Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3097

Kershner Correspondence – to, by, and about Howard E. Kershner, president, Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., 250 W. 57^th Street, New York 19, New York

1953-1960

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2483

Letter from Howard E. Kershner, President

Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc.,

26 West 58^th Street, New York 19, New York

No date

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

Thanks for your letter of December 3^rd with the copy of your letter to Mr. Hutchinson, the announcement of your six lectures, and the Purposes of the Science of Society Foundation. I have read all of them with full approval and have written a short editorial, welcoming your new organization and quoting most of your Point VI of the Purposes of your Foundation.

     With every good wish, I am

Most sincerely yours,

/s/ Howard E. Kershner

      President

HEK:dd

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2355

Letter from Howard E. Kershner, President,

Christian Freedom Foundation,Inc.,

26 West 58^th Street, New York City 19

December 31, 1953

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 It was kind and thoughtful of you to send me the generous Christmas Greeting, and I greatly appreciate it. May I take this occasion to wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

     I have just returned from a continental trip, ad­dressing groups of ministers and contacting theological seminaries. We have never found such generous response to our efforts.

     With all good wishes, I am

 

 

Sincerely yours,

HEK/eml

 

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1542

Proposed letter to Dr. Howard E. Kershner,

Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., 26 West 58th Street, New York City 19, in anticipation of printing the substance of Item 1549 in a folder that could be enclosed with this letter. Project was not carried out.

Summer-Fall 1954

 

 

Dear Dr. Kershner:

Doubtless you are aware that there is considerable confusion among authorities over the concept of national income. There are those (including Mr. Roy A. Foulke of the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation) who hold the materialistic view that only those material things which result from the application of labor to land can be regarded as national income. Our own is that national in­come is the value as appraised in the market of all those things which men do for and confer upon others by the process of exchange, and does not include anything that anyone does for or confers upon himself or upon anyone else otherwise than by the medium of contract and exchange.

Your own editorials in Christian Economics show so much intellectual penetration into the mechanism of the market that we think it might interest you to read the enclosed statement which we have prepared as to what constitutes the national income.

With almost every issue of Christian Economics we feel like congratulating you more and more on the enlightening work that you are doing and are happy to pledge our continuing admiration and support.

Very sincerely yours,

SH:m

Enc: Folder on national income

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2419

Letter from Heath to Howard E. Kershner, President, Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., 26 West 58^th Street, New York 19, New York

September 19, 1955

 

Dear Dr. Kershner:

The other day my grandson read to me your beautiful Sermonette in the September 6 issue of “Christian Economics”. In fact, he read it twice to me, and only just now I have had him read it to me again.

     I think it is one of the finest expressions of its kind that I have ever seen or known. It only confirms my strong belief in the great good you are doing not only in the economic way but in those things which we consider higher than food and raiment and towards which we all aspire.

Sincerely yours,

SH/m

ENC: “The Trojan Horse of Land Reform”

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2419

Letter to Heath from Howard E. Kershner, President, Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., 26 West 58^th Street, New York 19, New York

September 27, 1955

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

Thanks for the kind words in your letter of September 19. It is such expressions that give us the courage to continue.

     I have read “The Trojan Horse of Land Reform.” It is the best statement I have seen setting forth the truth about the whole land program. The Henry George people have not made much headway in this country, and it does not seem to be a critical issue at this time. If it should become so, we have filed your statement for possible use.

     The Sermonettes are now used in about 660 churches for a total of 110,000. Your approval of this one effort is highly encouraging.

     With all good wishes, I am

Most sincerely yours,

/s/ Howard E. Kershner

     President

HEK/lj

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1604

Extract from letter from Heath to Dr. Howard E. Kershner,

president, Christian Freedom Foundation, New York City

February 26, 1957

 

I find it helpful to think of freedom as one must think of living: not merely as a condition, but as a process, a proceeding; not as something possessed, but something being done.

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1942

Extract from carbon of letter re Citadel, Market & Altar to

Dr. Howard E. Kershner, The Christian Freedom Foundation,

250 West 57th Street, New York City

August 22, 1957

 

This book /Citadel, Market & Altar/is founded primarily on physical and biological science, but I am sure you will appreciate the fact of its leading into high conceptions concerning the creative nature and spiritual potentialities of our free enterprise society — as distinguished from political affairs.

I trust you will enjoy reading it and that you will be stimulated — -perhaps also inspired — by some of its unusual points of view.

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1604

Letter from Heath to members of the

Christian Freedom Foundation, New York

September 10, 1957

 

 

Dear Member of the Christian Freedom Foundation:

 

Through the kindness of Dr. Kershner, I was invited to read a short paper entitled, THE PRACTICE OF CHRISTIAN FREEDOM, before the Annual Meeting last May at The Great Northern Hotel in New York.

 

As you may recall, this paper was very well received, so much that I am having copies of it sent to a number of persons known to be favorable to the principle of free enterprise — among whom you are, of course, included.

