Spencer Heath's
Series
Spencer Heath Archive
Item 3096
Read Correspondence – to, from, by and about Leonard E. Read, president, The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
1947-1961
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2935
Penciling on notepad paper by Spencer MacCallum taking dictation
from Heath regarding Leonard Read’s classic article, “I, Pencil.”
No date
Dear Leonard Read:
Hurrah for you! Not only as a sound and pungent writer of libertarian economics but as a fictional fantasy man. I can’t tell you how much I and my grandson have enjoyed it and have enjoyed talking about it. Let’s have a lot more simplified spelling in economics, all sweetened up with entertainment such as even a half-mind should be able to enjoy.
Many best wishes,
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2313
Correspondence regarding a gathering facilitated by the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, at which Heath discussed his ideas on the possibility of free enterprise growing into the field of public community services. The four letters here are (1) Bradford B. Smith to Leonard E. Read, October 21, 1947; (2) W.M. Curtiss to Heath, November 15, 1947; (3) W.M. Curtiss to Fred R. Fairchild, November 15, 1947; and (4) W.M. Curtiss to Heath, January 19, 1948.
Dear Leonard: October 21, 1947
Your friend, Mr. Spencer Heath, came in to see me the other day. We had a pleasant hour together finding a good deal of common ground. When I saw him I remembered that I had talked with him and liked him when I met him at one of your Irvington evenings.
Mr. Heath did not undertake to express to me, on the occasion of his visit, the philosophy of a positive program of private enterprise which I understand he has developed over several years of investigation and cogitation. I suppose this was in natural response to the understandable reaction of those who, when possessed of important but revolutionary truth, fear that its too sudden exposition will only result in disbelief.
Mr. Heath, however, did express a desire to have an evening with a few people interested in private enterprise, in the course of which he would undertake to set forth his views, not only because he would like others to be advantaged but also because he would welcome severe if sympathetic criticism. He would like to be host on such an occasion, but expressed inexperience in its organization. So, of course, I promptly nominated you who are the most expert person in that kind of thing (along with a number of other things, like cooking steaks) in America. How does the idea appeal to you?
With best wishes,
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Bradford B. Smith
cc – Mr. Spencer Heath
__________________________________
Dear Mr. Heath: November 15, 1947
Enclosed is a copy of the letter I have just sent out to the following people:
Dr. Fred Fairchild, Yale University
Mr. Henry Hazlitt, New York City
Dr. Ray Westerfield, Yale University
Dr. Willford I. King, New York
Dr. Rufus S. Tucker, General Motors Corporation
Dr. Leo Wolman, New York
Dr. Ludwig von Mises, New York
Mr. Bradford B. Smith, United States Steel Corporation
In addition to the above, the following persons here at the Foundation have been extended a similar invitation
H. C. Cornuelle L. E. Read
W. M. Curtiss Dean Russell
F. A. Harper V. Orville Watts
I’ll keep in touch with you as December 3rd approaches and let you know the developments.
This morning’s mail brought your manuscript. I shall be interested in reading it.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ W. H. Curtiss
Executive Secretary
Enclosure
__________________________________
Dear Dr. Fairchild: November 15, 1947
Mr. Spencer Heath has been known to us here at the Foundation for over a year, and has visited us several times. He is an engineer by training, and of the highly intellectual type. In recent years he has given considerable attention to economic and philosophical problems.
He is the author of a number of pamphlets and has prepared the manuscript for a book entitled Citadel, Market and Altar. He calls it “The Outline of a New Science, Socionomy, the Science of Society.” It is a scholarly piece of work, although very heavy going for a lay reader.
John Chamberlain wrote of Heath’s book: “…after all these centuries, I believe that someone has at last discovered and formulated the true function of private property in land. Mr. Heath’s general philosophy is a widely creative one. A lot of people will disagree with him but he’ll catch most of them off base, for his arguments are not in the least conventional.”
One of the functions of this Foundation is to encourage basic research in the field of the social sciences. We feel that Mr. Heath’s work may deserve some critical attention by thoughtful persons interested in such matters, without thereby either endorsing or condemning his conclusions.
