The archives tell us a fascinating but incomplete story about the development of human action.
The disappointment Mises must have felt when the war eclipsed the publication of his magnum opus, National Economies,
must have given way to renewed hope as the tide turned against Germany in the summer of 1944.
For then, Mises began to contemplate the reconstruction of Europe.
As he would write in December 1944 to Yale University Press proposing to publish an English
language version of National Economy, quote, it is very likely that the great issue of
post-war reconstruction will stimulate interest in a book which deals extensively with economic
problems and discusses thoroughly all proposals for an economic and social reform, close quote.
Mises had already made a deep and lasting impression on Eugene Davidson, who was editor
of Yale Press, with his books Bureaucracy and Omnipotent Government, published by Yale
early in 1944. Davidson frequently had lunch with Mises in New York at the Roosevelt Hotel
during that year, and while considering Mises' proposal for Human Action, he consulted Henry
Henry Haslett in January of 1945, telling him that, quote, we are in your debt for having
introduced von Mises to us in the first place, close quote. Mises' two-page memo to Davidson
on December 27, 1944, outlined the project for an English language version of his treatise
on economics. It will not simply be a translation of the book published in Geneva in 1940 in
in German Language, Mises wrote.
Besides the revision of the whole text,
which will involve entirely rewriting some chapters,
other important changes seem to be necessary
in order to adapt the book better
to the intellectual climate in America, close quote.
The very next day, Davidson replied with a note of thanks,
asking Mises how large in advance he would like to begin work.
Mises asked for $1,500 plus $400 for expenses, which Yale Press eventually agreed to when the contract was signed on the 9th of March in 1945.
The contract stipulated that Mises was to pay Haslett for editorial assistance.
It turns out that Haslett helped enormously with the manuscript for bureaucracy and omnipotent government.
Davidson, in a letter to his friend, Ray Westerfield, who is professor of political economy at Yale, revealed that,
Henry Hazlitt and our editorial department labored mightily over these two books.
And while we wished to be more optimistic about the new one, he conceded that only their prior experience would make the editing of Human Action easier.
These fears proved to be groundless. When Mises sent Davis in the first set of manuscript pages for Human Action, he replied on 10 November 1947,
I spent a good deal of the weekend on it, and while some of the reasoning was abstruse,
the main argument is brilliant and learned. After asking him how long Hazlitt's and
the other editing will take, he declared, the manuscript is in good shape in general,
although there are a few Germanisms left here and there. Hazlitt's editing did not take
Although he supplied Mises with 38 pages of editing remarks, most of them were minor word changes, with only a few suggestions for improving the content or the style.
After receiving the signed contract from Mises, Davidson began to solicit opinions of the national economy and the project.
Norman Donaldson, managing director of Yale Press, handled the correspondence.
Like Davidson he became smitten with the project. Donaldson first asked Henry
Haslett on January 15 in 1945 for his opinion and for a list of other
commentators. After noting the importance of the theory of money and credit and
socialism and the excellence of bureaucracy and omnipotent government,
Haslett wrote, quote, national economy is the fundamental theory of which the
The conclusions on the books on socialism and money are the corollaries. It would have a very important effect on economic thought in America, and be a standard book on economic principles of permanent importance.
Professor Bechardt and John Van Sickle
Bechardt, who was then Professor of Banking at Columbia, dismissed the project outright,
quote, I doubted Professor Mises' work would have a sufficiently wide sale to justify its translation and publication, close quote.
Van Sickle then at Vanderbilt wrote favor in publication.
Mises writes with, quote, great clarity and with a ruthlessly logical consistency, he
wrote.
The student of social processes needs a dose of this kind of vigorous reasoning more urgently
than ever before, even though he finally rejects some of von Mises's extreme positions, close
quote.
Habler commented that while the book was well written and interesting, it was very extreme
and will not be well accepted in academic quarters.
Moreover, it is scientific in tone and in many parts too difficult for the layman and thus would not sell.
He suggested that Donaldson contact Frank Knight.
Knight was more favorable, writing,
Undoubtedly, economic theorists and scholars of all schools of thought will consider it a real service to economics to present the book in a good English version.
Mises, Knight wrote, is no doubt the last of the great Austrian or Viennese school, since other members of comparable standing turned their scientific along with their political codes.
But he cautioned that Mises' views on monetary and cycle problems are more important than those on general theory or general problems of policy.
Knight also related an assessment by Oscar Longa, who he had asked to comment on the project.
Longa, an outspoken opponent of Mises in the debate on economic calculation and socialism,
could only muster that Mises once did some pioneering work in monetary theory,
But that has long been available in English.
He agreed that it would be good to have a decent English edition,
which scholars could make use of for particular points of reference
and to make historical connections.
