The Funding of Ludwig von Mises in America: New Information
This story is virtually unknown. I did not know about it until a week ago when I read a 2008 interview with Richard Ware. Ware had been a senior officer of two foundations, the Relm Foundation and the Earhart Foundation), from 1951 to 1984. He took over as president of both foundations in 1970. He retired in 1984. He died in 2015 at age 95. An obituary is here. He was the last survivor of the 1947 Mt. Pelerin meeting, which Relm helped to finance.
In October 2008, Ware was interviewed by David Levy and Sandra Peart. The interview was in three parts. Ware reminisced about the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, and Mises. I found out about this interview only because I was contacted by Dr. Levy, who is researching the history of the University of Virginia's economics department. I was on the fringes of the UVA because W. H. Hutt had agreed to take me as a grad student at Robert LeFevre's proposed grad school. But the plan fell apart. I had corresponded with Hutt. He had agreed to accept me into the program. Hutt then went to the UVA. I stayed at the University of California, Riverside. I had been an Earhart fellow for a year. Ware extended my fellowship for another year. I had been sponsored in 1966-67 by Donald Kemmerer, and in 1967-68 by Hutt. I was funded again in 1969-70. I received a Weaver Fellowship from the I.S.I. Relm put up the money for the Weaver Fellowships.
With respect to the money for Mises, he said this of the five foundations: "They gave it to Leonard Read; he was the agent. And Larry Fertig arranged it. Larry was a trustee at the FEE but also a trustee with NYU." The total was $10,000. This sounded like a one-time donation. I checked with Bob Anderson on April 30, who was one of Mises' students at NYU, an Earhart Fellow, and the business manager at FEE from 1957 to 1961. He told me that he wrote the payroll checks every two weeks. He recalled that Mises was paid $200 every two weeks. That meant $5,000 a year. If the five foundations had paid $50,000, he had not heard of it. It is possible that Ware was incorrect. It is also possible that the five foundations donated the money before Anderson was hired by FEE, and Read was still paying Mises despite the fact that donations from the five were no longer coming in. I suspect the latter.
Anderson said the payments did not constitute a grant. Mises was on FEE's payroll. Mises' income was, in today's money, in the range of $43,000 a year in 1959. He could survive on that in New York City. He lived in a rent-controlled apartment, as did Rothbard. But he did not live high on the hog.
Tens of millions of dollars have flowed through these two foundations to graduate students over a period of 65 years. The list of recipients and their advisors is over 500 pages, with about six recipients per page. Senior professors recommended these students to Earhart.
Ware talked in detail about several economists: Mises, Hayek, Warren Nutter, and James Buchanan.
NYU never paid Mises. Ware made this observation regarding NYU's department of economics: ". . . he's a visiting professor downtown, they wouldn't let him on the campus uptown." Technically, Mises was a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration, not the liberal arts faculty of NYU.
Dr. Levy added this:
It is so embarrassing. So much of 20th Century economics is von Mises and Hayek and this whole literatures which they started and they can't get jobs. It speaks to the profession and gives sort of the background to Nutter they can't get jobs even though have made an enormous impact in a professional discussion.
Ware commented on Mises' enormous breadth of knowledge.
He had an enormous range of knowledge. I remember I took him one day, he came to lecture to my graduate students at Wayne and in my spare time and I took him to the Detroit Institute of Arts. He was looking at somebody's painting and he was able to look at it and say it is not quite as good as the one that's in Bombay. . . . Or Delhi, or something like that. But then this was major knowledge.
Then he said this of the relationship between Mises and Hayek. Hayek was a product of Mises' seminar in Vienna in the early 1920's
Richard. And they sort of had a little more distant relationship, to von Mises, the two of them in this country. I don't think Hayek particularly wanted to be known as a Misian or a Mises student.David. That's interesting.
Sandra. You think that was an intellectual issue or a personal issue?
Richard. Personality. They were totally different people. Mises acted like the First Lieutenant of Artillery.
But it was more than this.
Richard. He had a much greater range of cultural knowledge than Hayek had. . . . He came from a different generation.David. Right. He writes very insightful things on people like Hegel, that he's just sort of is in a generation where you could read Hegel and get something out of it. I was at a conference where Hayek talked and he was saying that students of his generation would learn English to be able to read Kant, because the English translation would be an interpretation or a simplification.
I can't imagine von Mises saying things like that. Von Mises going to read Hegel in German and get what Hegel is trying to do. He doesn't need any of the interpretation and in the simplification. Oh that's interesting. I tell my Austrian colleagues that von Mises in America, when he was writing on America is not as interesting as when he is writing in Europe because he doesn't have his library. That von Mises without his library is diminished and so when his library was lost.
That was in 1934 when he left Vienna for a professorship in Switzerland. He was afraid that the Nazis would take over in Austria. They did four years later. The Gestapo confiscated his papers at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, plus the books that he had not taken to Switzerland. The papers were sent to Czechoslovakia, where they were confiscated by the Red Army in 1945 and sent to Moscow. They were not destroyed. They were discovered by Richard Ebeling in 1996.
After Mises died in October 1973, Earhart paid Hillsdale College $25,000 to buy Mises' American library. This was money for his wife Margit. Bob Anderson, who was at FEE for a second time, replacing me in 1973, recounts the following.
I’m only aware of both the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor and Stanley Miller of Benton Harbor each donating $25,000 to Hillsdale to buy the Mises library. I cannot recall the exact date of the purchase, but funding for the purchase was arranged by Leonard several years after Mises died in 1973. The library was first offered by Larry Fertig to FEE, but Leonard did not want it because of limited space in FEE’s library which existed at the time. Roche could have collected more funds for the Mises library purchase, but FEE never had any knowledge of that happening. Fertig had arranged the sale of Mises library to help financially support Mrs. Mises, and I assume it was Hillsdale that finally paid her the $25,000 for the library. As far as I know Larry was never aware of the duplicate payments to Roche for the library, and I sure never disclosed it to either Larry or Stanley. I seriously doubt if Leonard divulged it either, but he did know it happened! (May 1, 2018)
So, there are still a lot of questions as to who funded Mises in America, and how much they paid. This much is sure: it was not a lot of money.