Mr. Heath has asked me, on his behalf, to extend to you an invitation to be one of his guests at dinner at The Town Hall Club, 123 West 43rd Street, on Wednesday evening, December 3rd at 5:30 P.M. He will discuss the possibilities of free enterprise re-entering fields of activities now occupied by government. He would like to have his views freely challenged.
Will you please let me know whether or not you can attend?
Sincerely yours,
/s/ W. M. Curtiss
Executive Secretary
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Dear Mr. Heath: January 19, 1948
I hope you enjoyed the dinner and discussions Friday evening as much as I did. Names and addresses of those who attended follow:
Dr. Bradford B. Smith, Economist
United States Steel Corporation
71 Broadway New York 6, New York
Dr. Willford I. King
President, Committee for Constitutional Government
28 Shore Road, Douglaston, L. I.
Dr. Ray B. Westerfield
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
Dr. Ludwig von Mises
777 West End Avenue, New York City
Dr. Rufus Tucker, Economist
General Motors Corporation
1775 Broadway New York City
The Foundation for Economic Education:
H. C. Cornuelle
W. M. Curtiss
F. A. Harper
Dean Russell
V. Orval Watts
William Johnson
Under separate cover I am returning a number of your manuscripts which you were kind enough to loan us. I fear we have kept them much too long.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ W. M. Curtiss
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 3021
Letter from Leonard Read, of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE),
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, to Heath at 11 Waverly Place East, New York 3, New York, enclosing an item on Georgism that FEE Occasionally gave out when the subject arose.
August 28, 1953
Dear Mr. Heath:
Thanks ever so much for your letter of the 22nd and a copy of your correspondence with Henry Hazlitt. You may some excellent points.
Enclosed is a memorandum entitled “Notes on the ‘Land Question’” which we sometimes send to Georgists who write to us.
My best!
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard E. Read
LER:bf
Encl.
NOTES ON THE “LAND QUESTION”
Ivan R. Bierly
There are many facets, probably more than I now realize, of the questions that follow. Emphasis is given, by excluding most of the side issues, to what appears to be the more fundamental aspects of them.
(1) If “access to the land” is of paramount importance to my life, how can I trust the evil, coercive power of government to let me live? To criticize “private property in land” as a monopoly right that is evil, and then to advocate “abolition of private property in land” in favor of the monopoly involved in “common property” (Progress & Poverty – p. 328-329) is, it seems to me, even accepting the thesis for the moment, the substitution of a greater for a lesser evil. I can see no way, no automatic means, of ever being assured of direct access to the land. In the instance of private property, I must (and can) deal with other persons; in the instance of common ownership, I must still deal with persons – not as individuals but then as representatives of government. Personally, I would rather take my chances on dealing with individual persons, as such.
Perhaps I have not studied George’s writings adequately, but at the moment it seems to me that he minimizes too much the indirect access to the land that is offered in an exchange economy. Also, it seems to me that he rather casually concludes that depressions are caused by private property in land. Are you acquainted with Benjamin Anderson’s book Economics of the Public Welfare –Financial & Economic History of the United States 1914-46 published by D. Van Nostrand?
(2) How can any system devised and put into effect by man be presumed to be self-perpetuating? It seems to me that this is the presumption, else the single tax program couldn’t be “the answer”. But assuming for the moment that it is “the answer,” so long as government is administered by man, what reason is there to suppose that it would continue to be the only tax? The 16th Amendment changed the situation in the United States a great deal. What’s to prevent another “16th Amendment” from having the same effects, even though the single tax were “the answer” and were previously put into effect? It seems to me that what man establishes he may also change. Thus the answer to our problem today seems to me to be a deeper one than any mechanistic proposal, as the single tax. Nothing short of rekindling of the desire for and an understanding of individual freedom can suffice – with this I’m sure you will agree. No system alone is adequate; and even then there would be the problem of passing on this vitalized understanding from generation to the next.
In fact, any system offered as an answer to all of our problems might be a stumbling block, in the sense that perception of the real problem of “understanding” might be dulled the sooner, or never attempted.
(3) Further, were I to endorse Henry George’s idea of “common ownership of land” on the basis that land rent is socially created, I can see no logical stopping point. Part of my personal income is derived from the fact that I live in a community where my services can be sold at a higher price than were I to live in some small, obscure place. Is this added income not a result of the greater demand of this particular community for such services as I have or wish to offer? If the idea is accepted that “ground rent” is to be taken because it is created by society, what about the increment of my personal-service income in this location compared with elsewhere?