Westerfield, who knew Mises from a monthly conference group
at the National Association of Manufacturers,
was positive, calling it a first-rate book.
Hayek stated blandly that the project is well worth undertaking
and that the general standard of the work is of a kind that will do credit to any university press.
Machlop was the only commentator with enthusiasm for Mises, calling him one of the great figures in the history of economic thought,
adding that his book's importance is beyond doubt.
He was a poor forecaster of his success, however, claiming that, quote,
Mises' review is exactly what Davidson and Donaldson were looking for to justify the project to Yale's publishing committee, which approved it on 5 March 1945.
Mises responded to the news with characteristic humility in a letter to Davidson, quote,
receive my best thanks for the good news. I hope that you shall not have to regret having undertaken this project.
Two years later, Mises reported in a letter in March of 1947.
With the exception of a few pages, I have already finished the first draft of my manuscript.
Of course, there is still a lot to be done in polishing it up. Mises sent the first set
of polished manuscript pages on 6th November 1947. Davidson's reaction was very positive.
He wrote to Mises, quote, undoubtedly, this will be a very important book. The main argument
is brilliant and learned and well-timed as far as public thinking is concerned, close
And to Hazlitt he wrote, I think we're going to have quite a book. I'm very much impressed by it.
Hazlitt wrote back in December of 1947 that quote, it is a profound piece of work and whatever its immediate reception may be,
it is bound in the long run to stand as a landmark in the history of economics.
It looks to me like the finest thing Mises has done and that's saying a great deal.
By April of 1948, Mises had delivered 810 pages and suggested that the manuscript would run 1,400 pages.
In July, it was complete at 1,462 pages.
On 2 August 1948, Davidson wrote to Mises, quote,
I think you have provided those interested with the very Bible of free enterprise and
one based wholly on human reason as opposed to revelation.
On 27 September, Mises sent a list of suggested titles.
Davidson had made the working title of the manuscript National Economy, and Mises now
explained to him that the German title translates simply economics.
Thus, Mises put at the top of the list, economics, a treatise on human action.
While human action, a treatise on economics, was last on the list of five, beside it, Davidson
wrote, I like this.
It became the definitive title when Mises wrote back to Davidson in December of 1948,
quote, The more I think it over, the better I like the title, as it is the function of
The finished manuscript was sent to the printer on 10 November 1948 for proof copies. On 27
November, Donaldson wrote to Leonard Reed at the Foundation for Economic Education promising
to send galley proofs for his inspection under the expectation that he would make a pre-publication
7 months earlier, Donaldson had tried to negotiate a publishing deal with Reed, whereby fee would
make Human Action the first in its economic library series edited by Haslett. Under the
terms, fee would bear the cost of the 3,000-copy production run of the book in exchange for
40% of the list price with no royalty payments to Mises. Since the price of Human Action
Donaldson was $10 and the estimated production costs were $3.78 a copy. Donaldson was suggesting
a break-even proposition for fee. Yale Press needed to sell 2,000 copies by Donaldson's
estimate to pay its advance to Mises. In May of 1948, Donaldson's expectation was that
2,500 copies could be sold, quote, over a period of a few years, close quote. This deal
The theory will never materialize, but it did become a source of a conspiracy theory, proffered by Carl Schrift-Geyser, a former book critic for Newsweek.
He stated that when Human Action came out, he was ordered to ignore it, since Hazlitt would review it.
Later, he claimed to have learned that Hazlitt was responsible for its publication.
He charged that Fee, at Hazlitt's insistence, arranged with the Yale University Press for the subsidized publication of Human Action and for its subsequent promotion by the Foundation, since Yale did not indicate this on the jacket or elsewhere, and Hazlitt did not report it in his review of Schriftgeiser, Houston Treachery.
The galley proofs arrived in December 1948, and the finished book was published on 14 December 1949. Reviews were quick in coming in.
Hazlitt in Newsweek, Lawrence Furtig in his regular column, Seymour Harris in the Saturday Review of Literature, Gabriel Ryan in America, all in September.
Godfrey Nelson wrote about the book in his New York Times column of 2 October, and John Kenneth Galbraith reviewed it for the New York Times Book Review late in October.
Galbraith famously attacked Yale Press for its claims about the book printed on the jacket.
Regarding the statement that Mises's approach differs from the bankrupt economics that conquered the Western world in the last decades, Galbraith demanded proof that Keynesian economics was bankrupt.
And concerning the claim that in the last decade, economic decisions in Europe and the United States have determined a host of malignant political consequences,
Galbraith demanded to know what these consequences were.
Since the answers to his demands were evident, Davidson's letter of response blasted Galbraith for ignoring the 900 pages between the flaps.
