Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1531

Carbon of letter from Heath to George S. Montgomery, Jr., 112 East 36th Street, New York, New York.

September 13, 1954

 

 

Dear Mr. Montgomery:

My very many thanks to you for publishing your fine exposé of the alien-minded academic conspiracy that has so far perverted the minds of the current generation against their traditional American ideals.

I refer, of course, to your Return of Adam Smith. I have just finished it with the profound hope that it and others similar will trail-blaze America back out of the present collectivist quagmire to the high ground of freedom and productivity that made her so rich and strong.

Anciently and until after Adam Smith, there was no large-scale administration of private property — only a primitive, small-scale productivity. All large accumulations were by political or similar coercion, and were consumed for the most part in debauchery and display by the tax-taking and landholding political powers. Popular resentment against them was sound.

After the time of Adam Smith this resentment was carried over against the land and capital owners who, now entirely separated from government, administered large savings productively and thereby for the enrichment of all.

The false notion based on Ricardo’s exclusively agricultural theory that non-political land holders automatically impoverish capital and labor by accepting the so-called “unearned increment,” or rent of land, is per­haps the chief root of the whole string of propaganda fostered by J.S. Mill and his classic “Liberals” and their inevitable collectivist successors. Their pro­paganda has destroyed in the academic mind all notion of the legitimacy of the natural rewards earned by the contractual administration and distribution of properties and products, including primarily the non-political ad­ministration of land. This fundamental hang-over fallacy came to its completest exposition in the writings of Henry George and his high-pressure American disciple, the Rev. Dr. McGlynn.

As I have enjoyed the keenness of your exposé at the academic level, I take it you may find similar in­terest in my critical analysis of the primary fallacy out of which the subversive and supposedly intellectual warfare against property and its contractual, as against its political, administration has grown.

Accordingly, I enclose herewith my “Progress & Poverty Reviewed and Its Fallacies Exposed,” together with a supplemental booklet, “The Trojan Horse of ‘Land Reform’” and, separately with my further compliments and for your convenient reference, this principal work of Henry George.

Expressing again my admiration for your work, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

SH/m

Enc:  “Progress & Poverty Reviewed”

“The Trojan Horse of ‘Land Reform’”

Progress & Poverty under separate cover