It would seem to me that were I to accept this viewpoint, I would necessarily have to go the next step as George Bernard Shaw did after becoming acquainted with George’s writings. That is, the natural faculties and abilities of any individual person are also an endowment of nature; further, society rewards the more able members in proportion as they have the faculties to best serve it, and use them. Their choice of the extent of use of these faculties is a personal thing that they can control, but they can no more control the original endowment of faculties than you or I can.
Further, no matter how intellectually capable and willing a person might be, these qualities would have no value were he a Robinson Crusoe. But they do attain a value in an exchange economy, and, as you indicate with land, it is people who create value.
My point so far has simply been that if one sets out to tax away all values created by society, I don’t see how one can logically stop with land; it would seem to me that the same logic can be applied to justify that which I know you want most to avoid. Further, it is difficult for me to see in our exchange economy how anyone can fail to gain by the fact of his existence as a part of society simply through the act of producing for exchange. If there be an unearned increment for the land owner, is there not also for every other member of society?
(4) The following paragraph is quoted from page 468 of The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism by George Bernard Shaw, published in 1928 by the Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. in Garden City, New York, and is offered as evidence that George’s writings on land ownership were influential in encouraging Shaw and others to adopt Socialism as a good thing:
“Between Karl Marx and the Webbs came Henry George with his Progress and Poverty, which converted many to Land Nationalization. It was the work of a man who had seen that the conversion of an American village to a city of millionaires was also the conversion of a place where people could live and let live in tolerable comfort to an inferno of seething poverty and misery. Tolstoy was one of his notable converts. George’s omission to consider what the State should do with the national rent after it had taken it into the public treasury stopped him on the threshold of Socialism; but most of the young men whom he had led up to it went through (like myself) into the Fabian Society and other Socialist bodies. Progress and Poverty is still Ricardian in theory: indeed it is on its abstract side a repetition of De Quincey’s Logic of Political Economy; but whereas De Quincey, as a true-blue British Tory of a century ago, accepted the Capitalist unequal distribution of income, and the consequent division of society into rich gentry and poor proletarians, as a most natural and desirable arrangement, George, as an equally true-blue American republican, was revolted by it.”
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2375
Letter to Andrew Dickson White,
c/o Caxton Press, Ltd., Caldwell, Idaho
July 6, 1954
Dear Mr. White:
Some time ago Leonard Read sent us a copy of your Fiat Money Inflation in France. We were enormously intrigued by it, almost terrified by your poignant presentation, especially in its psychological aspects — a cloud, once no bigger than a man’s hand but which now threatens utter devastation.
It is our own happy conviction that there exists in the world and in Nature what we may call divine alternatives to political and thereby destructive administration of property and human affairs — that the pure contract relationship, the non-political technology of the market, as it comes to be understood and applied, is capable of transcending all the dilemmas that beset public affairs.
In line with this and with our compliments we are sending you some printed material that sets out the basic fallacies of coercive or political administration. It also throws, we hope, some light upon the non-coercive alternatives that only await our understanding of them in order to bless and serve mankind.
Again expressing our appreciation we remain,
Sincerely yours,
Spencer MacCallum Secretary
SM:p
ENC: “Society and Its Services”
“Progress and Poverty Reviewed”
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1164
Random taping by Spencer MacCallum of conversation with Heath at 11 Waverly Place, New York City, about the many libertarians such as Leonard Read, who would retain a measure of political government
July 1955
/The trouble is,/ you can’t find any argument for one-dollar taxation that isn’t just as good for one-hundred-dollar taxation. Putting it around the other way, all their arguments against one-hundred-dollar taxation are just as valid against the one-dollar taxation. So they don’t have a leg left to stand on.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2484
Letter to Heath from Leonard E. Read,
The Foundation for Economic Education,
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
December 4, 1956
Dear Spencer Heath:
Thanks so much for your letter of November 17th which just arrived, and for your piece, “Solution for the Suez.” I have read this with both interest and approval and want to show it to my associates that they might share in it.