In December of 1949 the book was reviewed in the London Economist and in January of 1950 in American Affairs and by John Chamberlain in Plain Talk.
Yale's press promotion of Human Action was in the hands of its newly appointed secretary, Chester Kerr.
Kirzner would be director of publications of Yale Press during the botched second revised edition, which devastated sales of the book, but for now he, like others at Yale Press, were astonished at the commercial success of Human Action.
In eight days, 425 copies had sold to the public, which in addition to pre-publication sales of 1,300 copies, ran Yale's press stock down to 15 copies.
It had 885 more copies shipped from the bindery. After 11 days, a second printing of 1,000 copies was ordered, as bookstore sales were running 80 a day, up from 50 a day the first week.
After 15 days on 30 September, the press had only 475 copies left in the first printing of 3,000 of them.
During the first week of October, Yale Press sold another 635 copies.
In 22 days, 3,160 copies of Human Action were sold.
Officials at Yale Press were ecstatic.
Donaldson predicted that 2,500 copies could be sold over a period of a few years. Plans were set for a third printing of 1,500 copies.
In short, the book was a publishing sensation, no mean feat for an intellectual feast of almost 900 pages.
Its publication launched the Austrian School of revival, which has 50 years later matured into a visible and viable alternative to the neoclassical paradigm.
After 12 years in print, Mises set in motion the second revised edition in a letter on 16 March 1961 to Kerr, who is now director of publications, stating that,
It is time to publish a new edition revised in some points and slightly enlarged.
Mises often entertains suggestions for changes in his work from colleagues, friends and editors.
While preparing the second revised edition, Mises received 28 typewritten pages of suggestions
from Percy Graves on 12 October 1961.
Unlike Hazliff's list for the first edition, Graves recommended many significant alterations
and Content, and offered extended remarks on several sections, such as the one on monopoly.
As usual, Mises accepted some and rejected others. Yale Press received the news of a
second revised edition with enthusiasm and waited for Mises' changes, which he said
would be delivered by the end of the year. Kerr informed Mises on 7 December that the
press had just enough copies of the first edition to last until the end of the year.
They sold out on 13 February 1962, and Mises, because of an extended illness, including
a two-week hospital stay following surgery, did not deliver the changes until 9 March
when he traveled to New Haven and personally handed them to Kerr. It would be a year and
three months before Mises would see a published copy of the second revised edition. On 15
May 1962, Mises received the page proofs of the changes and new pages for the second edition.
He returned them on 5 June. From then until the second week of November, he heard nothing
from Yale Press. On 12 November, the Press sent revised proofs, which Mises quickly corrected
and sent back. It was standard practice for Yale Press to send Mises two page proof copies
of his manuscripts. It did this for bureaucracy, omnipotent government, the first edition of
Human Action, Theory and History, and the Theory of Money and Credit. He would put his
Kirz's corrections on both sets send one back to Yale and keep the other for his files
to check against the printed book.
But on 9 January 1963, Mises received a call from a subordinate of Mr. Kirz, who told him
that he would not receive page proofs of the entire manuscript.
An agitated Mises wrote to Kirz the next day, saying that he would, quote, not renounce
seeing the final page proofs.
He reminded Kirz that it is general usage in the publishing trade that the author has
to see and approve the text before the book is released for publication, and stated,
It is not my fault that you have chosen a method of production that makes it inconvenient
for you to let me read and, if necessary, correct the final proofs.
Kerr wrote to Mises on the same day, explaining the controversial method of production and
why it precluded producing page proofs.
The second edition, according to Kerr, was produced by taking a copy of the first edition,
Separating its pages and pasting them along with the corrections and additions onto cardboard sheets and then photographing them for reproduction.
Kerr asserted that only by this method could the cost of the second edition be justified.
In a later letter to Mises' lawyer, he revealed this method reduced the cost from about $13,700 to $11,200.
Her attempted to placate Mises by telling him that he had seen corrected galley proofs of the changes and a dummy copy and assured him that since no changes have been made that you have not seen, it is really not necessary in our opinion for you to take another look at the book.
After claiming that he would take full responsibility for the final copy, he told Mises that Yale would go to press with the book within a week, making it practically impossible for Mises to see the final product.
The book did not go into print until June, six months later.
Mises responded to Kirz's letter on 15 January stating that he had only seen galley of changes that he made and an uncorrected dummy copy, not the entire text.
He wrote, quote, I have no assurance that the detached parts have been put together coherently, close quote.
We are entirely willing to take responsibility for seeing that a new edition of Human Action is printed without error.
I am confident that you will have no regrets not having some page proofs.
Three months passed before Mises was inspired to take further action by a letter he received from Lyle Munson of Bookmailer Inc.
