Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2730

Carbon and penned notes for letter to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Washington DC re T:R:EO:4, HHC, application for tax exempt status for the Science of Society Foundation, Inc., 1502  Montgomery Road, Baltimore 27, Maryland. Application failed because publication of a book by a founder, in this case Citadel, Market and Altar, was not an allowable activity.

April 12, 1960

 

 

STATEMENT OF SPENCER HEATH

Dear Sir:

 

I was the founder and for some ten or more years directed The Science of Society Foundation (not inc­orporated) which in 1956 became incorporated as The Science of Society Foundation, Incorporated. I am at the present time the President of that Corporation.

 

 This Foundation was formed mainly for research and report on the origins, the mode of operation and the potentialities of the voluntary systems of society, and not to propagandize for any program of political action or any set of beliefs, but rather to seek objective under­standing of our free and voluntary institutions in general, and especially of the system of free economic enterprise on which the revenues required for all purposes, both public and private, must necessarily depend.

 

My own background for this research began with a youthful enthusiasm for the natural sciences, followed by Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in law from the National University in Washington, D.C. (now George Washington), and a successful practice in that place until 1912. From then until 1929 I was engaged in engineering development and manufacturing, chiefly aeronautical, and during the period of World War I largely as a supplier to the United States and Allied Governments, for which war work both Army and Navy awarded certificates of merit and appreciation to me.

 

 In 1929 I disposed of all my engineering and manufacturing properties and patents to the Bendix Aviation Company, with which Company I continued for two years as research and consulting engineer in this country and abroad.

 

 Back in the 1920s, I had purchased and extensively improved the 110-acre place in Elkridge, Maryland which is now the home of the Foundation. For landscaping this area, among other things, I built a greenhouse specially designed and equipped for the propagation of evergreens. In this connection I sent two young persons to the University of Maryland to study landscape gardening while I carried on experimental plant propagation under advice and direction of the University.

 

 During my semi-retirement during the period 1930-1939 I resumed my early scientific interests by extensive systematic readings (at college level) in virtually all of the natural sciences. This was done with a special view to their method of investigation as a possible pattern for research into and a like understanding of the social organization. For some four years of this period, from 1934 to 1937, I was a teacher and lecturer for the Henry George School of Social Science in New York City, and during that time I read extensively also in the literature of social and political sciences and lectured occasionally on the history and philosophy of freedom at various institutions such as The John Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia and the Senior Faculty Organization at McGill University in Montreal.

 

 From 1938 onward, under the style of The Science of Society Foundation (not incorporated), I published privately various booklets and pamphlets reporting my researches on the nature of the Voluntary Society such as The Energy Concept of Population, Private Property in Land Explained, and Real Estate Administration as Community Services. These and other lesser publications formed the basis of the manuscript for Citadel, Market and Altar, which was published in 1957 as a research report by The Science of Society Foundation, after its formal incorporation in 1956. This report follows, as to the method of research, the notable series of seminar lectures given at the University of Chicago by visiting professor A.R. Radcliffe Brown, Chairman of the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford University, England, in 1937 but not published until 1957. These lectures, now published under the title, “A Natural Science of Society,” afford an example of scientific research and method basically similar to my own.

 

 For the ten years now past I have devoted practically all my effort and time and modest resources to publicizing, from a background in the natural sciences, the results of my readings and researches in the social and political sciences and indicating further possible understanding and applications. As one example, the Foundation publicized in 1950 a proposed non-political solution of the then acute problem of the Suez Canal. Notwithstanding its necessarily limited circulation, this proposed solution was heartily commended by very eminent authorities in science, economics and public affairs. Among these were: — Dr. Graham P. DuShane, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Dr. Ludwig von Mises, internationally eminent and now visiting Professor of Economics at New York University; Dr. William E. Rappard, President, Institute Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva, Switzerland; Honorable Peter Grimm, United States Ambassador at Rome; Lord Robert Gilbert Vansittart, late Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, London, England and, nearer at home, Dr. Felix Morley, educator, publicist and political scientist, now at Gibson Island, Maryland, and Dr. Josef Solterer, Chairman, Department of Economics, Georgetown University — all as shown by the exhibit attached to and made a part of this statement.

 

 By reason of its being in the nature of a research report, the Foundation’s major publication to date, “Citadel, Market and Altar,” enjoys a select but limited distribution. It has been generously commended however, by persons of public reputation and authority. Among these are Dr. Roscoe Pound, political scientist and Dean Emeritus, Harvard University School of Law; Dr. William Ernest Hocking, Alford Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Harvard University; Dr. Edwin G. Nourse, Past Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers to the President; Dr. Glenn C. Saxon, Professor of Economics, Yale University; Dr. A. H. Hobbs, Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania; Dr. Louis B. Wehle, Ex-associate United States Ambassador to the Netherlands; Dr. Charles C. Gillispie, Professor of History, Princeton University; and Dr. John J. Grebe, former member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and now Director of Nuclear and Basic Research, Dow Chemical Company — all as shown on the printed circular and the printed excerpts of book reviews, American and foreign, attached to and made part of this statement.

 

 For the past eleven months work for the Foundation has been carried on principally by me and at my own expense among Colleges and business organizations in Southern California and by Spencer H. MacCallum, Secretary of the Foundation, in research under the direction and approval of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, gathering thesis material for his Masters and Doctors degrees in Social Anthropology. This is being done without cost to the Foundation and with a view to further advancement of its purposes and work.

 

 The Foundation work in Southern California has included, among other things, a series of informal, two-hour seminars at one of the group of Associated Colleges at Claremont, California. These four seminars were proposed and arranged for by Dr. George C. S. Benson, President of Claremont Men’s College, specifically for the purpose of examining and evaluating the research work of the Foundation as reported by its president and in its principal and in its lesser publications. These seminars were attended by the President of the Colleges and participated in by him and his administrative assistant and by faculty members from the various departments of political and social science. This and other activities of the Foundation in Southern California are listed on the partial schedule hereto attached and made a part of this statement.

 

 All services given to the work of the Foundation by its officers and personnel are voluntary and without salary or compensation in any form. It is my desire and firm intent that every act or undertaking by the Foundation shall fall within the provisions of Section 501(c) of the 1954 Code and shall be strictly within the purposes and limitations of the Foundation as set out in its Articles of Incorporation and that its principal officers shall continue indefinitely to donate their services and that no money, from whatever source, shall be paid to any officer or employe of the Foundation otherwise than for full value received.

 

 It is now planned to enlarge the present Board of Trustees of the Foundation to include additional members of standing and repute and to employ in this work substantial donations that are now contingent upon the Foundation’s being found eligible for tax exempt status as a scientific and educational organization having value in the near view and to the long-term public interest.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

The Science of Society Foundation, Inc.  

 

                           

                   (signed) Spencer Heath

                            President

 

 

Spencer Heath/fm