My Years with Ludwig von Mises

CHAPTER VII Life in New York

THOUGH LU had tried incessantly, he had not yet found a position to relieve our financial worries. He asked little for himself and he never complained, but it hurt him, for my sake, that we had to live so carefully. Nevertheless, though we hardly ever went out for dinner, he insisted on going to the theater once a week.

America was at war and we, who had lived through so much war in Europe, were astonished at how little the war seemed to affect people in America, with the exception of those, of course, whose sons or husbands were in the service. There was no food shortage. Many items were rationed, but I remember only coffee and sugar having been really scarce.

I was dissatisfied with myself. Everyone around me was working, and I got restless. I had to remind myself again and again of the promise I had given myself, that Lu’s work and well-being shouldl be the main purpose of my life. Lu noticed my dissatisfaction and urged me to go back to the stage. But that was impossible for a newcomer in a foreign country—especially in wartime—without connections to the stage. Then he insisted I should try radio, and that I did. For weeks I auditioned with WOR, CBS, and WNEW. I got encouraging letters and was invited for further auditions. The result was always the same: “Wait. Come to our studio every day. We promise you, as soon as a part turns up for you, you are going to get it.” But I could not wait weeks and months sitting around in studios and agencies; Lu needed me at home. He was completely helpless; he did not even know how to boil an egg. Years later he would often say: “The greatest invention of the twentieth century is instant coffee; even I can fix myself something to drink. It is easier than peeling an orange.” Lu never learned that one’s right hand could be used for other purposes than writing. His manual dexterity was zero. But I knew his weaknesses; I had known them before we were married, and perhaps I loved him the more for them.

The summer of 1942 taught us something about middle-class America. We went to the Poconos for our vacation. Lu had chosen the hotel, a small, simple inn, with perhaps thirty guests in all. The owner of the place picked us up at the station, and when we passed the churchyard she said, “This is the cemetery. Now we are slowly approaching the inn.” After a few days Lu told me he thought it would have been more appropriate if she had said: “After a short stay in our inn you will be rapidly reaching the cemetery.”

The guests were all extremely friendly and expected the same from us. Lu’s reserved ways—always polite of course—tickled their curiosity, and they had to know more about us. Soon they found out that Lu was a writer and a professor, which meant to them he was a school teacher. And that school teachers were poorly paid they all knew. They certainly never had met a scholar before.

One morning a woman told me: “I read an article of your husband’s in the Mercury, ‘Inflation and You.’ How interesting it is to meet a writer; I read all through breakfast. You folks must tell me more about writing. How long, would you say, did it take your husband to do this article? What is he doing now?”

“You are from Austria,” another one said to me. “Isn’t that the country where the sheep come from?” Apparently she had mixed up Austria with Australia. One lady complained to Lu: “Imagine the cheek; they have put a second boy in my son’s room.” “Without asking you?” said Lu. “Oh no,” she replied, “They did not put him in his bed. That I never would have allowed.”

Among the guests were two sisters, together perhaps 180 years old. They admired Lu greatly and followed him wherever he went. One day one of them told Lu that she had visited Columbia University, studied French, and loved to translate. “Just recently,” she said, “I have done such interesting work.” “What was it?” Lu asked politely, to show his interest. “We have a little nephew,” she answered, “who is twelve years old. He is a wonderful writer. Recently he wrote a little story about his dog and I translated it. Would you care to read it?”

You can imagine how stimulating such people were for Lu. The result was that we hastily escaped after only two weeks. By this time I had started to become the buffer between Lu and people who bored him. I knew him so well, he just had to give me a certain sign and I knew what he wanted.

Life in New York became more regular than before. We were often invited out, and at least twice weekly we saw guests at our home. During my free time I was busy sending food parcels to Europe, mostly to England, where the need was great and where we had so many friends.

As I knew myself and my need for work and a purposeful life, in 1943 I decided to take a course in English stenography and typing. If I could not get a job, I could help Lu; that was sure. I registered with the Delehanty Institute on Forty-second Street, and for six months I went there every day from nine to one, and every afternoon I sat down to do my homework. Shorthand seemed like a puzzle; it fascinated me.

I hardly had finished the course when I got a job with Sonneborn & Co., a chemical firm, as private secretary to the president. Had there not been a war and help so hard to get, I, a middle-aged beginner, would never have been chosen for the job. To me it did not even seem real; I felt as if I were on stage again. The scene was set in a beautiful office in the financial district of the city. There were one hundred twenty-five employees, mostly young men and girls, who wasted much time at water coolers and restrooms. I alone could walk in and out of the president’s office. Nevertheless, I felt like a stranger. Only on Fridays—when I, like the others, got an envelope with a paycheck—did I know this was part of my new life, that it was real. I did not even stay a year. Lu could not bear the thought of my coming home in the rush hour, tired, and then having to prepare dinner and work in the kitchen.

