WEBVTT

NOTE Reflections on Mises and Rothbard

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.440
This is a special session of the Brown Bag today.

2
00:00:02.440 --> 00:00:06.760
I'm taking over from Mark Thornton, who couldn't be here today.

3
00:00:06.760 --> 00:00:10.360
But we're very honored to have today in town with us George Cother,

4
00:00:10.360 --> 00:00:14.400
who knew all the greats and socialized with them.

5
00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:18.320
Lee, Ayn Rand, Emma Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises.

6
00:00:18.320 --> 00:00:23.080
And very honored to have him here today to be able to speak with us

7
00:00:23.080 --> 00:00:25.120
about some of his experiences.

8
00:00:25.120 --> 00:00:29.760
He's also responsible for the Mises bus that's out front here.

9
00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:40.260
Mr. Cotter arranged the entire project and supervised it and was a benefactor towards it and also right now he's doing the same thing for Professor Rothbard.

10
00:00:40.260 --> 00:00:48.260
Unfortunately, he never was able to get actually measured for the vessel. The person who will do it has to do it entirely from pictures.

11
00:00:48.260 --> 00:00:56.260
But Mr. Cotter's arranging that. Also, he's a great benefactor for the Mises Institute. We're very pleased to have you here today, sir. Please.

12
00:00:56.260 --> 00:01:22.260
Thank you very much. I'm honored to be here. I'm not an economist, as they say, but I'm a journalist economist, and I've often thought of writing a book titled, Some Economists Aren't, because there are some economists teaching in some places I feel confident who don't really know as much about it as I do, but that's your problem, that's what you're going to change.

13
00:01:22.260 --> 00:01:40.260
I'll try to confine this entirely to memories of Mises, after which I'll add on memories of Rothbard, because I met Mises first, and as a result of that, that's how I met Rothbard.

14
00:01:40.260 --> 00:01:47.260
So one stroke of good luck led to another, and both became very warm friends.

15
00:01:47.260 --> 00:01:55.220
and it started when I was working for the foundation for economic education which

16
00:01:55.220 --> 00:02:04.060
at that time was planning to produce a periodical which has now evolved into

17
00:02:04.060 --> 00:02:09.260
the Freeman and at that time there was Baldy Harper there and Paul Perot and

18
00:02:09.260 --> 00:02:16.420
maybe some others whose names might not mean much to you but after six months

19
00:02:16.420 --> 00:02:23.940
there, it was determined that well maybe we shouldn't put out a periodical, should we

20
00:02:23.940 --> 00:02:30.820
take advertising or shouldn't we and so on, it was a problem in entrepreneurial judgment

21
00:02:30.820 --> 00:02:35.460
which was a little bit too much down to earth for the lofty discussions that were taking

22
00:02:35.460 --> 00:02:42.100
place at the time with fellows like Leonard Reed and Baldy Harper, I must say one thing

23
00:03:12.100 --> 00:03:28.100
Well, what are you? What is your answer? He said, would you believe Russia? That's the kind of a mind-ball he had. He could be right, but he couldn't. That doesn't look much like it yet.

24
00:03:28.100 --> 00:03:37.100
Well, while I was at the Foundation, one, eating lunch all alone in the cafeteria, they had taken this old home and turned it into an institute.

25
00:03:37.100 --> 00:03:44.060
What was, what had been a big spacious kitchen, they'd cut up into little dining nooks.

26
00:03:44.060 --> 00:03:49.340
And I was in one of these dining nooks alone at a table for four.

27
00:03:49.340 --> 00:03:54.420
And in walked Leonard Reed, with a stranger, short man, about, in fact, a little bit shorter

28
00:03:54.420 --> 00:03:58.180
than I am, I think.

29
00:03:58.180 --> 00:04:02.780
Completely dressed, you know, not casual, jacket and tie and all that.

30
00:04:02.780 --> 00:04:08.780
And Leonard came in, he walked over to the table, he said, George, I'd like to have you meet Dr. Mises.

31
00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:14.780
Well, I didn't know if Dr. Mises was an economist or a medical doctor or what he was.

32
00:04:14.780 --> 00:04:19.780
So he said, may we join you for lunch? I said, sure.

33
00:04:19.780 --> 00:04:23.780
So Mises is on one side of me and Reed's on the other.

34
00:04:23.780 --> 00:04:29.780
And it wasn't, as I later described to a newspaper man who interviewed me for,

35
00:04:29.780 --> 00:04:34.300
for, I was going to make a talk in my hometown in Connecticut on inflation and they interviewed

36
00:04:34.300 --> 00:04:39.580
me and he said, well, how did you get this way? And I said, well, it all starts with

37
00:04:39.580 --> 00:04:45.460
a young man sitting down with a man named Mises. He was like a physics student sitting

38
00:04:45.460 --> 00:04:54.460
down with Einstein for lunch, something like that. But it wasn't long into that lunch when

39
00:04:54.460 --> 00:05:03.060
I realized I was talking to an intellectual giant. I mean, I was blinded, really. I was

40
00:05:03.060 --> 00:05:08.860
bowled over by it. And I guess my interest showed through pretty rapidly, and some of

41
00:05:08.860 --> 00:05:18.940
my comments must have pleased him, or questions, or whatever. He said to me in a very, almost,

42
00:05:18.940 --> 00:05:25.500
and I wouldn't say pleading but in a very inviting way. He said, would you like to join my seminar?

43
00:05:26.860 --> 00:05:36.300
And I said, oh, you bet I would. He says, come to New York University next Tuesday, 725. Yes, sir. Okay.

44
00:05:36.940 --> 00:05:45.340
Well, I was there as a chappy, young guy. I'm about 20 years older than Murray, 19 to be exact, I guess.

