Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1533

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Charles F. Kettering, Ridgeleigh Terrace, Dayton, Ohio.

September 13, 1954

Dear Mr. Kettering:

     I am greatly impressed by that excerpt from The Kettering Philosophy that appears in Newsweek of September 13. You have shown the adventurous disposi­tion of your mind in many important and previously unexplored directions.

     I wonder if you have ever thought of how our voluntary social organization apart from political ob­structionism and in spite of it still carries on. It must have occurred to you that it has a rational, understandable mode of operation the same as everything else that contributes to the abundance and advancement of human life, and you have probably imagined that the basic principles involved in it might be far more simple and direct than has ever been supposed. I think you must have a mind considerably similar to that of Michael Pupin, in which case it may interest you to see the little booklet, “The Inspiration of Beauty,” which I enclose. This, of course, is highly idealistic, perhaps seemingly far removed from practical affairs with which all my investigations have been chiefly concerned.

     Going to another extreme, I enclose also a condensed proposal for the practical non-political organization of a city under the legitimate motivation of giving its inhabitants honest public services in exchange for honest profit. Between these two extremes, there is, as I conceive it, a whole field of wonder and beauty that is only waiting to be examined and explored.

     May I ask some expression of your own reflections in regard to this.

Sincerely yours,

 

SH/m

Enc:  “Inspiration of Beauty”

Prospectus of Real Estate Organization