 

This is being done under auspices of The Science of Society Foundation, Inc., of whom I am President and a copy of whose Purposes I enclose herewith.

 

Wishing you every inspiration on behalf of human freedom and the creation of spiritual values, I am

 

 

SPENCER HEATH
SH:m                    

Enclosures

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2727

Letter from Howard E. Kershner,

President, Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc.

250 West 57^th Street, New York 17, NY, attaching draft of an editorial

on CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR, to be published in Christian Economics

December 13, 1957

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 

I have just finished reading your great book CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR, and enclose herewith an Editorial, which I propose to run in CHRISTIAN ECONOMICS.

 

With congratulations and best wishes, I am

 

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Howard E. Kershner

     President

HEK:sjp

 

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Editorial 12/12/57

Re-write 12/13/57

 

Citadel, Market and Altar

 

In this issue, we published a review of Spencer Heath’s remarkable book “Citadel, Market and Altar” (The Science of Society Foundation, Inc., Baltimore, Md.) This is a deep, philosophical, hard-to-read, but richly rewarding book. Its pages record the activity of a great and benevolent mind, dealing with the problems of human existence. Spencer Heath sees the possibility of peace, plenty, and high spiritual development.

 

     Standing in the way of this happy accomplishment are: The nationalized states (which) penalize and paralyze their people’s exchange, both within and without. Impoverishment follows. They blindly destroy themselves, and fall by each other’s hands.”

 

     Condemning the use of force and coercion as distinguished from the voluntary cooperative activities of man, Spencer Heath says:

 

 “Standing now before the threshold of a social glory the realization of which will dwarf all poets’ dreams, men must again choose whether in their community affairs the practice of force shall cast them from the House of Life into outer darkness or the practice of public service by profitable exchange shall lift them into the waiting freedom and fullness of life. The great social mutation that awaits and impends is the social-ization of public force into public service by exchange.

 

 “When the great business of community service is carried on as a business and not by depredation upon business, it will be magnificent above all other business in the world.”

    

     This is one of the most eloquent condemnations of the use of force and violence to interfere with and control the activities of men, that we have seen. It is, moreover, a most eloquent plea, for the confinement of government to the protection of life and property, the restraining and punishment of predation and the practice of freedom in the market-place. It properly assumes that these activities must be carried on by moral men, who live in accordance with God’s moral law.

 

     A glimpse of the enormous advantages that will accrue to mankind as the result of setting up such institutions and conscientiously living under them, is beautifully stated by Spencer Heath in the following words:

 

 “Society, thus, will have a free and unrestrained economic system including a free, efficient and self-supporting system of public services. Each will exchange its wealth and services with and thus enhance the productivity of the other. Nature will have achieved a form of integrated life in which the component individuals will have circumstanced in completest freedom to give and to receive. The consequent abundance of economic goods will come to them almost as automatically as the filling of the lungs with air.

 

“Emancipated alike from environmental compulsions that beset and enslave the whole primitive world, and from the political and governmental repressions and restrictions that bind and burden the functioning of the social realm, the spirit of men will leap upward in the free practice and culture of all the artistic, esthetic and spiritual powers with which it is essentially endowed.”

 

     This book will richly reward the patient philosopher, who wishes to delve to the depth in this analysis of Society. We close by citing the following pertinent lines:

 

“In every age, so far as men have practiced the golden rule of service by mutual exchange, the creative ‘power of God’ has blessed them with a measure of freedom, and with freedom, abundance.

 

 “When private persons put others under compulsion by force or deceit and thus get without giving, such actions are forbidden and punished as crimes. But precisely similar acts, systematized under governmental power, we morally approve and applaud or blindly accept and endure. Men acting as government, supposedly as servants of all, have no code of pro-social conduct such as there is for plain and private men, for those who are limited to the voluntary relationships of consent and exchange.

 

 “Every social perversion, every business depression and the downward trend of production and exchange that marks the social decline, can be traced to cumulative repressions of the social process by political authority. This dries the very springs of public revenue, bankrupts the productive economy and destroys all the values that society creates.”

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3097

Book review by Rev. C. Westhof of Heath’s Citadel, Market and Altar

January 7, 1958

 

Exploring Social Organization

REV. C. JOHN WESTHOF

Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Edmond, Okla.

CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR

By Spencer Heath, Science of Society Foundation, Baltimore, 1957. 259 pp. $6.00.

THE OBJECTIVITY of a scientist, the appraisal of a businessman, the spirit of a mystical saint, the language of a poet — these are the elements which make this book an experience in reading. Above them all, however, is the breath-taking vision of this modern explorer in the realm of social organization.

None of these elements appear by accident. They are the flowering of the author’s spirit. For Spencer Heath is scientist, businessman, mystic, saint and poet. A successful inventor who supplied most of the airplane propellers used in World War I, Heath retired to devote his time to the avocation of horticulture. This led to research into the natural sciences. From this has come his study of human relationships.