45
00:05:45.340 --> 00:05:52.780
so here's this young feisty fellow sitting I don't I don't think we sat

46
00:05:52.780 --> 00:05:56.460
next to each other except and when the thing was over we sat next to each other

47
00:05:56.460 --> 00:06:02.260
on the subway coming up some of the New York University was was down as you know

48
00:06:02.260 --> 00:06:06.480
downtown and we were riding up the subway together and Murray and I got

49
00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:13.780
talking and I instantly realized here's another real smart guy and a very

50
00:06:13.780 --> 00:06:43.780
This was a very affable one and he had some books in his hand and I said, what are you reading? He says, there, look at this one, title, Knox, Our Enemy, The State, the first book Murray handed me, and later, well, I'll tell you more about Murray later, but as the seminars went on, I not only attended myself, but this is the, this is a

51
00:06:43.780 --> 00:07:06.340
Characteristic, it was a characteristic of Lou Rises. If you showed any interest, he had the time, he had the patience, he didn't disdain, even the stupidest person, if the stupidest person asked a question, he would give them an answer in a way that he hoped that this uninitiated could understand.

52
00:07:06.340 --> 00:07:36.340
it was nothing haughty about him he was for a man of his mind he was amazingly humble in his manner and very almost bashful in his behavior especially around ladies and he would welcome my wife and I took my wife many times which was a good thing to do and then she understood the way I was acting

53
00:07:36.340 --> 00:07:56.340
I was pretty well before she passed on, and I took my two sons, and they are ardent Misesians, free market, and one of them, I hope, is sending you some checks now, and if he isn't, I'm going to kick him in the pants.

54
00:07:56.340 --> 00:08:02.540
But this was characteristic, Mises was a man who was generous with his mind, much more

55
00:08:02.540 --> 00:08:10.660
so than, the only contrast I can make is, I had attended many meetings at the Montelerin

56
00:08:10.660 --> 00:08:17.980
Society and I wasn't sure where Professor Friedman stood because I'd heard stories

57
00:08:17.980 --> 00:08:22.300
at his last meeting, I was out, maybe I had to go to the washroom, I was out of the hall,

58
00:08:22.300 --> 00:08:29.500
Friedman just said, as far as he's concerned, you can do away with the Federal Reserve.

59
00:08:29.500 --> 00:08:38.580
I had never, of course, I haven't read all of Friedman, so one time I wrote Friedman

60
00:08:38.580 --> 00:08:45.020
and I said, what is your position at this moment on money?

61
00:08:45.020 --> 00:08:51.940
He had been quoted as having favored a discount rate or so and so one time and another rate

62
00:08:51.940 --> 00:09:01.620
and another time somewhat like the fellow of Harvard up at Boston, but I got a letter back

63
00:09:01.620 --> 00:09:04.380
from Friedman.

64
00:09:04.380 --> 00:09:10.340
My position on money is precisely what it always has been sincerely, you know, something.

65
00:09:10.340 --> 00:09:12.860
In other words, I've got a real brush-off answer.

66
00:09:12.860 --> 00:09:20.660
Well, I've seen Mises meet very ignorant people who are asking ignorant questions, but he

67
00:09:20.660 --> 00:09:21.660
never brushed them off.

68
00:09:21.660 --> 00:09:28.500
He was a gentleman, he was courteous, he listened, and took his time, patience, which I think

69
00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:32.660
is exceptional for a man with all that brilliance.

70
00:09:32.660 --> 00:09:37.500
Now the other thing, oh, he also had a very soft, gentle voice.

71
00:09:37.500 --> 00:09:42.980
He never pounded, he never did a Rothbard.

72
00:09:42.980 --> 00:09:48.620
Murray was just the opposite, because Murray was outgoing and effusive and Mises was quiet.

73
00:09:48.620 --> 00:10:05.020
In the seminar, we had Henry Haslett there, Larry Fertig, Percy Graves.

74
00:10:05.020 --> 00:10:08.340
We had a very interesting collection of people.

75
00:10:08.340 --> 00:10:16.420
I was the only journalist, there was a manufacturer, there was a young Japanese student, Toshio

76
00:10:16.420 --> 00:10:23.780
by Murata, who has translated this book, I think, yes, in the Japanese, he's translated

77
00:10:23.780 --> 00:10:29.060
Human Action in the Japanese, he finished that I think about a year, maybe two years,

78
00:10:29.060 --> 00:10:38.580
a year and a half ago, and a prodigious result that you can see coming out of that Mises seminar.

79
00:10:38.580 --> 00:10:48.060
I didn't produce anything, but as Hayek said to me, he said to us in Oxford, it's important

80
00:10:48.060 --> 00:10:51.500
that we talk to these dealers in secondhand ideas.

81
00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:55.940
Well, at that time I didn't realize that Hayek himself was a dealer in secondhand ideas.

82
00:10:55.940 --> 00:10:57.500
There's nothing wrong with that.

83
00:10:57.500 --> 00:11:02.580
I mean, we're all dealing with lots of secondhand ideas.

84
00:11:02.580 --> 00:11:16.240
But Mises never threw his weight around except in his books, that's why he threw his weight

85
00:11:16.240 --> 00:11:17.240
around.

86
00:11:17.240 --> 00:11:22.600
Now the other characteristics about him that you might be interested in, I was sitting,

87
00:11:22.600 --> 00:11:29.840
the seminar room was just about this large and the table was just about this big actually

88
00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:59.840
and I was way down in the other, the room was oval and I was way down in the end of the oval and Mises was in the middle. He's where this gentleman here would be and he was talking this way and that way and I didn't know that Mises had a very bad hearing problem. That's the one thing, one touch of vanity that he had. He didn't want anybody in the know. He couldn't hear very well. He had a hearing aid but he didn't even want, he was not, he was a little embarrassed about it.

