A Band of Aging Brothers at the Mises Institute

Gary North - March 27, 2018

In 1974, about 50 people showed up at South Royalton, Vermont, to attend a week-long conference on Austrian School economics.

Ludwig von Mises had died the previous October at age 92. Hayek won the Nobel Prize a few months later. This was the dark period between those events: the low point was when the week began. This was the turnaround.

Not all of the attendees were Austrians. There were some Chicago School grad students. Milton Friedman came by one evening to deliver a lecture. He was in the neighborhood. He vacationed in Vermont.

A good account of the event was written that October by Richard Ebeling. It is here.

Prof. Ebeling, who still teaches, came to the Austrian Economics Research Conference at the Mises Institute last week. Five of us from South Royalton spoke. The other three were Joseph Salerno, Walter Block, and Roger Garrison. Salerno and Block are still teaching.

Here, he speaks on his astounding 1996 discovery of the personal papers of Ludwig von Mises. Mises left Austria for Switzerland in 1934. He was convinced that the Nazis would gain control in Austria, which they did in 1938. As a Jew, his life was at risk. He left his papers behind. The Nazis did not burn them when they took over. Then the invading Russians got the collection. They took it to Moscow. No one in the West knew it was there.

Note: bureaucrats do not usually burn papers. They archive them . . . just in case.