My Years with Ludwig von Mises

CHAPTER XI Our Last Years Together

ON MAY 29, 1969, Lu held his last seminar at New York University, but that did not mean he was ready to retire. Until 1972 he kept up his seminars at the Foundation for Economic Education, where the intellectual atmosphere was so much to his liking.

At home he was constantly reading. Once he was asked: “Don’t you have a hobby?” “Oh yes,” he replied, “reading.” His studio was his sanctuary, his books his treasures. The last thing he did at night before retiring was to go to the bookshelves and, like a gourmet studying the menu in a good restaurant, carefully select a book to enrich his evening. One of the last books he read with great interest was Louis Rougier’s The Genius of the West. He had already read it in the original French edition, and he considered it to be a great and valuable book.

Despite his gall bladder and hernia operations of many years before, Lu had an excellent constitution. His was a healthy mind in a healthy body—to the last year of his life. His eyesight was perfect and remained so to his last days. The only thing that depressed him was the deterioration of his hearing. He could not participate in a general conversation, being unable to hear clearly when more than one person talked at the same time. As a consequence of his poor hearing he could no longer enjoy the theater. Nevertheless, we kept up the subscription to the Metropolitan Opera that I had given him years before. Thanks to our good seats, he could follow the performances as attentively as before. The opera was the highlight of his later years.

Once in a while he also listened to a chamber-music concert on radio. When I tried to get him interested in a good television show he said, “It would take too much of my time,” and he specially objected to listening to commentators. “I can do my thinking alone,” was his reaction. An exception was Bill Buckley’s Firing Line. Buckley’s intelligence, his sharp and biting wit, his zeal and eminent productivity impressed Lu greatly. Lu was a steady reader of National Review, but often regretted that the magazine lacked sound economic articles, which he regarded as a mistake of Buckley’s publishing policy.

Lu’s failing hearing was especially depressing to him in the discussion periods following his lectures, when he missed the questions that were put to him. In the last years of his seminars I arranged that all questions be put to him in writing and—for the benefit of the students—be read aloud to him, Percy Greaves transmitted the questions to him. Percy had such a clear and penetrating voice that Lu always could hear him. This procedure proved satisfactory, and Lu’s quick and brilliant answers always earned the admiration of the students. The only disadvantage of the written questions was the interruption in the direct flow of thoughts between student and professor.

The deterioration of Lu’s hearing—so natural at his age—made him feel lonely and isolated. To avoid this, I invited even more people to the house than before. But he needed my help more and more. I became sort of a “public relations officer”—the “middleman” between Lu and his students.

When meeting people for the first time, Lu usually asked for their names in writing. He often told me “the listeners at my lectures have a full hour or more to look at me, to hear me talk, while I see them for only a short moment after the lecture, when they are introduced to me. Later they are astonished—or even offended—when on another occasion I don’t recognize them.”

After 1971 Lu began to cut down on his traveling. In April, 1969, we flew to California for a series of lectures in Los Angeles. It was a quick trip, and we were back in New York after a few days.

The happiest summer of Lu’s later years was that of 1967, spent in Mittersill, a little village in New Hampshire. Mittersill is like a tiny Austrian village. It lies deep inside the woods, cool and shady, three miles from Franconia. That summer we did not climb Mount Washington or any other mountain. In spite of this, we enjoyed a perfect summer. We could walk and be out of doors all day long. The house was roomy and charmingly furnished and had a well-equipped kitchen, so we could either eat at home or walk the few steps to the Austrian restaurant.

The highpoint of our stay in Mittersill was the visit of our little granddaughter, Mandy, whom Gitta, my daughter, had brought to stay with us. When Lu saw Mandy, his eyes lit up. She was a beautiful little girl, seven years old, slim, with blond hair and huge blue eyes. As I mentioned before, Lu hardly ever worked during his vacation. But when he did, I would never disturb him. Mandy, however, did not recognize any rules. When she wanted to have a word with her “Gran’pa” she went straight into his room, and he never reproached her. When she thought he looked too serious for her taste, she only needed to say “Gran’pa, smile,” and immediately a kind, warm smile brightened his face.