Lu was asked to become a member of the Overseas Rotary Fellowship in New York. In the first years he attended their weekly luncheons frequently. Later, when he was too deeply involved in his writing, he only went to their annual banquet, where I accompanied him. Lu had been a regular member of the Rotary Club in Vienna. In Europe the Rotary Clubs were somewhat different than those here in America. In the old country every Rotary member was the most distinguished representative of his profession in his city. During their meetings they discussed important political, economic and social questions. That was why Hitler immediately dissolved not only the Free Masons, but also the Rotary clubs all over Austria and Germany.

At the end of 1942 Lu started writing various articles for the New York Times. Henry Hazlitt was the Times financial editor, and I have no doubt that he was the one who induced Lu to write these articles. Though the slogan of the Times, then as today, was “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” and though these beautiful words have not changed in thirty-two years, the ideological tendency of the Times certainly has. I wonder how often any conservative or libertarian could write an editorial for the New York Times today!

From March 28, 1942, to July 31, 1943, Lu wrote nine articles for the Times. For each of them he received ten dollars. But that was unimportant. More important was that his name became familiar to the general reader, and the numerous letters resulting from these articles were surprising. These nine articles were titled: “Hitler’s Achilles Heel,” “The Nazis under Blockade,” “Germany’s Transport Problems,” “Reich Gets Big Shock,” “The Problems of a PostWar Union of the Democratic Unions,” “A New World Currency,” “Industrial Empires,” “Inflation and Money Supply,” and “British Post-War Problems.”

Another consequence of these articles was Lu’s introduction to the National Association of Manufacturers. On January 4, 1943, Noel Sargent, secretary of NAM, and Vada Horsch, the assistant secretary, invited Lu to come and see them in their offices on Fifty-third Street. They had read Lu’s articles in the Times and wanted his views on how to terminate wage and price controls. These were the golden days of the NAM, theirs was the leading voice for free enterprise. Shortly after this first meeting, Lu was invited to work with the Economic Principles Commission, which was authorized by NAM’s president and board of directors and which labored over many years. Lu was a contributing member of the special group that created a two-volume study called the Nature and the Evolution of the Free Enterprise System. Lu’s relations with the NAM lasted from 1943 to 1954, giving him a forum where he met all the important industrialists of the country, the most respected economists, and the best known businessmen.

In 1943, besides the numerous meetings and sessions with the NAM on monetary reform and economic principles, he was a member of a commission to study the organization of peace, and he participated in Count Coudenhoven’s Pan-Europe Conference in March, 1943. On March 15, 1943, he spoke on “Aspects of American Foreign Trade Policy” in the Faculty Club of New York University; on April 10 he spoke in Boston at the Twentieth Century Association (on “Economic Nationalism and Peaceful Cooperation”), where he said in short: “Economic nationalism is the root cause of the international conflicts which resulted in two world wars. It was economic nationalism that on the one hand drove the ‘dynamic’ nations into agression and on the other hand prevented the peaceful nations from stopping in time the rise of Nazism and from erecting a barrier against a new German agression. All plans for a better post-war order are futile if they do not succeed in eliminating protectionism and establishing free trade.” On November 10 and 11 he gave two lectures at Princeton.

It was a great financial relief for us when William J. Carson, the executive director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, wrote to Lu that the Rockefeller Foundation had renewed his grant for another two years, to the end of November, 1944. Also by this time his connection with the Yale University Press had begun. (See Chapter 8, “The Story of Human Action.”)

The next twenty-five years were positively the most productive and creative of Lu’s life. I never knew how he could manage, but he had time for everything and everyone. His mind and his time were equally well organized. And there was not a Saturday or Sunday—if there was no NAM meeting—when he did not go with me to a museum or to an art gallery in the morning and to a theater in the evening.