89
00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:29.840
So I'd ask a question or make a comment, and his habit was to tell from his prodigious memory, he would make a point, an economic theory, and then he would say, for example, then he'd go into an anecdote from the Napoleonic Wars, or the potato war in Austria, or some incident in history, to demonstrate, not demonstrate, but to

90
00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:59.840
would characterize the point he was trying to make, and then he would finish his little narrative, then he'd stop, and he'd look around the table, waiting for somebody, well, everybody was so overawed by this man's mind, there were very few people who would speak up, even Hazlitt, although Hazlitt remained silent, largely out of deference to the rest of us in the room, give the rest of the chance, you know, and Hazlitt himself a very modest man.

91
00:12:59.840 --> 00:13:05.440
didn't want to keep making a comment after Mises that I would be down at the end there

92
00:13:05.440 --> 00:13:14.840
and I was really, well I was terribly disappointed, I thought the man was ignoring my question

93
00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:18.560
and I didn't realize later he couldn't even hear what I said and he didn't want to say

94
00:13:18.560 --> 00:13:29.040
I can't hear you. It's just a little bit of vanity, which is understandable. He always

95
00:13:29.040 --> 00:13:37.600
There's another personality thing is his dress, he never, anybody who's read this book, the

96
00:13:37.600 --> 00:13:43.320
market mentions it in there, he would never appear in public or even in private without

97
00:13:43.320 --> 00:13:48.840
a coat, without a jacket and tie, he was very fussy.

98
00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:55.040
And when he came out to the house for dinner, he'd be invited for dinner at seven o'clock

99
00:13:55.040 --> 00:14:25.040
and you could you knew you could be fooling around in the kitchen in the dining room when the doorbell rang you look at seven o'clock right on that dot just like if you've seen pictures of him in his military uniform you know there's one in this book he was a really smart pressure Austrian officer when he was in the military and his military preciseness and his exact exactness on time in addition to coming to my house and

100
00:14:25.040 --> 00:14:33.480
When we go for a walk, they went to, Lew and Margaret went up in the country, up in Vermont

101
00:14:33.480 --> 00:14:36.800
every summer to have a little vacation.

102
00:14:36.800 --> 00:14:39.080
And they invited us to come up and see them.

103
00:14:39.080 --> 00:14:44.360
We'd go up there and we'd check into the nearby inn, you know, and we'd go out to dinner together

104
00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:51.640
and we'd take a walk in the woods and you'd be walking along and Mises would discover

105
00:15:21.640 --> 00:15:51.640
I had a friend who was a sculptor, and a good one, and I asked her, would you, if I gave you a commission, she said, for Mises, you know, she knew who he was, she had met him at dinner parties at our house, and she said, I won't charge you anything, it's an honor for you to ask me to do it, and I said, all right, I'll ask him, so I asked, I asked Lewis,

106
00:15:51.640 --> 00:16:01.640
Again, you see, humility. You wouldn't have that trouble with Hayek. No way. Am I right, Professor?

107
00:16:01.640 --> 00:16:14.640
For example, the first Mont Pelerin meeting I attended as a guest was in Switzerland,

108
00:16:14.640 --> 00:16:22.640
That lovely resort hotel over the valley of the Angadine there and Professor Hayek, for

109
00:16:22.640 --> 00:16:30.920
whom I have the most profound respect of course, I never forgot the speech he made at the end

110
00:16:30.920 --> 00:16:31.920
of the meeting.

111
00:16:31.920 --> 00:16:38.480
He announced that after, this was in 57, which is exactly ten years after the founding of

112
00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:40.280
of the Society.

113
00:16:40.280 --> 00:16:46.200
He announced that he had carried the burden of this presidency of this society for ten

114
00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:51.240
years and he felt it was time to lay down the reins and so on.

115
00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:58.960
And then he expatiated a little more on a few words and I said to my wife, it reminds

116
00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:06.740
me of, was it Mark Anthony, thrice upon the lubrical he fused the crown, you know, like

117
00:17:06.740 --> 00:17:14.740
Speaking of Caesar. After refusing it thrice, he took it. Old Hayek, you know, he loved

118
00:17:14.740 --> 00:17:19.740
the limelight, no question about it. And his brother, I got a letter from his brother the

119
00:17:19.740 --> 00:17:25.300
other day in England who had heard that I had a bus ride to Hayek through pictures the

120
00:17:25.300 --> 00:17:30.260
same way we were going to do Murray. And it turned out very well. I had my own pictures

121
00:18:30.260 --> 00:18:42.260
and when the sculptor put the calipers on his head, Mises turned red. He blushed like a baby. He was so embarrassed to have his tic-tac-tac.

122
00:18:42.260 --> 00:18:55.260
And another thing about him that amazed me, on the wall in his apartment, you remember the old pictures of Franz Joseph, the Emperor of Austria, the grey mutton chop.

123
00:18:55.260 --> 00:19:02.980
He had a nice picture of old Franz Joseph, his emperor, still hanging on the wall, which

124
00:19:02.980 --> 00:19:07.140
illustrates again the difference between Mises and his student Rothbard.

125
00:19:07.140 --> 00:19:15.100
I can't imagine Rothbard ever hanging a picture of an emperor on the wall.

126
00:19:15.100 --> 00:19:25.380
But the other things that might be worth telling about him, well I probably shouldn't tell

127
00:19:25.380 --> 00:19:33.700
this but I will because it's embarrassing for myself, being a writer and being asked

128
00:19:33.700 --> 00:19:42.780
sometimes to write all sorts of things including some which were a little, not salacious but

129
00:19:42.780 --> 00:19:47.020
a little naughty, you know, Ogden Nash was an expert at that,

130
00:19:47.020 --> 00:19:48.980
Limericks and so on.

131
00:19:48.980 --> 00:19:52.020
So I had dashed off something for this chap who was having

132
00:19:52.020 --> 00:19:55.020
a birthday party across the street.

133
00:19:55.020 --> 00:19:58.780
And I made the mistake when Mises came to dinner one night.

134
00:19:58.780 --> 00:20:03.300
I said, what do you think of this or something?

135
00:20:03.300 --> 00:20:07.060
And of course, he assumed I had written it, which I had.

