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Doing some genealogy work, I came across this August, 1974 letter in my files. It was from my grandfather, Weld Carter (1900-1989), to his sister Elaine, from whom he'd long been estranged (their mother had not approved of his marriage in 1924!), and with whom he had fairly recently renewed contact, to their mutual delight. (For context: Manheim is Manheim, PA, in Lancaster County, where they moved in the early to mid 40s to farm. I assume the foundations referred to are RSF and Lincoln.) Ultimately there were 12 TRED books, so this work continued for another 4+ years after this letter was written. [Wyn Achenbaum, 10 April 2006]

I became a convert to the social philosophy of Henry George back in the early 40's, shortly before we moved to the farm. In 1953, on invitation from the director of the Henry George School in Chicago, Marjorie and I moved to Chicago for a three-year stint for me as director of education there, returning to Manheim April 1, 1956.

That Christmas the director of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, at the instigation of one Sid Evans of San Diego, whom I had met in Chicago, asked me to make an experimental tour of colleges and universities for three months in the fall of '57 to see what, if any, interest I could uncover in the ideas of George among academicians. (The Foundation is the publisher of George's works and is dedicated "To Promote the Economics of Henry George,")

To my surprise, I uncovered so much interest that the following year we were invited to resume the tour on a permanent basis, which we did until the summer of 1962, when I resigned and we returned to the farm.

During these years I had discovered numbers of interested individuals and I had picked five to go to New York as guests of the Foundation in October 1960 to confer as consultants to the Foundation, advising it as to how best to spread these ideas among college ranks.

This group advised that what was needed was a re-expression of George's ideas in the language and mathematics of modern economists and that the way to develop such a literature was through a conference or a series of annual conferences. This the Foundation accepted and agreed to finance such a conference in the summer of '61, which I had a large hand in organizing and planning (at the U of Colorado in Boulder.) This proved so successful that another was authorized for the following year on the campus of the U of Illinois. So, after my resignation, the Foundation again negotiated for my services in a way that would not involve such traveling.

By the end of '62 we gained three new members and at a meeting in Feb. '63 the group decided to call itself "the Committee on Taxation, Resources and Economic Development" which abbreviates to "TRED" by which it is now known.

Two of our most illustrious members have died; three others resigned. Today we number 12, as you will see from the enclosed letterhead. These twelve (+1 who died) include four of the past presidents of the National Tax Association. Inasmuch as only every third year is a president of NTA drawn from academia, this means that TRED can claim four of the past 5 academics to have served NTA as president. In addition, the editor and the associate editor of the National Tax Journal are TRED members and four other TRED members are or have been directors of the NTA.

We will hold our 13th conference at Madison this October, with George Break, our most recent member, as program chairman. So far we have published six volumes of proceedings and we have two more in process, all by the University of Wisconsin Press. The announcement of TRED 6, our most recent, is enclosed. It also lists the earlier five. Also enclosed are copies of our most recent program, so that you may get some feeling about the operation.

This year early in February I was informed by the Foundation that it had transferred the support of TRED to another foundation and that it was retiring me as of May 1. Certainly at my age this was not remarkable (it was remarkable I had lasted so long!) In addition it was a fact that the Foundation had fallen on hard times a/c market conditions and some poor investments. But there was something cavalier about it and TRED was very upset about it, as no apparent adequate replacement of me had been provided. So on 7/1 TRED's chairman negotiated my reemployment on a part-time basis, but at only 1/3 my former inadequate salary, for one year, to ease TRED over the transition to the new sponsor; but no arrangement for expenses has yet been made.