I have already written about Professor Paul Mantoux and mentioned his son Etienne. Etienne was very dear to Lu. He often attended his course in Geneva and came to the house to converse with Lu, who thought Etienne to be one of the most promising scholars of the future. At the beginning of the war Etienne served in the French air force as an observation officer on the Saar frontier. In 1941, under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he came to the United States for research at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies. He was working on a book on Keynes (published in 1952 by Charles Scribner’s Sons). He came to New York often, sometimes two or three times a month, to see Lu. One special afternoon, Tuesday, March 16, 1943, I will never forget. He came early; I served tea; we spoke about his parents, Paris, Geneva, the war. But soon I felt that he was impatient to talk to Lu about his work; I excused myself and went out. At the door, before closing it, I turned around, and suddenly the couch, where Etienne had been sitting, seemed to have disappeared. In its place I saw Etienne in uniform, lying on a battlefield, his eyes closed, killed. This picture lasted only a few seconds. I closed the door behind me, went into my room, sat down and tried to get hold of myself. But the image would not disappear. Later, when Etienne had left, Lu came into my room and gave me Etienne’s greetings. I could not restrain myself; I told Lu what I had seen. Lu laughed at me: “You simply are imagining things. He is not in the air force any more.” But I saw he was uneasy and said this only to quiet me. A short time afterwards, Etienne returned to France and resumed his officer’s duties in the air force. On April 29, 1945, hardly more than a week before the bells rang for victory and peace, his plane was shot down near a small Bavarian village in the Danube Valley, killing him.

Lu was deeply shocked and grieved. Etienne Mantoux had meant so much to him, and Lu later wrote in his article “Stones Into Bread—The Keynesian Miracle”:

A highly gifted French economist, Etienne Mantoux, has analyzed Keynes point for point. Etienne Mantoux, son of the famous historian Paul Mantoux, was the most distinguished of the younger French economists. He had already made valuable contributions to economic theory—among them a keen critique of Keynes General Theory, published in 1937 in the Revue d’Economie Politique—before he began his The Carthaginian Peace, or The Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes. He did not live to see his book published. As an officer in the French air force he was killed on active service during the last days of the war. His premature death is a heavy blow to France, which is today badly in need of sound and courageous economists.1

In 1943, at a party with the Hazlitts, we met Lawrence Fertig and his wife Berthy. Over the years the Fertigs became our closest friends. In all the years we knew Berthy we never heard her say an unkind word about anyone. She always tried to understand and excuse human frailty. Hazlitt and Fertig had recognized immediately that Lu was not a man who was interested in money for himself. So they both did for Lu what he himself could not do. They made sure that, financially, Lu got ground under his feet again. He never could ask anything for himself—in writing, yes, but not personally.

One little episode may be significant. Lu always wanted me to travel with him when he lectured, but he could not afford to pay for me. One day—it must have been in the forties—Hazlitt told Lu about an invitation he got for a lecture trip. He did not want to go without Frances, so Hazlitt answered: “Is Mrs. Hazlitt included in this invitation?” “Of course,” came the reply. From that day on Lu followed Hazlitt’s example, and he did not have to travel alone any more. In later years, Lu’s invitations always included me.

A man like Lu could not have had a better friend than Hazlitt. His enthusiasm for Lu’s ideas, Lu’s teachings, Lu’s convictions, was so honest, his thinking so parallel to Lu’s perception, that he had the constant urge to write about Lu, to show the world what it could gain by reading Lu’s books and what it would lose by neglecting them. Larry Fertig also supported Lu and publicized his writings. Fertig was well known through his weekly column, which appeared for seventeen years in the now defunct World Telegram, through his book Prosperity through Freedom, and through his frequent appearances on television in political and economic discussions. In 113 of his columns, he mentioned Lu not less than eighteen times.

Over more than thirty years, every Sunday morning when we were in town the telephone rang: Larry, asking for Lu. They would talk for almost an hour. This was the weekly review. Everything that happened in economics and politics, all the burning questions of the day, would be discussed, and Lu gave his forewarnings for the future. Larry was more optimistic than Lu—though Lu at that time did not see the situation of the U.S. as hopeless. He had confidence in the strength of America, confidence that she would pull out of the difficult situation inflation had brought about. But whatever he said and wrote contained a warning about the growing deficit in productivity in comparison to America’s supply of goods and services.

Almost immediately after Lu put down the receiver, the telephone would ring again. This time it would be Henry Hazlitt, “Harry” to his friends. This conversation would last another hour, with different questions and answers. But Lu’s warnings were always the same. Afterward, I often asked Lu: “Is your seminar over for today?” He would answer with a laugh.

These were the only two people with whom Lu really talked on the telephone. Mostly I answered. Appointments and arrangements were made through me. For Lu the telephone was a necessary but disturbing means of communication. He tried to avoid it as much as possible.