136
00:20:07.060 --> 00:20:11.300
I didn't mention it when I handed it to him, but he looked at it.

137
00:20:11.300 --> 00:20:21.300
That was his answer. Sorry when he could express his thorough disgust that I would ponder with such a thing.

138
00:20:21.300 --> 00:20:40.300
But he, oh, there are so many things. My memory is not what it was, of course, but he, oh, yes.

139
00:20:40.300 --> 00:20:51.380
Near the end of his days when his mind was beginning to get fuzzy, we went down to dinner

140
00:20:51.380 --> 00:20:57.820
at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park in New York City because I knew they were

141
00:20:57.820 --> 00:21:05.100
going to be playing some Viennese music and so on, and there was Mrs. Mises, of course,

142
00:21:05.100 --> 00:21:13.500
Margaret and my wife and I, and I think perhaps their daughter from England was there.

143
00:21:13.500 --> 00:21:17.540
But Lew was sitting next to me and the music came on.

144
00:21:17.540 --> 00:21:23.740
He didn't say much during the dinner because, you know, he wasn't alone before he passed

145
00:21:23.740 --> 00:21:24.740
on.

146
00:21:24.740 --> 00:21:31.620
And when the music started he started to hum and he started to go this way and he was humming

147
00:21:31.620 --> 00:21:39.940
Viennese Music. So he was typically, as Murray has written many times, he was the quintessence

148
00:21:39.940 --> 00:21:45.660
of the Viennese gentleman, you know. And I don't know whether Murray ever told you this,

149
00:21:45.660 --> 00:21:52.540
but they used to go, in Europe they used to go to the opera. But when they got to New

150
00:21:52.540 --> 00:21:57.820
York they had lost a lot of money and spent a lot of money on trying to get there, fleeing,

151
00:21:57.820 --> 00:22:27.820
you know Margaret tells about the I titled the chapter for a flight from Europe in fact I titled all the chapters in her book but she tells how difficult it was getting out of Europe and he arrived here pretty hard up I think although nobody told me that but that was of course he was a very prudent man and he lived very humbly he I spoke to Larry Ferdy about that once I said what are we gonna do I said what are we

152
00:22:27.820 --> 00:22:35.020
What can they do when Lew gets, you know, unable to continue his work?

153
00:22:35.020 --> 00:22:42.060
Are we going to raise a fund for Frederic's own true worry, he says, the old boy is all right.

154
00:22:42.060 --> 00:22:50.540
Well, the inference was that the old boy had made enough money in the market, or in the economy, to take care of himself, which I'm sure...

155
00:22:50.540 --> 00:22:57.180
I can say one thing about it, there was one line in his book, just one line and I read

156
00:22:57.180 --> 00:23:03.400
it and that line was, in fact when I did the condensation, did you ever see that little

157
00:23:03.400 --> 00:23:09.900
thing I did on human action? I should have brought some copies. I boiled down human action

158
00:23:09.900 --> 00:23:17.100
into one, not human action, but I boiled down the essence, like you concentrate orange juice,

159
00:23:17.100 --> 00:23:23.740
and I took the principal points of his economic philosophy and without putting

160
00:23:23.740 --> 00:23:29.060
any words of mine in at all, I took all the German construction out, reversed the

161
00:23:29.060 --> 00:23:34.700
sentences, I took phrases out of one sentence and added them to another to

162
00:23:34.700 --> 00:23:38.500
express the same thought that took him three or four sentences because of the

163
00:23:38.500 --> 00:23:42.420
German language, he was thinking in German and writing in English. Anyway this

164
00:23:42.420 --> 00:23:46.900
little book came out and as I was putting this book together there was one line

165
00:23:46.900 --> 00:23:56.860
And it hit me, it said, the falling exchange rate predicts the coming inflation, and I

166
00:23:56.860 --> 00:24:03.140
read it again, I started to think, well I can't tell you how much that one sentence

167
00:24:03.140 --> 00:24:20.440
I bought my first Swiss francs in 1957, and all I can remember is that in 1972 the Swiss

168
00:24:20.440 --> 00:24:29.080
franc was worth 25 cents U.S. Yesterday or the day before it was worth 85 cents.

169
00:24:29.080 --> 00:24:36.160
So I can credit Professor Mises at one sentence, got me to think, and I figured it backwards

170
00:24:36.160 --> 00:24:44.360
because I knew the inflation was coming, but I hadn't realized the impact of the import

171
00:24:44.360 --> 00:24:52.200
of the exchange rates and when it began to, it's been sliding a long time, but recently

172
00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:55.320
it's been diving.

173
00:24:55.320 --> 00:25:00.520
So anyway, Lew, we didn't have to, I didn't have to work at Raising Money.

174
00:25:00.520 --> 00:25:05.200
And Frederic, who himself was quite a wealthy man, for all I know, Frederic, I don't know

175
00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:09.980
whether he needed any help, but I do know that his last days were comfortable.

176
00:25:09.980 --> 00:25:17.000
But they never, to show you how frugal they must have been, when he came to New York he

177
00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:22.840
settled in this apartment up in the upper, I don't know, any of you, Roger, you've probably

178
00:25:22.840 --> 00:25:23.840
been there, haven't you?

179
00:25:23.840 --> 00:25:24.840
No, I haven't.

180
00:25:24.840 --> 00:25:33.480
was up on Central Park West, the corner of 77th Street, and it was a very, it was a rent

181
00:25:33.480 --> 00:25:39.760
control, the anomaly is that here's a professor who's opposed to rent control, he's living

182
00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:44.640
in a rent control, he had to, all apartments were rent controlled at the time he moved

183
00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:54.040
in, and he stayed there, never moved, never lived anywhere else as his permanent home

184
00:25:54.040 --> 00:26:02.600
in the United States, that one apartment, and one thing I can tell about is this must

185
00:26:02.600 --> 00:26:08.920
relate to his military bearing and he walked like a military.