One day we visited Franconia College. The students recognized Lu and gathered around our car to pepper him with questions, mostly about Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Austrian philosopher, who was in fashion with them at that time. Lu, as always, answered every question patiently, while Mandy looked at the boys and girls around us. It was a strange crowd, their heads full of ideas of how to improve the world and their bodies scantily dressed. All were in bare feet, with long flowing hair or masses of beard framing their faces. After watching these youngsters, little Mandy said: “If all the boys and girls in American colleges look like this, I’d rather go to school in England.”

Mandy, at that time, was a rather untidy little girl, and I tried my best to change her. One day I told her: “Mandy, darling, each evening when I come into your room and find your toys put away and the room tidied and nice looking, I’ll give you five cents. After a while you will have saved enough to buy your Mummy a nice present.”

When Lu heard this, he explained to me that it was a bad educational practice to bribe a child. But that very evening he went into Mandy’s room to kiss her goodnight and told her: “Mandy, how would you like it if I gave you ten cents every night when your room is tidy?” Could anyone imagine that Mandy would not have liked it?

As usual we had guests that summer: Ilo and George Koether and Bettina and Percy Greaves. We also became very good friends with Austrian Ambassador to the United Nations Baron von Haymerle and his wife, who had a little chalet very near ours. A year later Dr. Haymerle became the Austrian ambassador to Russia. They wrote us from Moscow, but the cards were so carefully worded that the unwritten words were more eloquent than the written ones.

In May, 1970, Lu made his last extensive lecture trip. It had been arranged by Charles Heatherly, at that time director of the southern Intercollegiate Studies Institute and now educational director of the National Federation of Independent Business in California. This trip took us from Seattle, where Lu gave an excellent lecture before a full house of some 600 people, via Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona.

It was an exciting trip for us because it took place during the days of unrest on American campuses. Many students wearing red armbands—to show they were against participation in the Vietnam War—were boycotting classes and lectures. Others, frightened of being caught up in riots, simply stayed home.

Charles Heatherly accompanied us on the flight to Tucson. At the airport we were received by Dr. Louis Gasper, a six-foot, twenty-six-year-old bachelor, who was an assistant professor in the Economics Department at the University of Arizona. Several of his students had come along to meet Lu. They all accompanied us to the Pioneer Hotel.

That afternoon a friend of Leonard Read invited Dr. Gasper, four of his students and ourselves to see his house, which was high up in the hills, and then to dinner at a country club. This gentleman had an impressive library, and he immediately asked Lu to write a few words in his copy of Human Action, which was open on the table. He insisted that Lu was the only author—besides Winston Churchill—whom he had ever asked to autograph a book. “Strange bedfellows,” I thought, and wondered whether this hospitable gentleman had really read all the books in his library or knew many of their authors. After a glass of champagne, he took us in his Rolls Royce, driven by an elegant chauffeur, to the country club, where we had the best food we had eaten in a long, long time.

Next morning—Lu preferred to stay in the hotel—the elegant chauffeur came with the Rolls, and Mr. Heatherly went with me to the Desert Museum. This museum was a strange sight. Everything was in the open. We saw tigers, lizards, huge cockroaches, mountain bears next to caves, exotic plants, and strange looking flowers. I must confess I was not very happy in that Rolls Royce and was glad when we were back in the hotel. There were only two Rolls Royces in Tucson, and everyone, of course, knew the owners. I was afraid the students, in their excitement, might eventually become destructive. Whenever there was time, I watched the riots on television and saw the mounting unrest among the students.

Lu’s lecture was in the evening. We had to cross the campus again to get to the auditorium, but this time we went in Dr. Gasper’s car, so I felt no danger. Gasper introduced Lu, reading the citation the American Economic Association had given Lu in 1969.

Lu spoke about inflation. As always, his presentation was clear and convincing. Before and after his lecture he got a standing ovation. It lasted so long it must have embarrassed him.