The third of our very close friends was Philip Cortney, who had lived in Paris. Cortney was head of an important steel export firm in Paris and director of the executive committee of the Banque Transatlantique of Paris. He was married to a former singer of the Opera Comique in Paris, and when the Germans occupied France, the Cortneys came to the United States and made their home in New York, where he joined the American branch-factory of Coty, the renowned perfume manufacturer, becoming the firm’s president. Strangely enough, he hated the smell of perfume—he was not even able to recognize a difference between scents—but he loved economics and reading, and he very soon became an enthusiastic admirer of Lu’s and a great friend of mine. He was, if I remember rightly, the first one to suggest, in a French newspaper, that Lu deserved the Nobel Prize for Human Action. Cortney was opposed to a government-fixed gold price, and he fought like a lion for his ideas. If the government did or said anything that displeased him, a letter went off, or an editorial appeared in a newspaper, or a news pamphlet was published. Hardly ever were his letters disregarded; even Richard Nixon, then vice president, took the time to write a rather lengthy answer to one of his letters.

Philip was the most hospitable and generous friend imaginable. For many years he invited “the family,” as our little group was called, for dinner at the Plaza. The round corner table, number 1, was always reserved for him. (This was the table at which Helen Traubel and Lauritz Melchior used to dine with their friends after the opera.) Our “family” included, besides Lu and myself, the Hazlitts and the Fertigs.

Philip often invited other people, too. One of the more frequent participants was Dr. Albert Hahn, the well-known economist and banker. Later, in the fifties, he returned with Nora, his beautiful wife, to Switzerland, where he died in 1968. Albert Hahn’s wit, humor, and sarcasm fitted splendidly into the atmosphere of these dinner parties. Whenever a famous Frenchman whom Philip knew was in town, he invited him to join us. André Maurois was Philip’s guest several times. Frequently Bill and Mary Peterson were invited.

Never did Philip receive his guests without a present for the ladies. Every new lipstick his factory produced had to get the seal of appproval from the lips of the wives of his favorite friends, and all of us were at all times provided with the best of his perfumes.

“King Arthur’s Round Table” dinners had a certain unforgettable color and charm. The discussions were lively and animated. Attentive service, good food and excellent wine elated and lubricated our minds. We were gay, but never noisy, and never, never was there any gossiping. We respected each other and loved each other’s presence. In retrospect I would say that these evenings belong to my fondest memories. Lu always looked forward to these gatherings with as much pleasure as I did. He relished those hours with the friends who were so close to him and his way of thinking.

One day, I remember, I was in bed with a sore throat. Lu came into my room with a manuscript under his arm. “Read this,” he said, “I just finished a book.” It was Omnipotent Government. Handwritten. I read it, without a break, from beginning to end. I knew it would be a success. If I could read a book of his, spellbound, without being able to stop, the public would go for it.

In August, 1943, we again went to the White Mountains, but this time we stayed at Ravine House. Again we made the most beautiful climbs. On Monday, August 9, we went up to Carter Dome; on August 12 we walked again up Mount Washington, but this time via Gulfside Trail to Edmunds Col and back via Randalph Path to Ravine House. This excursion we made with our very good friends Louis and Lucy Rougier. The Rougiers had to leave Paris when the Germans occupied France, and they remained in New York during the war, living very close to us. We saw each other at least two or three times weekly. On August 15 Lu and I went up to Carter Notch, on the sixteenth—we hardly ever took a day’s rest—to Lowe’s Bald Spot. On the twentieth we went to Dome Rock, where we met the Haberlers, mountain climbers like us. On the twenty-first we went to Lookout Ledge and Crescent House, on the twenty-fifth to Pine Mountain, and on the twenty-seventh to Madison Huts via Valley Way, returning via Knife Edge. On one of these hikes we unexpectedly met Richard, Lu’s brother, and his future wife, a well-known mathematician and for many years Richard’s assistant.

Lu always insisted he would not work during the summer—that is to say, he would not write. He kept his resolution so strictly that he even did not write to his friends. That was my task. “That’s what I married you for,” he joked. But on our walks I frequently saw him deeply lost in his thoughts; then I would stay absolutely quiet. I knew how necessary this complete silence was for the working of his mind, and I also knew that he was happy, because—though lost in his thoughts—he knew he was not alone; I was with him. From time to time he took my hand or he put his arm around my shoulder, never saying a word, just to assure himself that I was near.