186
00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:14.840
When I was helping Margaret on this book she, sometimes the first time she came out to my

187
00:26:14.840 --> 00:26:20.440
house in Connecticut and we sat down at the table and she had this manuscript and it was

188
00:26:50.440 --> 00:26:51.440
Law.

189
00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:54.600
It was a two-hour drive and sometimes I had to go into New York anyway.

190
00:26:54.600 --> 00:26:58.480
I would wind up working at her place.

191
00:26:58.480 --> 00:27:04.880
And she kept saying, just stay overnight, you don't have to stay overnight and work

192
00:27:04.880 --> 00:27:05.880
some more on the book.

193
00:27:05.880 --> 00:27:06.880
Let's get the book.

194
00:27:06.880 --> 00:27:07.880
Push.

195
00:27:07.880 --> 00:27:09.960
He was a pusher.

196
00:27:09.960 --> 00:27:15.720
And all right, so I stayed overnight twice and then I couldn't stay any more because

197
00:27:15.720 --> 00:27:44.720
Lew Mises' bed, he said, you can sleep in Lew's bed. His bedroom, his bed was in his office, which is about a little larger, like, if you squared this, no, it wouldn't be. It would be if you didn't, if you cut it off here, and his bed, by golly, was like an army cot. It was a flat thing, you know, about so wide, it went this way. God's name, did that man sleep in his bed?

198
00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:53.720
Maybe he slept in the bedroom where I never saw the bedroom, presumably, but she said you can sleep in Lou's bed.

199
00:27:53.720 --> 00:28:00.720
She said, Lou's bed? Maybe that's where he took his naps. But it was Army style, I'll tell you that.

200
00:28:00.720 --> 00:28:10.720
I can't recall any other incidents that could bear taping.

201
00:28:10.720 --> 00:28:17.280
Now, I'd like to add a couple of things about Murray.

202
00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:23.520
Murray, when we first met, we came up together on the subway quite often.

203
00:28:23.520 --> 00:28:31.880
I came up to catch the train up to Pelham, where I lived then, and sometimes I'd actually

204
00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:37.280
drive down there and park the car and I'd drive Murray home.

205
00:28:37.280 --> 00:28:43.520
and not very often, a couple of times, I think, but the first time I did, insisted, oh, you

206
00:28:43.520 --> 00:28:50.040
must come up and have a piece of, have a coffee and a piece of cake, and I met Murray's parents,

207
00:28:50.040 --> 00:28:56.920
very nice people, he worked, his father worked for an oil company, very nice, and I could

208
00:28:56.920 --> 00:29:02.840
tell right offhand, it was a fine family relationship, and they're pretty proud of their son even

209
00:29:02.840 --> 00:29:09.840
before he had achieved what he has. I could sense that. And of course, I realized, I figured

210
00:29:09.840 --> 00:29:16.840
I knew, I didn't realize how far Murray would go, but I could certainly see the potential.

211
00:29:16.840 --> 00:29:24.560
And Murray and I, and Joey and my wife became good friends and they came down and we had

212
00:29:24.560 --> 00:29:31.960
another thing I learned through Mises in economics. I went down to the Virgin Islands on a vacation

213
00:29:31.960 --> 00:29:39.560
with no intention of buying anything, didn't have that much to buy anyway, to buy with.

214
00:29:39.560 --> 00:29:45.200
A real estate man got me up on a hill overlooking the sea on two sides, St. Croix, and it was

215
00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:49.720
a beautiful view, and I said, how much is this two-acre lot?

216
00:29:49.720 --> 00:29:54.560
He said, $16,000, right away.

217
00:29:54.560 --> 00:30:07.560
Well, a 100-foot lot, tell them New York, down the street from me, is worth about $16,000, $150 feet.

218
00:30:07.560 --> 00:30:16.560
And here you've got two acres over, no snow, no slush, no train going by, no traffic.

219
00:30:16.560 --> 00:30:19.560
So I said, something's wrong with this ratio.

220
00:30:19.560 --> 00:30:26.000
So I said, all right, I went down, I put down a down payment to hold a lot. If I hadn't

221
00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:33.560
had a sense of relative values, you know, I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't studied

222
00:30:33.560 --> 00:30:40.880
what little economics I gleaned from Mises, which I consider for me quite a lot actually.

223
00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:51.160
But I owe that man not only what he did for my mind, but what he did for my pocketbook.

224
00:30:51.160 --> 00:30:52.160
Very practical.

225
00:30:52.160 --> 00:30:57.840
And maybe you should put that in some of your lectures to these young guys, you know.

226
00:30:57.840 --> 00:31:05.000
Did you ever expect to make any money if you can't read Human Action?

227
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:08.880
But Murray came down there with Joey, and we had a wonderful time.

228
00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:47.760
I'm going to use most of that all of the time that I can to helping the cause of freedom

229
00:31:47.760 --> 00:31:56.320
in one way or another and of course with all these institutes fee, this one.

230
00:31:56.320 --> 00:32:05.840
I might have an anecdote about going to Russia with what's his name in Cato, I think my memory

231
00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:34.840
I heard that they were going to have a Cato seminar in Moscow and I called up, oh my heavens I'm embarrassed I can't remember the name, Ed Crane, I called him Ed Crane, I said, Ed how would you like to take a bus to Ludwig von Mises to Moscow and present it to the Mayor?

232
00:32:34.840 --> 00:32:44.760
," and he said, Well, that's lovely. I said, Well, I can get you one. I'll get you one.

233
00:32:44.760 --> 00:32:49.840
Well, he said, That's very nice, George, but he said, I'd rather have one of Hayek.

234
00:32:49.840 --> 00:32:59.240
I said, Why? Good Lord. I said, Mises was Hayek's teacher. Hayek praised Mises as his

235
00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:09.960
He says, teach, why do you want to take? Well, you know, he says, Hayek won the Nobel Prize.