Mr. Heatherly had placed me in the first row. During the question period after the lecture, I sent a question up to Lu, printed to hide my handwriting and not giving my name: “What should undergraduates do if they are forced by their professor to read socialist and leftist literature?” By chance, Dr. Gasper took my piece of paper last, and it gave Lu an opportunity for a most impressive ending to the evening. My action startled me. Never before had I raised my voice or asked a question during one of Lu’s lectures. I failed to note down Lu’s answer to my question. Maybe because I knew in advance what he would say. It was easy for Lu to answer my query. That must have been one of the reasons I sent it up. I knew that the lecture and the following half hour of questioning put a terrible strain on him, and I wanted to give him some relief.

As Lu’s answer is more important than my question, I wrote to Dr. Gasper in February, 1975: “Do you by any chance have the lecture given in Tucson on tape or could you give me—out of your memory—a short outline of Dr. von Mises’ answer?” Dr. Gasper answered: “I wish that I could satisfy your request at once from my own memory. Regrettably my position on the platform (the highest honor I have had) made me much the most nervous person there and therefore did not permit me to take notes as ordinarily I would.”

With refreshing honesty Dr. Gasper verified once more the bewilderment, adoration, and awe young people often felt when they first met my husband. Only later would they realize how humble and modest he really was.

But my husband surely advised the students to read what their professor asked them to read. “But read not only that,” he must have said, “read more. Read everything about the subject from every point of view, be it socialist-Marxist, liberal, libertarian. Read with an open mind. Learn to think. Only when you know your subject from all sides can you decide what is right and what is wrong. Only then are you ready for a discussion, because you can answer all questions, even those your opponents will throw at you.”

The next morning Lu and I visited the campus museum. When Lu became fatigued, we returned to the hotel. After lunch the big Rolls with the elegant chauffeur appeared again, to take us through the campus to the auditorium, where Lu was to meet the faculty and then speak to the general public.

The faculty meeting was rather disappointing. Only about twenty-five members of the faculty came to meet Lu. Dr. Gasper explained: “They are like jackals, but don’t forget the atmosphere of this campus is leftist and the excitement about Nixon and Cambodia is increasing.”

This was not very comforting, but in contrast to the faculty reception the lecture for the general public was very crowded. Lu spoke about the trade cycle and about gold, and when Gasper asked some questions about the current economic situation, Lu gave them his frank opinion in his forthright and honest way. The public responded enthusiastically, and again Lu got a long standing ovation. On Saturday, May 9, we returned to New York.

That summer I rented a little house in Dorset, Vermont. It belonged to David Gilbert, former owner of the hardware store in Dorset. He was a self-made man, who, when he retired, could not be without work and had taken up picture framing, which he did extremely well and with great taste. We occupied his original house, a lovely old building with a beautiful, shady old garden. Next to it David had built for himself a small modern cottage, where he lived with his wife, Nora, a very efficient and kind woman. We soon became good friends. By then, we had been in Dorset so often that Lu was known everywhere as “the Professor.”

Dorset is easily reached from New York, so we had frequent visitors. One day Percy Greaves appeared with four young students who had attended a seminar at FEE. We already had met two of these young boys in Seattle. They were most eager to see Lu again and to discuss various questions with him. Lu held a seminar that day in the garden, beneath a huge, shady old chestnut tree. Afterward, there was a lively discussion, with Percy transmitting the questions to Lu. In the neighboring garden sat our landlord, David Gilbert, listening intently, making notes once in a while, determined to ask Lu later on for explanations.

That summer we also had a most cherished visit from Gustavo and Lupe Velasco and Elenita, their young daughter. Though Gustavo is an excellent driver, he had lost his way on the hilly, backcountry roads. When they had not arrived by 11 P.M., everyone was worried, even the owner of the Dorset Inn, where I had rooms reserved for the Velascos.