The next summer (1944) we spent at Lake Placid, where we met many friends, made beautiful excursions, and decided in the end that New Hampshire was more to our liking. On our walks every day Lu tried to convince me I should not neglect what he called my “talent for writing,” which he felt I had proved so successfully in Vienna with my stage adaptations. “Write short stories,” he told me. “You can do it.” And he ordered a book for me to study the composition of short stories. “Actually,” he said, “there is only one important thing to observe. You must build up the whole story for a surprise ending. If you can do that, you have a good story.” That summer I wrote one short story after the other; I had ideas enough. But when we came back to New York, I was much too busy working for Lu to be able to follow his advice.

On October 12, 1944, Lu made his first long trip alone since our arrival in the United States. (He had not yet learned Hazlitt’s “prescription” for getting me invited.) This trip was arranged by the NAM Advisory Group, with the purpose of having Lu talk at two meetings, one in Los Angeles, the other in San Francisco. For Los Angeles he had chosen as his subject “Depression and Unemployment, Are They Inevitable?” In San Francisco he was to talk about “The Crisis of Free Enterprise.”

A letter which Lu got shortly before he left—signed “JAR” (name unreadable), director of Braun Corporation, Chemicals and Laboratory Supplies, Los Angeles—gives an interesting description of California at that time:

Southern California is very definitely and vitally interested in the problem of the depression and unemployment. Probably, we, in Southern California, have one of the most critical areas in the United States. We are today practically a two-industry community—ships and planes. . . . I think that no citizen group in America is more keenly aware of the crisis of free enterprise than our group in Los Angeles. . . . There is one factor to which your attention should be definitely drawn. Very probably, you are already aware of the differences in the thinking of business and industrial men in San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco has been a closed-up shop city for many, many years. Business executives up there have grown accustomed to this idea. They have (we in Los Angeles think) a defeatist attitude. They are apparently making very little attempt to throw off any of the shackles of the closed shop. In Los Angeles, on the other hand, our executives have seen Los Angeles develop from a second-rate city to a real power. They attribute, and I agree with them, that much of this industrial growth has been due to the fact that Los Angeles has, during this long period of years been able to maintain open-shop conditions. I bring this difference in these two cities to your attention to remind you of the different thinking which is being done in Los Angeles and in our sister city to the north.

For some time Lu had been in correspondence with Leonard Read, then general manager of the Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles. In his first letter, dated June 4, 1943, Read invited Lu for a “series of lectures on behalf of free, competitive enterprise,” and he sent Lu a pamphlet published by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Lu answered on June 12:

The arena in which the fate of the West will be decided is neither the conference rooms of the diplomats, nor the offices of the bureaucrats, not the capitol in Washington, not the election campaigns. The only thing which really matters is the outcome of the intellectual combat between the supporters of socialism and those of capitalism. The masses, those millions of voters who are supreme in democracy, have to learn that they are deluded by spurious doctrines and that only market society and free enterprise can bring them what they want: prosperity. But in order to persuade the crowd, you have first to convince the elite, the intellectuals and the businessmen themselves.

He agreed to give some lectures, and Read proposed the date of October 20, 1943, having heard that Lu would be in California around that time. He also invited Lu for dinner at his home to meet a group of outstanding men, among them Lu’s good friend Benjamin M. Anderson.

On Monday, October 16, Lu arrived in Los Angeles, and for the next two days he was the guest of R. C. Hoiles, publisher of the Santa Anna Register. During these two days he spoke twice, once at a forum lecture, sponsored by the Register, about “The Causes of War,” and once at the Santa Anna Rotary Club, about “Credit Expansion and Depression.” It was on October 18, 1943, that Lu met Leonard Read for the first time—Leonard Read, who was to play such an important part in Lu’s future. I would like Leonard to tell about this first meeting in his own words:

It was during World War II, about 1943, that I first met Dr. Mises. As General Manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, I had invited him to address a meeting of our board. Mises outlined, in his talk, the inevitable path of government intervention. He pointed out how government regulation leads to problems and misfortunes its advocates had not anticipated. If they do not realize that the causes of this mischief rest on the intervention of force by government in the market, they propose another and still another government intervention. Each such law [is] enacted in the attempt to cure the ills caused by the point of view of its proponents, until finally the only opportunity that still seems open is to take the final steps leading to a completely controlled economy of the Nazi or Russian type.

It was a pessimistic picture that Mises painted in that lecture. Each of us in the audience could see a parallel between the theory he presented and the path our own government was traveling—with its wartime price and wage controls, priorities in the allotment of raw materials, rationing of consumer goods, and the like. After the talk, one of the audience questioned the speaker. “It is a depressing prospect you have outlined, Dr. Mises. Considering the program our politicians have adapted and its inevitable disastrous consequences, what would you do, if by chance, you were made dictator of this country? What first step would you take, Dr. Mises, if you could do just exactly as you wished?” Mises’ eyes sparkled and quick as a flash, he replied with a grin, “I would abdicate!”

