, and especially ground rent, is extortion (because when landlords were the government it was), and that profit is illegitimate (because merchants long ago were pirates). It seems to me that much could be done to clear up these basic misconceptions. In this connec­tion I am sending you two publications of my own, both aimed at the common fallacy of “unearned increment.”

     I do not know what your reaction may be, but if it interests you very much I shall be happy to send you my definitive critical review of Henry George’s Progress & Poverty as first published by the Freeman Magazine more than a year ago. We are not enough of us aware that land communism (or land socialism) is fundamental to all communism and that without it no communism can stand.

Thanking you for your courtesy, I am,

Very truly yours,

 

SH/m

Enc: “Trojan Horse of ‘Land Reform’”

“How Come that We Finance World Communism?”