Gustavo could not understand all the excitement. He was delighted to find a cold meal, cool drinks, and fruit in his room, for the Velascos had not eaten anything since lunch. They had hoped to arrive much earlier, but after eight o’clock it was very difficult to find a place where they could get a regular meal. Only three days later, when I asked Gustavo for my dishes, did he realize that it was not the hotel owner who had supplied the supper, but that it was our foresight that had enabled them to go to bed without being hungry.

On October 21 we flew to San Francisco for another week of lectures. Lu gave his first lecture the next day—a short talk about money. For the first time I noticed that he was not as alert as usual. The trip, the change of climate, and the change of time must have affected him. To my great relief he was much better during the question period. On Saturday Percy Greaves, who was with us all the time, had a lecture of his own in Burlingame, where he spoke to a large audience for about three hours. Lu came in at the end and finished the session with a short talk, lasting only ten minutes. Then the questions poured in for Lu. Percy, helpful as always, read them aloud and Lu answered. But I noticed a change in his handling of the questions. He used too much time in answering. I sent him a little note, written in German, advising him to be very brief. Percy was rather humorous: When he gave Lu the note—he did not know what it contained—he said: “Professor, here is a note in code,” and everyone laughed. I was relieved that Lu understood. The audience responded well, giving him huge applause, but I could not lose my concern about the many lectures he had promised to deliver later that same year. I knew he needed rest and should not travel so much.

Nevertheless, in November, 1970, we went to Grove City College. Hans Sennholz took good care that Lu was comfortable and had enough rest. The audience, students taught under the guidance of Dr. Sennholz, were eager to hear “the Professor” talk. The atmosphere was warm and friendly and the audience enthusiastic.

On December 10 Lu gave a lecture at Plano University, and the following day he delivered a final short address to the faculty and student body at the university, where some of Percy’s students were graduating. These were the last lectures he gave outside New York City.

His seminar in Irvington still went on, however; the last time he spoke from the platform was on March 26, 1971. He had always loved lecturing in Irvington, and he continued doing it as long as he felt able. It is fitting that the painting of Lu by George Augusta, the well-known portrait painter, has a place of honor on the landing of the beautiful staircase of the Foundation for Economic Education. This painting, initiated by Lawrence Fertig, was presented by the trustees of FEE to Leonard Read in honor of the foundation’s twenty-fifth anniversary.

George Augusta practically lived with us from morning to night from March 8 to March 10, 1971, using these days for the basis of his work. Our living room became his atelier; he shared our meals; he talked to us; he watched Lu’s every movement. He tried to keep Lu interested, all the time observing him and his reactions. A psychoanalyst listens; a painter or a sculptor watches. The result should be the same: insight into man’s soul. For me it was fascinating to watch so closely an artist at work. All the time I had to sit next to Lu, in a special location, so that his eyes would rest on me constantly. “I could not have done this painting without you,” Augusta often said, and I agreed that Lu would not have “wasted his time” sitting quietly for three days without a book, looking at nothing.

I love this painting, though in my opinion it does not show Lu as he was in 1971. He looked more alive at that time. The eyes in the painting have the far distant look, the tired expression he showed only in his last year. But there is the tiny smile on his lips he always had for me and which I loved so much.

Augusta had also made a little color sketch of me and offered it to me as a present. Knowing the value of his paintings, I felt I could not accept it. But when he showed it to Lu and Lu was so honestly enthusiastic about it, he asked Lu whether he would accept it as a present. Lu, really happy, accepted it. Augusta said he would keep the sketch for a few days in order to finish it, show it to a few friends, and then send it to Lu. But he must have forgotten about it, for Lu never got it and was really quite disappointed.

Though I never could forget Lu’s age, I set great hopes on the summer and the rest he would get in the fresh unspoiled air of Vermont. The Gilberts had rented their house the year round, therefore, for three months in the summer of 1971 I had taken a little house in Manchester, Vermont—and I was lucky to have found that place. It belonged to a Long Island lawyer, who used it only in winter for skiing. We lived in this house for the next two summers, and we loved this place more than we ever had loved a place before. It was located on a hill, overlooking the beautiful green meadows. It was a quiet little house, with an open porch on three sides, which we could use at all times of the day, for on one side at least there was, even in the greatest heat, a slight breeze moving. From the porch you could follow the road with your eyes far down into the village.