236
00:33:09.960 --> 00:33:19.640
All right, if we got to do it with Hayek, we'll do it with Hayek. So I said, Hayek's

237
00:33:19.640 --> 00:33:28.640
on his deathbed in Germany, in Freiburg, Freiburg, Freiburg. So we can't, we'll have to try it.

238
00:33:28.640 --> 00:33:50.640
I'll find out if it can be done from photographs. And of course I'm happy that it did turn out well. I'm pleased that I sponsored and helped raise the money. In fact, the Mises bus, I paid all of it, it wasn't a big deal, the Mises bus, the casting of that cost $150 back in 1950.

239
00:33:50.640 --> 00:34:08.640
To cast that bust today is 975. And to cast a Hayek's 1001 or something, because the Hayek bust is a little bigger than me, Hayek actually had a larger head than me.

240
00:34:08.640 --> 00:34:18.640
I won't make a pun and say it in more ways than I want. Having said that, I would, I did.

241
00:34:18.640 --> 00:34:48.640
Hayek, God bless him, he tried up to the end, he wrote that bloody book, I don't know what you think of it, The Fatal Conceit and the interesting thing was, just about the time that we took that, I took two bus, I was determined to take a bus to Mises, so I went along, I crated up the bus to Hayek and I crated up the bus to Mises, two of them made specially for this occasion and got on a plane to

242
00:34:48.640 --> 00:34:57.580
Germany, we went from Germany to Moscow, we went from Frankfurt then on to Moscow.

243
00:34:57.580 --> 00:35:07.280
And we uncrated the Mises bus, in fact we uncrated, no that was another time, the Hayek.

244
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:13.040
And I turned it over to Crane and his boys and on the day of the presentation in order

245
00:35:13.040 --> 00:35:20.360
In order to make the flight to Poland in time for a reception into Warsaw, in order to make

246
00:35:20.360 --> 00:35:26.200
that I had to forego the presentation to the mayor.

247
00:35:26.200 --> 00:35:31.700
So Ed Crane wanted to, said I want you to be there and we'll present it.

248
00:35:31.700 --> 00:35:37.360
So I had to leave early and I said, I'll tell you what, I'll write you out two paragraphs

249
00:35:37.360 --> 00:35:42.200
you can read, a statement from me to the mayor and I'll just hand it to you.

250
00:35:42.200 --> 00:35:43.200
So he did it.

251
00:35:43.200 --> 00:35:51.080
Then I got on to Warsaw and they took me in the Oscar Long study, you know, the famous

252
00:35:51.080 --> 00:36:01.080
Oscar Long with whom Mises had a little post-mortem confrontation.

253
00:36:01.080 --> 00:36:08.200
But I don't know, of course, a lot of the books were in foreign languages and I couldn't

254
00:36:08.200 --> 00:36:09.200
spot them.

255
00:36:09.200 --> 00:36:19.920
But, incidentally, I went through Kane's private library in Cambridge, and his books, his library,

256
00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:26.560
private library was three quarters the size of this, and ninety percent of the books in

257
00:36:26.560 --> 00:36:29.720
that library were on mathematics.

258
00:36:29.720 --> 00:36:37.200
And I went to the King's College library shelf, and, of course, there was nothing of

259
00:36:37.200 --> 00:36:43.200
I think it was Hayek's, one of Hayek's, I don't think it was even the Road to Serfdom.

260
00:36:43.200 --> 00:36:51.200
No, it wasn't. But that was King's College. I forgot what year that was, but the thing

261
00:36:51.200 --> 00:37:03.200
that struck me about Keynes, very few books on economics, most of them about mathematics.

262
00:37:03.200 --> 00:37:16.200
We had a little memorial service for Mises, a very small one, up in the cemeteries where his ashes are deposited.

263
00:37:16.200 --> 00:37:25.200
And we had a wonderful memorial service for him in New York, and I dare say the one for Murray will be the same, and I'll be there.

264
00:37:25.200 --> 00:37:29.200
I think I get my plane reservations at the time.

265
00:37:29.200 --> 00:37:58.200
and I just can't imagine anything really new in economics, and of course this is speaking as a non-economist, but if Rothbard, the only thing, you've probably heard the story of somebody who went up to Mises one day after Rothbard's Man Economy and State came out and said,

266
00:37:58.200 --> 00:38:07.720
Professor, you realize of course that Professor Rothbard has differed with you on the point

267
00:38:07.720 --> 00:38:12.640
of monopolistic competition and so on.

268
00:38:12.640 --> 00:38:15.200
What do you have to say about that?

269
00:38:15.200 --> 00:38:26.200
And Mises said, all I have to say to you sir is that Professor Rothbard is a fine economist.

270
00:38:26.200 --> 00:38:32.160
That's another example of his humility and his intellectual purity.

271
00:38:32.160 --> 00:38:43.840
I mean he wouldn't, he just wouldn't, there was nothing, nothing, nothing, Mises never

272
00:38:43.840 --> 00:38:44.840
acted.

273
00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:48.320
His only action was all up here.

274
00:38:48.320 --> 00:38:55.880
Hayek was, Friedman was pretty good, well Friedman doesn't do too much of it.

275
00:38:55.880 --> 00:39:03.160
These didn't have time for any of the persiflage that goes with the profession and having,

276
00:39:03.160 --> 00:39:07.280
I don't know what else I can tell unless if you have any questions I can't imagine that

277
00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:09.560
I could be able to answer them and I would try.

278
00:39:09.560 --> 00:39:14.640
Someone told me once that Mises actually owned a car but was a terrible driver.

279
00:39:14.640 --> 00:39:15.640
That's right.

280
00:39:15.640 --> 00:39:23.040
Yeah, he was and in fact, that's a thank you anecdote I've forgotten, Margaret called me

281
00:39:23.040 --> 00:39:29.440
For me, I think it was in Connecticut then, she said, George, I have a favor to ask you.

282
00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:33.200
I said, yes.