I would like very much to meet with you on the question you raise and am sure a time agreeable to everyone can be arranged. I plan to be around here most of the time between now and the first of the year. Have you a time to suggest?
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard E. Read
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2490
Letter from Leonard E. Read,
The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.,
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
December 27, 1956
Dear Spencer Heath:
I shall long be grateful to you for sending me that volume by Sam Walter Foss, “Dreams in Homespun,” and also, for your nice letter of the 19th and the copy of the “Tomb of a Prophet.”
The next time we’re together I want to talk to you about Foss’s use of the term “ownership” – an idea that I find running through the thoughts of several philosophers. In my view they are using the wrong term, and it doesn’t – except in the cases of a few readers – convey what they have in mind.
My best to you in the New Year.
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard E. Read
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1588
Letter to Leonard E. Read,
Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
January 7, 1957
Dear Mr. Read:
I was happy to have your note of December 27th, and to know that you found pleasure in Sam Walter Foss’ Dreams in Homespun much the same as I have done for a good many years.
Of course Foss got off on the wrong foot in his use of the term “ownership,” but that was only because he was a poet and did not get off on any feet at all — only on the wings of song. And like most of our philosophers, he uses “ownership” just as they use “values” — in a metaphorical or metaphysical sense. So do our economists in very large part; for they, too, try to impute subjective properties to objective things, and often do not realize that, in the functioning of the market, the value of anything, as a fact, is simply what it actually brings in exchange, and not what somebody thought or felt about it in himself subjectively as a possibility. Adam Smith got this straight when he was consciously thinking about it, but was not able to hold to it all the way through.
I feel quite certain that it is because we transfer our feelings to things, trying to invest them with qualities which they in and of themselves do not possess, that we labor under so much confusion and are often so very disputatious about such terms as “ownership” and “value.”
My own approach to such matters is quite inductive and objective, as you will see by the marked portion of the enclosed galley proof taken from the Appendix, “On the Meanings of Terms,” attached to my soon-to-be-published volume, Citadel, Market and Altar.
Your kind good wishes for the New Year are cordially returned.
Sincerely,
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1607
Carbon of a letter to Mr. Leonard E. Read, Foundation for
Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
March 18, 1957
Dear Mr. Read:
I want you to give some further attention to the enclosed free-enterprise solution of the Suez Canal impasse. It occurs to me that this Canal solution affords a rare opportunity for education in the merits of the free-enterprise principle.
It has become practically non-controversial that political control in this instance is not only impractical but is also a serious menace to world security and to world peace. The situation seems ripe for a constructive alternative free-enterprise proposal to be favorably received. Witness the variety of persons (not only libertarians) who have already unanimously approved.
In general, we free enterprisers have to contend against political proposals that have not been obviously discredited. But here is a conspicuous opportunity for education in free enterprise to get a wide and attentive hearing. For in this proposed application, the free-enterprise principle can have a world-wide news value and publicity to correspond. The enclosed editorial from the Hollywood CITIZEN NEWS (circulation 340,000) is an example of this. And the quotations that I enclose are selected from almost a hundred favorable replies from a circulation of only four hundred copies of the proposal sent out.
I wish you would consider the advantages of your organization publicizing this point of view not only for its own sake but perhaps even more importantly as a trial balloon to crystallize public sentiment in favor of freedom and free enterprise in other acute situations and of its advancement as a policy in general affairs.
Application of free enterprise in the solution of the Suez, or even a very wide discussion of it, could bring wide attention to and great credit on an organization such as yours for promoting it, and quite possibly bring financial support from the great shipping and similar interests who would most directly benefit from a non-political operation and control.
I do not myself have the organization and facilities for doing full justice to this Canal opportunity, especially since I am in the midst of publishing a book and of other things that cannot be laid aside.
If this seems like a desirable side-undertaking for you and with possibilities such as I have indicated, I shall be very glad to have you take it up entirely de novo and without any credit to me for authorship or for anything already done.
Think it over carefully and let me know how it seems to you.
Cordially,
SH/m
Enc: CITIZEN NEWS editorial, 2/28
“Solution for the Suez” Extracts from letters rec.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1608
Carbon copy of a letter to Leonard E. Read,
Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
March 25, 1957
Dear Mr. Read:
Knowing as you do that I look upon the development of community-wide real-estate administration as the key to the future advancement of free enterprise in the field of public administration, you will not be surprised at the pleasure I have taken in reading Murray Rothbard’s contribution to your Special Essay Series.