With this statement Mises endeared himself to me. Here, I realized, was a truly consistent libertarian, one who really did not believe in using the power of government to band people to his way of thinking.2

Lu often wrote me from the West, if only a few words. On the train near Salt Lake City he wrote on October 15: “Darling, everything is OK. It is awful to travel alone. I am sorry you are not with me. I love you. Kisses, Lu.” On the eighteenth he wrote: “Darling, I am through with 3 of my 6 speeches and now I can rest a little. I was rather disappointed that there was no letter of yours here in the hotel. . . . Why? What does it mean? Tomorrow I have luncheon with Anderson. I kiss you. . . .” The next day I got only three lines: “You mean everything to me. Without you there is no sun shining for me any more. . . .”

He was happy to come home again, and I think the greatest impression Lu had on this trip was Leonard Read’s stag party. He told me what a surprise it was for him to see his host put on a chef’s cap and apron and barbecue the steaks for dinner. Lu observed, “Never in my life have I eaten better broiled steaks than those.” That was the first I ever heard about Leonard Read.

On December 6, 1944, Lu received the following letter from Dean E. Rowland Collins of New York University:

My dear Professor:
I have decided to recommend to the Chancellor and Council of the University that you be appointed to the faculty of the Graduate School of Business Administration for the second semester of the academic year 1944-1945 as “Visiting Professor of Economics” to give two hours of weekly instruction throughout the semester at a compensation of 1,000.00.

I propose that you offer a course to be called “Statism and the Profit Motive” for which you have suggested the following description:

“A critical examination of the viewpoints of the ‘orthodox’ and the ‘unorthodox’ economists. The various efforts to restrict the height of profits or to eliminate profits altogether are analyzed in detail. Special attention is given to the policies of fixing commodity prices, wage rates and interest rates at a level different from that determined by the unhampered interplay of market factors.”

I know that you will understand that final appointment must await approval of the Chancellor and Council. However, it is the general practice to approve the Dean’s recommendations in these matters so that we can assume that the matter is settled except for public announcement.

The course title that I have used, namely, “Statism and the Profit Motive” is subject to change. It may be that you would prefer simply “The Profit Motive.”

As always, when he got any letter of importance, Lu came into my room and silently gave me the letter. Only when he saw my reaction, when he realized that I was happy, did he smile faintly, thus showing what the letter meant to him. From now on, I knew, our life would be changed. He had the opportunity to teach, to have young people share the wealth of his ideas, the clarity of his mind, the logic of his reasoning. I knew what teaching meant to him and how he had missed it. And when, in January, 1945, the letter of approval came from the Council of New York University telling him that the appointment was confirmed, he was happy.

It will always be a credit to New York University that it offered Lu this teaching opportunity at the Graduate School of Business Administration. Until then, no big university in this country had offered him a chair. That Dean Collins was a great friend and protector of Lu’s from the first day of their meeting was clear. So was Dr. Dorau. But the attitude of the other professors was cool. They were very, very respectful, but Lu was not a man of their kind. He was a stranger to them. I saw this with my own eyes. Often I came to see him in his office—he later had a secretary and an assistant—and I noted the respect with which his colleagues treated him—but also the lack of personal warmth.

One of the few exceptions was Professor Lewis H. Haney, who once asked Lu to read the first chapter of his forthcoming book, History of Economic Thought, and “do me the great favor of making a critical examination of the chapter,” which Lu, of course, did.

Lu’s courses at NYU were sometimes very exciting. One of his former students, whose wish to remain anonymous I have to respect, told me: “Four or five students had formed a group in order to protect the professor against dissident students who opposed his views. They occupied a table ahead of the class next to the professor in order to be ready to protect him against any possible violence. But actually it never came that far.”

This was not the only change brought about in 1945. That year, Lu’s official connection with the National Bureau of Economic Research came to an end, though Lu always remained on friendly terms with the NBER. This is part of a letter from William J. Carson of the NBER: “The National Bureau has been glad to extend its hospitality to you, and to have contributed in this way to carry forward your studies of the economic factors and policies involved in the European crisis. When you are in the vicinity of the National Bureau at 1919 Broadway or at Hillside I hope you will always feel free to stop in and see us. Indeed, we hope you will make every effort to call when you can.”