We still walked frequently during the day, but Lu could not cover great distances. We had friends living nearby: Professor Erich Hula and his wife, Anne-Marie. They had a house in Weston, and it was a most beautiful drive to their place. (They were the only people I ever knew who, having spent their summers in the country for almost thirty years, could manage without a car. And they could not bear television, even though they were ardent music lovers.) We also visited with the former Indiana congressman, Samuel B. Pettengill, who lived the year round in Grafton, Vermont. He is the author of the charming Yankee Pioneers, which gives such a clear description and picture of the country and people of New Hampshire and Vermont.

Lu still loved to have guests, even if he did not participate in the conversation as much as before. Percy and Bettina and Frank Dierson spent a weekend with us, and George and Ilo Koether spent one night with us, enthusiastic about the beauty of the place.

One day Lu did not feel very well, so we went to see the local physician, Dr. Clifton Harwood, whose wife was a Vermont state senator. When the doctor heard Lu’s name, he greeted him as an old acquaintance and as his most honored patient. He knew Lu’s books, and he knew more about him from Human Events, which was the literature laid out on the table for his patients. Dr. Harwood was an unpretentious country doctor. His office was simple, with wooden chairs and a No Smoking sign on the wall. But when he had office hours, which he had daily with the exception of Thursday, every seat was taken. When a mother came in with a little baby and the child was crying, everyone had to wait; the child was treated first. Clad in a simple white shirt, his trousers held up by braces, he was a humanitarian in the real sense of the word: his profession was to help and to heal.

Lu was very ill that summer, with an infection, and I found Dr. Harwood to be a first-class diagnostician. He took excellent care of Lu, arranging for him to be brought immediately to the Hospital in Bennington. When Lu was dismissed too early and had a relapse, Dr. Harwood came to the house whenever Lu needed him. When Lu had to reenter a hospital and Bennington was overcrowded, Harwood arranged for me to bring him to Williamstown in Massachusetts. Lu wanted to have me with him all day long, so I had to drive fifty miles daily while he was in Bennington and one hundred miles while he was in Williamstown. People suggested that I stay near the hospital, but I longed to go back to our little house at night to be there when the telephone calls poured in.

One day Percy Greaves came out to see Lu in the hospital in Williamstown, and I asked him to stay overnight at our house. I had just received permission to take Lu home the following day.

Percy agreed, and when we left the hospital at eight o’clock, he followed me in his car. Suddenly a terrible thunderstorm developed. It was raining so hard as we drove through the lonely mountainous part of the country that we could not see ten yards ahead. There were no roadside turn-outs nor any possibility for shelter; we simply had to drive on. Percy followed me, watching my car closely, ready to help if I should need him. We arrived at the house late and left early the next morning. We had the same drive part of the way. Percy was supposed to return to New York, so I described the place where our two cars would have to part. But when we came to that spot, I saw that Percy was still following me. I stopped and he told me: “You don’t think I would let you bring the Professor home alone? How could you manage?” And he went all the way back with me to Williamstown, took care of the formalities, and helped Lu, who was very weak, to our car and made him comfortable. Then he went back with me to Manchester and stayed until he was sure that I could manage alone. Only a very, very devoted friend would have acted this way.

Lu recovered completely that summer, but he himself realized that he was no longer the same. He became very quiet, and I often wished he would tell me once again some of his war stories, which in former years he had told me so often. He once said, “The worst is that I still have so much to give to the people, to the world, and I can’t put it together anymore. It is tormenting.”