As showing how sound reasoning does eventually prevail, I enclose copy of a recent letter from one of the longest-time and most hard-bitten Single Taxers I have known. This letter, of course, speaks for itself.
I feel sure that a paper such as Dr. Rothbard’s having the prestige of F.E.E. can have very far-reaching effects among the more practical-minded followers of Henry George, some of whom, like Mr. Codman in the real estate business and Mr. Lincoln of the Lincoln Electric Company, are very substantial people in all other respects.
Sincerely,
SH/m
Enc: cc, Codman to Heath, 2/22
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2525
Letter from John S. Codman,
222 Summer Street, Boston,
February 22, 1957
Dear Mr. Heath:
I apologize for long delay in acknowledging several documents from you. But weak eyes and hands make it difficult for me to carry on my correspondence as I should. I am especially interested in the pamphlet entitled “Why the Henry George Idea Does Not Prevail.” To this question my answer is much the same as yours and let me register my acceptance of the following sentences:
“That rent instead of taxes is the naturally ordained recompense for Community Services is the very heart and essence of the Georgian ideal.”
And also the following:
“But his instrument for employing rent in lieu of taxation was taxation itself, the very tool of tyranny.”
However, your most interesting statement is the following:
“Only the general landowning interest, depending as it does on public values for its recompense, can properly perform the public services. It has none but public services to perform, none but public revenue to receive.”
I do not quarrel with the above statement, nor do I endorse it but I have been thinking a lot about it and I have tried to envision how it would operate. There are many questions that arise but I cannot ask them now. However, I should like very much to hear from you again if you care to express any further ideas as to practical details.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ John S. Codman
JSC-D
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2538
Letter to Leonard E. Read,
Foundation for Economic Education,
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
April 10, 1957
Dear Leonard Read:
I take it your attention has been drawn to the article, “SKYHOOKS,” by Dr. O.A. Ohmann, as reprinted from the May-June, 1955, issue of the Harvard Business Review and recently receiving attention from our Spiritual Mobilization and perhaps other libertarian friends.
This Ohmann article, while impressing me at first favorably, later gave are considerable pause — so much so that I studied it carefully and at last set down my reactions in the form of a letter to the editor of the Harvard Business Review, copy of which I enclose.
I am sending this also to a number of our Spiritual Mobilization associates with a covering letter in this wise:
In the mobilization of spiritual Ideals, I feel we should be circumspect — as wise as serpents, though harmless as doves.
I therefore enclose for your consideration one man’s spiritual (I hope) reaction to Dr. Ohmann’s article, “SKYHOOKS,” as reprinted from the May-June, 1955, issue of the Harvard Business Review.
I shall be very happy to receive any comment that may occur to you.
I am sending my reactions to Dr. Ohmann’s article to you in much the same spirit and intent.
Cordially yours,
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2547
Letter from Leonard Read,
Foundation for Economic Education,
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
April 15, 1957
Dear Spencer Heath:
I am extremely grateful for your letter of the 10th and your comments on the article by Dr. Ohmann. Your insights, in my view, are perfectly remarkable. How few have perceived that “the values of the spirit are not diminished in their giving but multiplied to the giver in such measure as he gives”!
Several of your points go into my journal for this day. Thanks.
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard
Leonard E. Read
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2914
Carbon of letter to Donald H. Andrews,
Department of Chemistry,
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore 18, Maryland
April 22, 1957
Dear Dr. Andrews:
It seems a long time since my grandson and I enjoyed that happy visit with you at your office. We have been looking forward to seeing you again.
Meantime, and apropos of the music of the spheres, we are sending you a sermon entitled, “The Music of Man and the Worship of God,” by our friend, Walter Donald Kring, which speaks for itself and I am sure you will enjoy.
This reminds me of a recommendation by Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, New York, that I should obtain a copy of your “sermon” which you delivered to some church organization and which he greatly admires. I should like very much to have a copy of this, if you would be so kind.