283
00:39:33.200 --> 00:39:43.600
You know, she said, Lew is a scholar, he's not a businessman, he's a scholar, and we

284
00:39:43.600 --> 00:39:51.080
have to buy a car, and I want to know what you think, is the Pontiac so-and-so good on

285
00:40:51.080 --> 00:40:59.200
He was a hardy fellow, though. There's mountain climbing. They used to climb mountains. Well,

286
00:40:59.200 --> 00:41:04.960
he was in the mountain troops, you know, in Austria during World War I. I wonder if he

287
00:41:04.960 --> 00:41:10.560
ever ran into Fritz Kreisler. He was in the troops, too, in World War I. And Kreisler

288
00:41:10.560 --> 00:41:15.080
wrote a book about it. And it's hard. I don't know where you'd find that book anywhere.

289
00:41:15.080 --> 00:41:35.080
I got a whole little copy and I Xeroxed one chapter where Chrysler tells how on Christmas day the troops fighting on both sides got out of the trenches, went and had a cake and rum party in no man's land and so on, got along fine, jolly, and they went back and started shooting at each other.

290
00:41:35.080 --> 00:41:41.080
Chrysler tells us out of his own personal prints.

291
00:41:41.080 --> 00:41:44.080
Mr. Koffman, you mentioned Toshio Murata.

292
00:41:44.080 --> 00:41:45.080
What did you say?

293
00:41:45.080 --> 00:41:46.080
You mentioned Toshio Murata.

294
00:41:46.080 --> 00:41:47.080
Oh, yeah.

295
00:41:47.080 --> 00:41:50.580
He's been in contact with the Institute in the last couple of years.

296
00:41:50.580 --> 00:41:52.080
I would imagine, yeah.

297
00:41:52.080 --> 00:41:55.080
We were glad to hear from him.

298
00:41:55.080 --> 00:42:00.080
He's a very dedicated scholar and a good one.

299
00:42:00.080 --> 00:42:06.080
He's got the free market economic theory right down the path.

300
00:42:06.080 --> 00:42:11.800
Mr. Coffin, how much time did Henry Hazlitt spend with Ludwig von Mises?

301
00:42:11.800 --> 00:42:20.760
Well, Henry Hazlitt was a pivotal character in the whole tale.

302
00:42:20.760 --> 00:42:27.960
He was in touch with Mises by mail before Mises came to America, and I think probably

303
00:42:27.960 --> 00:42:40.600
The only one, unless Mises had been in touch with that fairly sound economist in Columbia back in the early days.

304
00:42:40.600 --> 00:42:41.600
Mockle?

305
00:42:41.600 --> 00:42:48.600
No, no, no, before Mockle. Was he at Columbia? His name began with a B.

306
00:42:48.600 --> 00:42:49.600
Beckhart?

307
00:42:49.600 --> 00:42:51.600
No, Benjamin Beckhart.

308
00:42:51.600 --> 00:43:00.600
Now, he goes way back. This is back in really 1900, 1920 back in there.

309
00:43:00.600 --> 00:43:07.600
Oh, another thing I forgot that that's right. I forgot to tell you. This was interesting about Mises.

310
00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:13.600
The first seminar, he mentioned, well, I didn't mention all the three books.

311
00:43:13.600 --> 00:43:23.600
The first book he said, now you should all read the Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method.

312
00:43:23.600 --> 00:43:30.600
That's by Cohen, who was quite a logician. Wrote several books on logic and philosophy.

313
00:43:30.600 --> 00:43:35.600
Cohen was at the City College at the time. That's the first book you should get.

314
00:43:35.600 --> 00:43:45.440
Then the next book was, when we got into money, you should read Lombard Street by Badgett.

315
00:43:45.440 --> 00:43:49.320
And I ran out, and every time he mentioned a book, I'd run right out to use the bookstore

316
00:43:49.320 --> 00:43:50.680
and get a hold of it.

317
00:43:50.680 --> 00:43:55.200
That's how I built my library on the books that he mentioned.

318
00:43:55.200 --> 00:43:59.280
And I still have my copy of Lombard Street, and that book bears re-reading right now in

319
00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:04.280
view of what's going on in world monetary markets.

320
00:44:04.280 --> 00:44:14.360
It's a fantastic book in which Badgett says, I have described the financial manipulations

321
00:44:14.360 --> 00:44:21.000
go on with the Bank of England in Lombard Street and I disapprove of them entirely but

322
00:44:21.000 --> 00:44:24.600
I must confess I don't see any hope.

323
00:44:24.600 --> 00:44:33.200
He said that before Hayek's Constitutional Liberty came out and if you happen to read

324
00:44:33.200 --> 00:44:48.200
There was a review, Mises did a review of the Constitution of Liberty for a paper called Christian Economics which I fought tooth and nail to try to change it.

325
00:44:48.200 --> 00:44:54.200
I was one of the first ones hired by the foundation to publish Christian Economics.

326
00:44:54.200 --> 00:45:02.200
I said, look at this, economics is economics. It's not Christian, it's not Jewish, it's not Muslim, it's economics.

327
00:45:02.200 --> 00:45:17.200
You're going to put bad labor on it. Well, I know, but this is going to ministers, you know, it's going to the weirs, you know, and I'm going to interpret the Bible, and I'm going to get stories out of the Bible to illustrate the market, you know something like that.

328
00:45:17.200 --> 00:45:30.200
We've got to call it Christian. Okay, I can't fight Wall Street, only this time it was the Sun Oil Company. This foundation was bankrolled by J. Howard Pugh, the famous Sun Oil, two or three brothers, I think.