Also in 1945, Leonard Read left California for New York to become vice president of the National Industrial Conference Board. Read’s purpose in coming east was to spread the libertarian ideas which he was convinced were the only means to keep America and the world going. He only stayed with the Conference Board for a year. He soon discovered that the flow of ideas for individual liberty was restricted by the influence of labor union leaders. So some close friends, including Howard Pew, B.E. Hutchinson, a vice president of the Chrysler Corporation, and H.W. Luhnow, president of the Volker Fund, got together and decided to establish their own institution to spread libertarian ideas. They bought a beautiful estate in Irvington, New York, where in 1946 Leonard Read established the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and became its president.

It was a touch of genius combined with a shrewd sense of business that caused Leonard to associate Lu with FEE. It was the best idea he ever had, for he knew pretty well that if he could anchor the most eminent fighter for the free market to his foundation, not only the existence of the foundation was assured, but it would arouse the widest interest all over the country.

In October, 1946, Lu was made a regular member of the FEE staff, and in later years he promised to give a series of lectures in Irvington every year. The spiritual and intellectual atmosphere there was completely to his taste. The FEE mansion is located in a beautiful garden with tall, old trees, the lawn is kept immaculately, and flowers bloom everywhere. The house itself, built in 1888, has a dignity of its own. The rooms are large, the library well stocked, and all over the place there is the harmony of quiet, concentrated working.

The creator of all this is Leonard Read. The first one at his desk—at 8 A.M. every morning—he was the last one to leave in the evening—and still is. His studio is tremendously large, and his oversized desk, in a far corner, reminded me of Mussolini, who had intentionally placed his desk in the remotest corner of his huge room to make his visitors feel small and lost whenever they had to cross the room to speak to him.

Leonard Read is quite the opposite. As soon as someone appears at the always open door, he gets up, greets his visitor, and makes him feel at ease. Always working on an article, or writing a new book, Read finds the time to talk to everyone. Aggie, Leonard’s wife, was one of the most charming women I ever met. She was so delicate and lovely, so full of gaiety and laughter, everybody loved her—even women. Never did Lu and I leave FEE without a big bunch of flowers she secretly put into our car.

Lu loved the seminars at FEE. He knew that every participant was carefully selected, concerning his interests and his education, and so he was always sure of talking to an audience eager to hear him.

Before the classes started, Lu regularly made the rounds. First he had a little talk with Read; then he went to see Edmund Opitz, for whom he had a special appreciation; then he visited with W. Marshall Curtiss and Paul Poirot; Paul usually had to discuss an article that he was about to publish in The Freeman, FEE’s monthly magazine. Finally, Lu went into Bettina Bien’s office. As a rule, Bettina had a pile of his books ready for him to autograph or letters to sign, which were typed for him in her office. On his way down to the lecture hall—all these offices, with the exception of that of Dr. Opitz, were on the second floor—he had a friendly word for every one of the employees.

Lu’s lectures were calculated for a special Irvington audience, which consisted mainly of teachers, students, and businessmen. His way of delivering, though, was the same as at NYU. Only the content was lighter. He counted on people who had read Planned Chaos and Omnipotent Government, but had to be led up the road to Human Action. The interest was great and so was the demand for Lu’s books, which Leonard Read always kept in print and ready for distribution.

For thirty years Lu complained about the lack of a really good, serious, truthful, libertarian magazine. He always hoped that someone would bring together the people and the money to create a libertarian weekly or fortnightly, which he thought so necessary for the country. This was the dream and the greatest aspiration of his life. Plain Talk, published by Isaac Don Levine, had folded. That magazine, and later The Freeman, financed by Howard Pew and edited by Henry Hazlitt, came nearest to Lu’s conception of a libertarian journal.

Isaac Don Levine, Russian born, often joined our circle. He and Lu had more than one thing in common: through education and experience they both had a full understanding of Russian policies, and Lu, to the last year of his life, warned everyone to watch the Communist doctrines. In 1949 Don Levine wrote these warning words:

The premises for a constructive foreign policy are not subject to discovery by any advisory board. They are time-tested and well known. First, you must know your enemy and gauge the range of his operations. In the present instance, that range is global. Europe and Asia, the North and the South Poles are all on America’s first line of defense.3

Mind you—this was written in 1949.

Lu’s contract with New York University was renewed through the years until 1949. Raises brought his compensation to $2000.

In 1947 we spent a few days in the Catskills, where Lu persuaded me to start writing a film script. He gave me the idea, but I did not like it very much. It had a historical subject, the Hessians, and for my feeling it was too dry. But we finished it in one of the following country summers. It is still hidden somewhere in one of my drawers.