I shall be happy to be in touch with your philosophic reflections on rhythm and rationality (in Galileo’s fundamental sense — ratios among numbers) in the physical world.
Cordially yours,
SH/m
Encls: Kring sermon
SSF Purposes
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2563
Program for annual meeting of the Christian Freedom Foundation, New York City, at which Heath spoke on “The Practice of Christian Freedom” and Leonard Read on “The Positive Approach to Combating Socialism.”
May 1-2, 1957
PROGRAM FOR ANNUAL MEETING OF
CHRISTIAN FREEDOM FOUNDATION, INC.
May 1st and 2nd, 1957
to be held at
The Great Northern Hotel, 118 West 57th Street, New York City
Wednesday, May 1st
10:00 A.M. Introductory
10:10 to 10:40 A.M. Dr. T. Robert Ingram Speaking on organizing and
operating his parish school
10:45 A.M. Louis Milione “The Freedom Campaign in the
Schools”
11:00 A.M. Victor Milione “The Freedom Campaign Among
Students”
11:15 to 11:35 Rev. Irving E. Howard “The Freedom Campaign in
Conferences”
11:35 A.M. *Spencer Heath “The Practice of Christian
Freedom”
12:15 P.M. Lunch
1:45 P.M. Percy L. Greaves, Jr. A Discussion of some
Economic problems you have
raised, with questions and
answers.
6:30 P.M. Dinner
7:30 P.M. Dr. Samuel Noah Kramer “Motives, Taxes and Laws in
Pre-biblical Sumer” (with slides)
Thursday, May 2nd
10:00 A.M. Dr. Melchior Palyi “Foreign Aid and State
Medicine”
11:00 A.M. Leonard Read “The Positive Approach to
Combating Socialism”
12:15 P.M. Lunch
1:45 P.M. Business Meeting (for Directors only)
4:00 P.M. Adjournment
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2572
Letter from Leonard E. Read,
Foundation for Economic Education,
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York,
enclosing page proof and printed material
May 21, 1957
Dear Mr. Heath:
I’ve just received in the mail this morning a copy of your book, ”Citadel, Market and Altar.”
I immediately read John Chamberlain’s introduction and I can hardly wait until I get into the book.
Many of your ideas and mine are identical. The attached, which will appear on the back cover of FEE reprints and in other places, seems quite consistent with what Chamberlain has to say about what you have written. The Golden Rule idea is straight cribbing from something you sent me recently. A bit of plagiarism I am happy to acknowledge.
Best wishes.
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard
Leonard E. Read
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2807
Typed slip of paper by Heath, with penned notation
By Spencer MacCallum, “Question put to Leonard Read”
June, 1957
HOW CAN WE PAY THE
POLICEMAN (GOVERNMENT)
WITHOUT ANY DANGER OF
BECOMING HIS SLAVE
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1623
Carbon of a letter to Leonard Read,
30 Broadway, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
June 4, 1957
Dear Leonard Read:
Remembering your kind interest in the theme of the paper that I read at the Annual Meeting of The Christian Freedom Foundation, I am very happy to send you a copy of that address, which I enclose.
I hope very soon also to place in your hands a copy of G. Lowes Dickinson’s Modern Symposium, about which we had some conversation in your office some months ago. This book is a very fine and highly rhetorical setting out of many divergent views on public and general affairs that prevailed around the close of the nineteenth century. The highly contrasting ideas and sentiments are arranged in a kind of ascending order, ending in an esthetic and metaphysic crescendo presumably the author’s own. Share with me the pity that toward the end, it is marred with a strong slant of socialism for which the nineteenth-century Liberalism was all too unwittingly setting the stage, but with some good, robust rhetoric withal.
Cordially yours,
SH/m Enc.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1786
Extract from notes dictated to Spencer MacCallum for
letter to Leonard E. Read which never was sent.
No date
Speaking with perfect candor, I have for many years had and still have the utmost sympathy and admiration for your libertarian work — so far as it goes. But I do feel that with you there is no wide open door for the discovery or discussion of any possible alternatives to our present system of taxation so far as some minimal degree of coercion is accepted as being sound.