A few weeks after we returned to New York, Lu had his ninetieth birthday. Larry Fertig had arranged a small intimate party for about twenty good friends at the New York University Club. As a special present Lu received a two-volume Festschrift from the Institute for Humane Studies in California. The Festschrift included seventy-one essays from scholars in eighteen countries, former students and friends of Lu’s from all over the world. The idea for the book, Towards Liberty, was conceived by Gustavo Velasco and enthusiastically embraced by the president of the institute, our good friend, Dr. Floyd A. Harper, and beautifully produced by Kenneth Templeton.

I knew about this plan from the very beginning and had promised Dr. Harper not to tell Lu about it. But I could not really keep my promise, for Larry Fertig and Gustavo Velasco had sent their contributions in advance to Lu in Manchester. I would say it was wise of them to do so, for at that time he could still enjoy what he read.

What Lawrence Fertig wrote in Towards Liberty seems to me almost prophetic:

Economic historians of the 21st Century will undoubtedly be puzzled by the reception accorded to economic theorists of the 20th Century. They will be particularly puzzled by what occurred in the span of years between World War I and 1970. . . .

Great honors were showered on economists whose major accomplishments had been to promote a major inflation which, by the end of the 20th Century, was acknowledged to be the source of tremendous social unrest and economic crises. These were the fashionable economists who were sponsored by wealthy Foundations and indeed by most of the intellectuals of Academe.

But when economic historians of the future came to evaluate precisely who had made the most significant contributions to economic theory—to those broad and fundamental principles which explain human actions in the practical world people must live in—their puzzlement increased. For they could find only a meager record of academic honors or monetary prizes by leading ivy-league universities accorded to the one economist who had discovered and formulated some of the most brilliant economic theories of that century. His name was Ludwig von Mises.

In the coming weeks, when Lu read all the articles that were published about him in magazines and papers all over the world, he said to me: “The only good thing about being a nonagenarian is that you are able to read your obituaries while you are still alive.”

We now lived very quietly, but nevertheless I invited friends every week, for I did not want Lu to feel isolated. The ones he loved to see most were Larry Fertig, Henry Hazlitt, and Percy and Bettina. They all had strong, clear voices, spoke distinctly, and chose subjects that interested Lu, so he could participate in the conversation. But mostly he wanted to be alone with me. “If it were not for you,” he often said, “I would not want to live anymore.” I never believed the doctor when he told me in the last weeks of Lu’s life that a patient does not know when his mind is slipping. Lu knew it, and he saw no purpose for his living any longer.

The last summer, 1973, I was too tired to keep house again, and we flew to Switzerland, to a health resort high above Lucerne, with a most beautiful view on the Vierwaldstaettersee and the surrounding snow-covered mountains. The place had a beautiful park; the owners were friendly and attentive; and Lu loved to walk in the park. But the place was too remote for proper medical attention.

We left after a few weeks, and the very day after our return to New York Lu had to enter the hospital and never left it again. He was not allowed any visitors, but when Percy and Bettina came to see him on his ninety-second birthday, he asked me to let them enter. Bettina wished him a happy birthday, and he thanked her and kissed her hand. The Austrian gentleman had remembered the old Austrian custom. Bettina and Percy cried so hard I led them out of the room; I did not want Lu to be disturbed. With the help of valium I managed to keep my smile for Lu all the time.

The last and greatest joy for Lu was when I read him part of the article that Henry Hazlitt had published in Barron’s for Lu’s ninety-second birthday. I only read him a short passage, in which Hazlitt says:

These 92 years of his life have been amazingly fruitful. In conferring the Distinguished Fellow Award in 1969, the American Economic Association credited Mises as the author of 19 volumes if one only counts first editions, but of 46 if one counts all revised editions and foreign translations. In his last years other honors have come to Mises. But such honors, even taken as a whole, seem scarcely proportionate to his achievements. If ever a man deserved the Nobel Prize in economics, it is Mises.

I read it twice to Lu, to be sure he understood. And he smiled, a sad, resigned little smile.

This same little sad smile I remember only too well when, on December 4, 1969, Lu read an article by Winston Duke, published in the Harbis News, the Harvard University Business School community paper. It was called “The Man who should have received the Nobel Prize in Economics.”

