Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1770

Pencil dictation notes for a letter to Benjamin F. Fairless taken from Heath by Spencer MacCallum.

1955?

Dear Mr. Fairless:

     I wish to commend your various utterances to the effect that not businessmen alone but every consumer, including wage-earners, should stand up and be counted in the fight between socialistic extensions of the political power over the free enterprise from which all our modern, civilized living is derived. It is too blindly assumed that the conflict is between wage workers and the administrators who are owners or who represent them. The real conflict is between society which is trying to grow and to evolve out of political regimentation and those persons and organizations who seek to re-impose, in benevolent guise, the ancient chains of despotism on men.

    However, as Adam Smith made clear, the good or evil effects of public policies, although they fall upon everyone, employers, wage earners and property-owners alike, do fall directly and indirectly upon the owners of sites and resources within the territory affected, and only ultimately and remotely upon those engaged in private business and wage-earning. The land-owning class, said Adam Smith, are the immediate sufferers from any betrayal of the public interest and the first and immediate beneficiaries  . . .