It seems to me that our ideal should be such understanding as will bring about not a mere quantitative but a qualitative transformation of government from an arbitrary and coercive organization to one of reciprocal services for actual value received. Without some such ideal, it seems we are bound to compromise or at least temporize with an essentially evil principle.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 770
Fragmentary verbatim note by Spencer MacCallum
from random taping of conversation with Heath
No date
… question how to get political protection without opening the door to political control. He’s trying to rationalize a limited taxation, and he’s not altogether satisfied. Opitz, like Leonard Read, has yet to realize that you can’t use a little bit of a thing that is altogether bad.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 769
Recollected by Spencer MacCallum shortly after a conversation at which he was present between Heath and Leonard Read, of the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, New York, in which Read was considering the question whether or not to buck the Georgists and publish Murray Rothbard’s piece on land. The conversation was cut short by a telephone interruption. As I recall it, Read initiated the meeting to ask Heath’s opinion as to whether he should publish the paper. He subsequently did, as a special publication with limited distribution.
No date
Our forefathers depended on something NEW, and all our advance rests on that. Now are we going to stay where they left off, just to keep the ship from sinking? Or are we going to have to find something new of our own which will take us into port, so to speak — which will ADVANCE capitalism? The whole key to that something new is in the land question.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2648
Letter from Leonard E. Read, President,
The Foundation for Economic Education,
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
July 10, 1957
Dear Mr. Heath:
Only the night before last did I get around to reading your “The Practice of Christian Freedom,” the address you delivered before the Annual Meeting of the Christian Freedom Foundation. This really is wonderful and it’s always a privilege to have someone of your understanding in our midst.
It was good to have had you and your grandson at our seminar and I hope you continue to visit us often.
My very best!
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard
Leonard E. Read
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2905
Following a conversation between Heath and Leonard Read at which Spencer MacCallum was present, MacCallum made this note that Heath “would like to refresh his mind about these books and authors.”
No date
Berdyaev (Bur-jee-eff)
MacMurray, John: Reason and Emotion
Harding, Rosamond E.M.: An Anatomy of Inspiration
Von Eulenburg Weimar, Renee: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made:
The Human Body in the Light of Modern Science
(Also Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception)
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Heath also enjoyed Homer W. Smith’s Kamongo, Or The Lungfish
and the Padre, recommended by Archibald Wheeler at Princeton.
March 27, 1958.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2901
Carbon of letter to Leonard Read,
30 South Broadway, Irvington, New York
May 2, 1960
Dear Leonard:
I have just returned from Southern California, where I have been for most of the past year, making valuable and interesting contacts there.
Now I cannot remember what circumstance it was that prevented me from giving to your kindly letter of June 9, last year, the attention it deserved. Spencer and I are feeling a little sorry about this and wondering how to make amends for the omission.
I cannot overstate my complete sympathy with the work of your FEE. I only wish it could go further — in search of basic principle. I often wish we could talk together sometime in the faith that there is a sound principle working in our free enterprise system, the full understanding of which could enable us to dispense with any compromise with force, even at a minimum, in our public affairs. If this seems an unattainable ideal, which I believe it is not, it could at least give us a constant and unchanging star to guide the direction of our thought and ways. I have often wished that I could talk earnestly and searchingly with you.
Let me say that I think your letter is most beautifully and admirably phrased.
Sincerely,
Spencer Heath
SH/m
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 1693
Extract from letter to Leonard E. Read
August 24, 1961
As you know, I sympathize and in my own small way participate in the at-long-last-rising resistance to the bureaucratic tide, but am not fully satisfied with this. I want our conservativism to have its own specific dynamic and aim. If we are going onward and upward, we have got to have some real gas in our tank, and not depend upon the brakes alone merely to retard the popular drift down into the totalitarian Avernus.
In the present rising phenomenon of thousands of self-sustaining communities of many kinds (without benefit of any politics or taxation at all) we can see the new dynamic going forward faster than our appreciation or understanding of it.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 2913
Letter to Heath at 312 Halesworth Street, Santa Ana, CA,
from Werner Kloetzli, Jr., City Planner and Engineer,
4103 Tennyson Road, University Park, Maryland, with
enclosure of a brief essay of the same date
October 6, 1961
Dear Mr. Heath:
Mr. Leonard E. Read of the Foundation for Economic Education has suggested that I write you and ask for a copy of your book entitled Citadel, Market and Altar. I have become very much interested in private enterprise communities. My experience in city planning and publications of Mr. Read’s foundation have together created this interest.