I would recommend Mises’ book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality to each member of the H. B. School faculty as an exercise in introspection. And to the serious student of economics Mises’ monumental work, Human Action (the greatest piece of economic literature since The Wealth of Nations). Human Action alone is justification for a Nobel Prize in Economics. It is a poor comment upon the economic departments of so-called “liberal” and “open-minded” universities throughout this nation that this man’s works are so systematically excluded from economic texts and classrooms. Likewise it is a sickening comment upon the men who chose the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics that Professor Mises was not (even) nominated for that honor.

Lu’s mind was especially clear the day before his death. He held my hand all day long, but he was very weak and his voice was barely audible when he told me in the evening, “You look so tired; you must go home now and get some rest.” At 9 P.M. the doctor insisted on my leaving. Shortly afterward, Lu went into a coma and never woke up. He died at 8:30 in the morning of October 10, 1973. His doctor and three of the kindest young floor nurses were with him.

Lu is still with me and he always will be. His thoughts, his ideas, his books, his teachings will live on for a better future to come. The sale of his books not only continues but is steadily increasing. In Buenos Aires they have named a street after him. The Mont Pelerin Society gave an impressive memorial celebration at its 1974 meeting in Brussels—a memorial proposed by the society’s president, Dr. Arthur Shenfield. I attended as an honored guest. Seven distinguished scholars delivered memorials to Lu, and the speeches later were published in a little booklet. The University Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala has founded a Ludwig von Mises library. A new Spanish translation (by Rigobesto Juarez-Paz) of Theory and History has been published by the same university. Gustav Fischer in Stuttgart, Germany, Lu’s former publishers for his German books, will soon publish a new printing of Lu’s Kritik des Interventionismus (Critique of Interventionism), first published in 1929. This time it will be published by the German Society for Scientific Books (Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Buchgenossenschaft) and will have a foreword by F. A. von Hayek. Percy Greaves has published a glossary for Human Action, called Mises Made Easier.

Charles Heatherly, now Education Director of 300,000 members of the National Federation of Independent Business in California, has arranged a yearly “Ludwig von Mises Essay Contest” for college undergraduates. In 1975 more than a thousand students participated. President George Roche of Hillsdale College has introduced an annual series of “Mises Lectures” at Hillsdale. A couple in California have willed their estate for the foundation of a Mises chair in economics at Rockford College. The Libertarian parties of Tennessee, Washington, and Massachusetts published in their various newsletters a proposal to their members for a “von Mises Day,” to be observed annually on September 29. Lu’s Anti-Capitalistic Mentality was recorded for the blind in 1975, and recently Congressman Steve Symms of Idaho introduced a bill in Congress (H.R. 8358) calling for the minting of two gold coins for sale to the American people, each coin containing one ounce of .999 fine gold. One coin “shall have a portrait of the late economist Ludwig von Mises on one side and the seal of the United States on the other side.” The second coin “shall bear a portrait of President Thomas Jefferson on one side and the seal of the United States of America on the other side.” “In my opinion,” Symms said, “the painting of these coins would be a fitting tribute to the greatest economist and the greatest political thinker who have ever lived.”

If I myself could realize one special dream, it would be that every president of the United States should get for his inauguration a complete set of Lu’s books, destined for the Oval Office in the White House. These books should be marked for special recommended readings concerning government interference, socialism, and inflation. Perhaps they would help to preserve freedom in the United States. My second wish would be that every university or college where economics and political science are taught would—of their own free will—add a course on freedom of the market to their curriculum.

I can best sum up my husband’s character in the very words that he himself used in writing about the distinguished economist Benjamin Anderson:

His most eminent qualities were his inflexible honesty, his unhesitating sincerity and his unflinching patriotism. He never yielded. He always freely enunciated what he considered to be true. If he had been prepared to suppress or only to soften his criticism of popular, but obnoxious policies, the most influential positions and offices would have been offered to him. But he never compromised. This firmness marks him as one of the outstanding characters in this age.