One morning on our way back to New York, I saw that Lu was especially tense while driving. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, he was never a good driver, and I never felt safe with him. I offered to take the wheel, but he would not let me. Half an hour later, near Saugerties, when he saw a truck coming towards us, he lost control of the car. We crashed into a tree. I was thrown out of the car, after my head had gone through the windshield. For a moment I was unconscious. Lu apparently was unharmed. In no time a doctor was there, giving me an injection. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Saugerties. I remember the first words I spoke to Lu as the doctor took care of me: “I’ll never drive with you again.”

My cheekbone was broken. I was operated on, and when I was brought to my room, Lu was sitting quietly next to the bed. He was terribly pale and did not move. When he got up I noticed the difficulties it caused him. I asked him whether anything was wrong, but he brushed my questions aside. I was almost certain that something had happened to him, and I asked the doctor to examine him. We discovered that Lu had broken five ribs. He must have suffered terrible pains. But he would not say a word, and as usual, he never complained and never left my side.

I kept my word: I did not ride with him again. He often asked me to let him drive. I told him he would have to drive alone, and as he never liked to drive alone, he had to give it up.

I was rather depressed the first weeks after the accident. I had a big scar on my face; the car was smashed and would never be safe again, even if we had it thoroughly repaired. But then came another surprise. Philip Cortney called: “Margit, you and Lu need a car. I don’t want you to drive a car that is not absolutely safe. There is a Tempest waiting for you at the Pontiac garage; see whether you like it. It’s yours.” He understood Lu so well. He wanted to help him overcome his self-reproaches, and he wanted to lift me out of my “blues.”

It took me quite a while to feel ready to drive again. But I loved the car, and every Sunday we went into the country, usually taking some friends along. Until they left New York to live in Switzerland, Dr. and Mrs. Rudi Klein often came with us. Rudi had been a student of Lu’s in Vienna. He and his wife, Lilo, lived in our neighborhood and were good companions and close friends of ours, especially as they loved hiking as much as we did. Rudi had a wonderful memory, and he remembered conversations with Lu decades earlier. Once he reminded me of an afternoon shortly after America had entered the war in 1941, when he and Lilo had tea with us in our apartment. Another guest was a son of the famous Italian economist, Luigi Einaudi. The younger Einaudi was greatly worried about the fate of his native country under German mastery. Lu tried to encourage him, saying, “The Germans will not win the war. Italy will rise again, but England will become one of the poorest nations in Europe. Perhaps the day will come when we see your father as president of the Italian Republic.” Twenty years later Lu’s prophesies came true.

Klein told me of another episode, which happened at the time Nixon was first elected president. Rudi told Lu he could see a ray of hope in Nixon’s choice of advisers. Lu answered, “It is not sufficient that the advisers understand the economic problems; the head of the government must understand them himself. Otherwise he won’t be willing to die for his ideas. Nobody dies for the ideas of his advisers.”

Lilo and Rudi Klein were the last friends to see us in 1973, when we were in Sonn-Matt, the health resort above Lucerne. Twice they travelled six hours a day to be with us for only a few hours. They were and they still are very good friends.

 

4This article was first published by Isaac Don Levine in Plain Talk, March, 1948, and was reprinted in Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1952, 1962, 1974).

5From an article, “Ludwig von Mises,” by Leonard E. Read, written to be translated into Spanish and published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in April or May, 1959

6From “Our First Line of Defense” by Isaac Don Levine, Plain Talk, September, 1949, reprinted in Isaac Don Levine, ed., Plain Talk: An Anthology from the Leading Anti-Communist Magazine of the 40s (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1976).

• 1* Pronounced Meeses.
• 2*From an article, “Ludwig von Mises,” by Leonard E. Read, written to be translated into Spanish and published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in April or May, 1959
• 3*From “Our First Line of Defense” by Isaac Don Levine, Plain Talk, September, 1949, reprinted in Isaac Don Levine, ed., Plain Talk: An Anthology from the Leading Anti-Communist Magazine of the 40s (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1976).
• 4THIS BOOK will hardly answer any questions about economics. It is not a book of scholarly wisdom. But it will answer many personal questions about my husband, Ludwig von Mises.*
• 5With this statement Mises endeared himself to me. Here, I realized, was a truly consistent libertarian, one who really did not believe in using the power of government to band people to his way of thinking.*
• 6The premises for a constructive foreign policy are not subject to discovery by any advisory board. They are time-tested and well known. First, you must know your enemy and gauge the range of his operations. In the present instance, that range is global. Europe and Asia, the North and the South Poles are all on America’s first line of defense.*