At a Planning Board meeting in Mt. Laurel Township, N.J., last month, at which I was present, two things occurred by coincidence. A representative of the private electric utility that serves the region announced plans of his company to acquire a 120’ wide right-of-way across the entire length of the Township, a distance of over seven miles. In contrast, the impossibility of acquiring or even reserving a 120’ wide right-of-way for a street for a short distance of only about 1,600′ became evident. The two rights-of-way would be for different purposes, of course, the former for an electric utility line, the latter for a street. However, the point I wish to bring out is that the private agency is able to do its job, the public agency is not.
If major streets could be a business instead of a public operation, couldn’t such streets be successful and profitable, just as utility rights-of-way? Through this Township passes the New Jersey Turnpike, a toll road operated by an Authority; this toll road is public and supported by a bond issue, but it is an example of a road making a profit. Of course this Turnpike serves one of the heaviest long-distance traffic movements in the country, but it is an example of a road making a profit. If major street companies did not have government competition, it seems to me that they could succeed, and that the public could be benefited much more than it is now with its system of public roads.
I wrote to Mr. Read substantially as on the enclosure to this letter. Any criticism you might care to make would be very gratefully received.
A copy of your book would be very much appreciated.
Sincerely yours,
Werner Kloetzli, Jr.
Encl. City Planner & Civil Engineer
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Limited Municipal Government
Werner Kloetzli, Jr.
October 6, 1961
Let us create a limited municipal government. The first step would be to create (or find) a municipal corporation with a largely undeveloped land area in the suburbs of a large city. The second step would be to build there a suburban community with a limited government. Suburbs are growing all over the nation, and it certainly should be possible to create only one suburb as a freeman’s locale.
To avoid dependence on public roads for commuting to the large city, this limited government municipality should be located on a rail line.
Private schools may be the largest problem since most people are unaccustomed to paying for education. But by starting in undeveloped territory with new residents knowing what they are getting into, the problem could probably be overcome. Outstanding community advantages other than schools could help overcome the school financial problem.
A private country club could be a big attraction to get people to move into the municipality. (Incidentally, a private country club with an 18-hole golf course is under construction in Mt. Laurel Township, N.J.) And a club with golf courses, swimming pools, riding trails, bicycle trails, hiking trails, etc. would make unnecessary any municipal park system.
Private streets might be a legal problem. But there are private streets in existence in various places already, and there are no practical physical or financial reasons why more cannot be created. Local residential streets could be built by private home builders, and, in fact, home builders frequently build local streets today. Maintenance of these local streets could be financed by private organizations of residents rather than by the municipality. Major streets could be constructed as private toll roads.
As for utilities, private water and sewerage companies and other private utilities are no special problem. Many private utilities exist today. Also, private refuse collection is no special problem.
Private covenants running with the land could take the place of zoning and could otherwise assist in maintaining a good quality environment.
A suburb with a limited municipal government could be an opportunity to prove that free men can do great things under a free system. However, the suburb would have to be an outstanding place in which to live in order to beat the competition of other suburbs. Other suburbs built with usual government and financial methods would probably be somewhat less expensive for many families with several children of school age. But usual government methods often prevent or hinder good unusual community design. And such design would be a major item in making this suburb outstanding. With a limited government suburb which was an outstanding place in which to live, there would be a real opportunity to determine the value of the free method.
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Spencer Heath Archive
Item 3096
Typed note to Heath from Leonard E. Read, president, Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
December 26, 1961
My dear Spencer:
Thanks so much for your beautiful Christmas message. You are indeed a wonderful philosopher!
May the new year witness a continuance of your powers.
Cordially,
/s/ Leonard
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Metadata
| Title | Correspondence - 3096 |
| Collection Name | Spencer Heath Archive |
| Series | Correspondence |
| Box number | 19:3031-3184 |
| Document number | 3096 |
| Date / Year | 1947-1961 |
| Authors / Creators / Correspondents | Leonard E. Read |
| Description | Read Correspondence – to, from, by and about Leonard E. Read, president, The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York |
| Keywords | Read Correspondence |