329
00:45:30.200 --> 00:45:43.480
So we call it Christian economics. Well, out comes Constitutional Liberty and the head

330
00:45:43.480 --> 00:45:59.000
of the foundation, Kirzner. I imagine he asked Lew to write a review of it. I doubt that Lew

331
00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:10.840
Who did? Maybe, I don't know. At any rate, I know it was published. And Mises paid any

332
00:46:10.840 --> 00:46:17.720
compliments all through his review and then did his little demonstration of his intellectual

333
00:46:17.720 --> 00:46:25.640
honesty by saying, however, however. You know, you could tell that he was gentrifying his

334
00:46:25.640 --> 00:46:31.720
writing, to be gentle to Hayek. I could see that if he were talking personally to some

335
00:46:31.720 --> 00:46:37.400
close friend, he'd say, but the way I could just sense the way he worded this thing, he

336
00:46:37.400 --> 00:46:43.400
soft-chewed his criticism at this one point. I forgot what it is now. But otherwise, it

337
00:46:43.400 --> 00:46:50.400
was praising the book. It was two volumes, I think, wasn't it? Constitutional Litigants?

338
00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:59.400
What did Mises think of Ayn Rand?

339
00:46:59.400 --> 00:47:06.400
Oh, God, that's another...

340
00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:09.400
We were walking down the street one day and I said something about it.

341
00:47:09.400 --> 00:47:16.400
About Rand, I told him I'd been out to Hollywood to be interviewed by the great Cecil B. DeMille

342
00:47:16.400 --> 00:47:25.440
to Mill for a job, running his Right to Work Foundation, and while I was there I was in

343
00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:31.140
the home of Herb Cornell, who was Leonard Reed's number two man when they started the

344
00:47:31.140 --> 00:47:39.920
Foundation for Economic Education. Being in Hollywood and being in Herb Cornell's home,

345
00:47:39.920 --> 00:47:47.280
with Ayn Rand out there in the Paramount Studio writing for Paramount, I said, this was after

346
00:47:47.280 --> 00:47:55.920
the famous, that was shrugged, had been published, I said, I say, yeah, Ayn Rand's over here,

347
00:47:55.920 --> 00:48:01.720
I said, I thought I might drop in and see what she sounds like.

348
00:48:01.720 --> 00:48:04.840
I read her book, he said, oh, why don't you call her up?

349
00:48:04.840 --> 00:48:06.840
He says, I've got her, I've got her home phone number.

350
00:48:06.840 --> 00:48:20.840
I said, all right, I'll call her up and make an appointment. So I called up from his home that very evening, at six o'clock in the evening, and she said, hello.

351
00:48:20.840 --> 00:48:33.840
I said, Miss Rand? Yes. I said, you don't know me, but I'm recalling you from Herb Cornell's home. My name is George Couture. I'm a journalist.

352
00:48:33.840 --> 00:48:43.840
I don't know you. What's your name, Peter? How do I know you're not a communist?

353
00:48:43.840 --> 00:48:49.840
That was enough for me. I was going to take that and go. Slammed the phone down.

354
00:48:49.840 --> 00:48:58.840
Well, the name must have gotten through to her somehow, because she starts showing up at the Mises seminars

355
00:48:58.840 --> 00:49:04.520
When they were held in Gallatin House, which was the home of the former Secretary of the

356
00:49:04.520 --> 00:49:11.720
Treasury years ago, Gallatin, on Washington Square, one of those nice old homes, and the

357
00:49:11.720 --> 00:49:17.080
room was smaller than the room in the York University, but the table was beautiful. It

358
00:49:17.080 --> 00:49:24.400
must have been Mr. Gallatin's original antique furniture. It was an antique, yeah. And it's

359
00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:31.200
It's an oval table again, Mises at this end, and this time I'm right next to him, and right

360
00:49:31.200 --> 00:49:37.640
across the table, who's clearing it, me and Ayn Rand, and I saw her come in.

361
00:49:37.640 --> 00:49:41.360
I spotted her right away from her picture recording.

362
00:49:41.360 --> 00:49:48.000
So I thought, well, I'm not going to give this dame a nod of my head.

363
00:49:48.000 --> 00:49:53.360
All the other people in the seminar went, oh, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand, so I walked

364
00:49:53.360 --> 00:50:00.360
Right by her, didn't even look at her, sat down, and she's right across me. I still didn't like that.

365
00:50:00.360 --> 00:50:07.360
And every now and then I turn over and I try to catch her, look at her out of the corner of my eyes, she be glaring at me.

366
00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:12.360
I was not recognizing her importance, and she didn't like that.

367
00:50:12.360 --> 00:50:17.360
But Mises said one day, I said, what do you think of Ayn Rand?

368
00:50:17.360 --> 00:50:25.360
He says, fair, he says, one thing, she's no philosopher, she's no philosopher.

369
00:50:28.360 --> 00:50:36.360
But can't he say it jutly, you know, instead of unloading on her, which I would have done.

370
00:50:36.360 --> 00:50:41.360
You mean that shrew, that...

371
00:50:41.360 --> 00:51:08.360
and everything, her famous speech on money, and that was struck, which is the only part of the book worth reading, and that long speech, it's a tour de force, it's really worth reading, because she includes in that speech the concept of the morality of money, that you can tell where the morality of a country is by its money, and it's that simple.

372
00:51:08.360 --> 00:51:38.360
Gold is real money. Gold is silver, but especially gold. Not silver, it was silver and it was in India, but the difference between real money and phony money and credit money and checks and the rest of it, he could have unloaded on Rand, but I'm sure he would love that, I'm sure he didn't take time to read it, but that speech on money, and it was all Misesian,

373
00:51:38.360 --> 00:51:45.280
and all, philosophy and one of the whole things. So she, where she learned it along the way,

374
00:51:45.280 --> 00:51:49.120
I don't know, but she must have learned something from Mises. She must have been reading a lot

375
00:51:49.120 --> 00:51:55.680
of Mises before she came to the seminar, whether she's done it in the net, whether she's done

376
00:51:55.680 --> 00:52:04.120
more harm than good or who knows. She certainly followed up a couple of lives I know about

377
00:52:04.120 --> 00:52:27.480
Well, thank you very much. I've talked too much, too long.

378
00:52:34.120 --> 00:52:36.120
Thank you for watching.