Energy Concept

Spencer Heath believes in the future of society which he regards as a crowning achievement of man. A few years ago this reviewer heard a physicist predict that in time man would measure social energy just as physical energy is now measured. The thought was greeted with a good deal of doubt in his mind. Now comes Heath with a dynamic “energy concept of population.” The thesis is that the society in which the individuals live long has more energy potential to devote to progress than the society in which lives are short. This thesis is buttressed with a portfolio of facts and arguments which should prove reassuring to the Western world.

 The author believes — and convincingly demonstrates — that only a free society can increase the life span and allow the standard of life to rise. He is a firm believer in the free-contractual system for the exchange of goods and services. He describes the democracy of the market as fundamental, and says of it, “This is democracy based on mutual service in mutual freedom — the right to serve in order to be served — the right of voluntary exchange.”

Three Fundamentals

Citadel, Market and Altar takes its name from the three fundamentals of the social organism, the functions of which are coercion, cooperation and consecration. The first is exercised by government, the second by the market, and the third in the areas of the arts and religion. As one reads this portion of the book he is reminded of the Master’s words to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven.

 Several chapters are devoted to a study of land and property management. Spencer Heath believes that private ownership of land is vital to freedom. This thesis has never been attacked, but still we witness the phenomenon of the constant whittling away of man’s right to ownership. Heath shows how this erosion of property rights leads to “land communism without which no totalitarian power can be final or complete.” This section of the book needs to be read and reread by every thinking person — and by some who have never stopped to think.

Old World Ways

Heath traces the rise of American prosperity in the century of freedom and mourns the departure from it in the present age. “But the twentieth century reintroduced the Old World ways. Government came to be worshipped more than feared and confined, and the constitutional barriers went down. Government began absorbing all liberty and property and is now itself so looked to for welfare and freedom that insecurity, uncertainty and anxiety widely prevail.”

 This is a tremendous book, difficult to read in many spots, but doubly rewarding to the reader. It is mentally invigorating and spiritually stimulating. In this world with Sputnik jarring the nerves of free men, it is refreshing to remember the billions of stars God put in the heavens, and to remember that the universe is on the side of the society which will study His laws, His Spirit, and venture forth in the freedom He designed for mankind.

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2871

Penned note from Heath at 312 Halesworth Street, Santa Ana, California, to Howard E. Kershner, president, Christian Freedom Foundation, New York City. No indication that it was sent, but probably it was copied and mailed.

July 16, 1959

 

 

Dear Dr. Kershner:

 

Here is that circular /describing/ my daughter, Mrs. MacCallum, and her special youth service, “Catoctin Creek,” just in case you should learn of any needing such services in the course of your travels and other work.

 

     I have found much pleasure in reading your “God, Gold and Government.” It seems to me just about the most simple and lucid explanation there is of the necessary fundamentals of any successful civilization — especially when _______ from the political, i.e. the pathological side. We must hope and pray for such understanding as will bring into our public affairs the same kind of organization and productive procedures as we now live by in our non-political affairs. This ideal is presented in general terms by the enclosed — and much further developed elsewhere.

Cordially,

/s/ Spencer Heath

 

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3097

Carbon of a letter from Howard E. Kershner, President, Christian Freedom Foundation, Inc., 250 West 57^th Street, New York 17, New York, to George

S. Benson, President, Harding College, Searcy, Arkansas

July 14, 1960

Dear Dr. Benson:

     As you may know, Spencer Heath is a distinguished thinker in the field of Christian philosophy and economics. A few years ago he gave a series of talks at Sewanee University. Not long ago he spoke at one of our annual meetings and was very well received.

     The six talks he gave at Sewanee are outlined in the enclosed leaflet. I had lunch with Mr. Heath today and he tells me he would be willing to repeat this series to classes in some colleges where there is general interest in the subject. I thought at once of Harding College and told him I would send you this note. At the bottom of the leaflet you will see both his Baltimore and his Santa Ana, California address. Mr. Heath is a discerning scholar and always has something interesting to say.

     All good wishes.

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Howard E. Kershner

Howard E. Kershner

   President

HEK:kk

Enclosure

 

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3097

Carbon of letter from Howard E. Kershner, President, Cristian Freedom Foundation, Inc., 250 West 57^th Street, New York 17, New York, to James C. Ingebretsen, Campbell House, PO Box 877, San Jacinto, California

August 1, 1960

 

Dear James:

     I wonder if you know Spencer Heath who wrote the remarkable book, CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR. He is, in my judgment, one of our most profound libertarian thinkers. He spends a portion of his time in California and would be available for consultation and talks at Campbell House if you would like to use him.

     Some years ago he made an address at our Annual Meeting which proved to be very interesting.

     You can get some idea of his thought by looking at the two papers enclosed.

 

All good wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Howard E. Kershner

   President

HEK:dh

Enclosure