Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2780

Carbon of letter to Ludwig von Mises, 777 West End, New York City

April 24, 1945

Dear Professor Von Mises:

Many thanks for sending me the copy of your address. I particularly want to use it in connection with a wealthy philanthropist who is getting a little disturbed about how to do good.

 I daresay you are entirely familiar with the digest of Professor Hayek’s book appearing currently in Readers Digest. However, I am sending you a copy of it, since I am distributing them.

 I have just finished Isabel Paterson’s “God of the Machine.” She has a strange point of view, or rather a strange manner of expressing it, but she certainly is original and, in politics and economics, truly sound (as you and I understand it). I had the pleasure of meeting her and quite a bit of conversation but that was before I read her book. She has expressed a great deal of interest in some ideas I presented to her and seemed quite eager to read my manuscript, so I have sent it to her.

 I am still pressing my manuscript on publishers and editors,

but without any definite results so far. I think the principal handicap is in being an unknown writer. It is probably a further handicap that I have approached the whole matter from such a very broad, philosophical point of view.

 I am wondering if you might not give me some further
assistance by way of suggesting persons more or less remotely connected with publishers and recommending either me or my ideas to them. I think my discovery of the specific function of the institution of property in land, should of itself be something of a recommendation, even without the obvious corollary of extending the contractual technique into the public and governmental services, thus expanding the area of contractual

relationships at the expense of coercion and status.

 

 My very best wishes and regards to both of you.

Sincerely,

Spencer Heath