In Frustration, Monson asked Mises if he had explored the possibility of using another publisher. He informed Mises that after six months of failure to reprint, the typical contract stipulates that rights revert to the author. Mises did not delay in employing this letter.
On the 2nd of May, he wrote to Kerr, telling him about Munson's offer to publish Human Action, and demanded either publication without delay or a reversion of the rights to the book.
For the first time in correspondence, he made the accusation that,
The present management of Yale University Press does not like my book. You regret the fact that the previous management of the press published it. You are fully entitled to think and feel as you do, but you are not free to neglect the responsibilities which the press has assumed in signing an agreement for the publication of this extremely successful book.
Pressured by this tactic, Yale Press rushed to publication despite obvious problems.
It is doubtful that Mises' charge of bias against Kerr was true.
The delays were more likely caused by poor management and the disastrous results by rushing to publish.
Apparently, Yale Press mangled other books produced contemporaneously with its second revised edition in its devotion to cutting costs.
Once published, Yale Press immediately sent the first 200 copies to the Foundation for
Economic Education to fill a pre-production order.
Yale Press' failure to send Mises a copy hot off the press, even though it was contractually
obligated to send 10 copies, which it had always done with other books authored by Mises,
was probably a deliberate provocation since, in the face of Mises' protest, it eventually
Mises received his first copy of the second edition from Fee, and from it discovered the books' many errors. On 18 June, Mises sent a letter to Kerr outlining them. Kerr received a letter the next day from Leonard Reed, listing a similar set of errors. The index has inconsistencies in the style of capitalizing, the headings of chapters in the new
The Running Heads on the pages of the first edition are missing. Pages from the first edition appear darker than pages added or altered. Some pages have larger than normal spacing between paragraphs or between main and subheadings. Several pages have specks that appear to be punctuation marks, for example hyphens, accents, periods, and other pages have indiscriminate marks. An entire paragraph of text is missing from the first edition.
Page 362, page 465 from the first edition of Misen. The second edition has a duplicate
of page 469 on page 468, where the corrected first edition page 465 should have been. The
first eight lines on page 615 are a duplicate of the first eight lines on page 616, instead
of a continuation of the text from the bottom of the first edition's page 609. The last
The last three words of the last line on page 810 and the first line on page 811 should have been deleted.
After reminding Kerr that he had assumed responsibility for printing an edition without error, Mises wrote,
I am looking forward to learning, without further delay, what you propose to do, first about bringing out a corrected edition, and secondly about indemnifying me for the damage done.
In November, Yale Press promised to insert an errata sheet with each copy, put out a corrected edition in no less than two years, and sooner if the 2,500 first printing copies sold out,
and ensure that the new edition was produced by methods resulting in acceptable quality work.
Mises rejected these terms.
He wanted a new edition immediately,
a written guarantee that Yale Press would produce an edition meeting normal standards
and indemnification for damages.
Although Mises seemed more concerned with his reputation, monetary damages were not insignificant.
He received no royalty checks for the sales of Human Action for over fifteen months,
And for three and a half years, until the printing of the third revised edition, Yale
Press sold only 1,315 copies of the second edition. When Kurgatis turns to Mises, he
wrote, quote, judging from current demand and past record, the 2,500 first printing
copies will be gone within two years. And the year after Regnery published the third
The story of the 3rd edition began on 31 March 1964 when Henry Regnery wrote to Mises asking his opinion about publishing one or two chapters, especially the chapter entitled The Market, from Human Action as a paperback monograph with a short introduction by Mises.
Mises agreed to the proposal in a letter to Regnery in April.
He warned, quote, As you know, the Yale Press in publishing this new edition did a very poor
job.
On account of this, my relations with the press are, to put it mildly, strained.
Nonetheless, I think that they will grant you the authorization, close quote.
Regnery made the offer to occur in a letter on 10 April.
Yale Press did not respond to the proposal for 10 months. In February 1965, Kerr unexpectedly
offered Regnery the reprint rights to the entire book. Regnery was pleased about the
possibility but realized the need to reset the entire book instead of accepting Yale
Press's offer to lease the second edition plates. Mises enthusiastically received the
news and pushed to have the new edition reset. After an extended correspondence with Reed
in which they discuss Yale Press's relationship to Mises and the use of Yale plates.
Regnery decided to go ahead with the project and re-placed an advanced order for 500 copies
and encouraged Regnery to reset the book.
By 28 May, Regnery still had not heard from Kerr, nor had Yale Press even after several
requests sent him a copy of the second edition.
He informed Mises of this and asked him for a copy of the book which Mises sent on the
2nd of June.
On 15 August, Regnery informed Mises of the terms of an offer from Yale Press and his
progress on raising $7,000 from the Realm Foundation to reset the entire book. The contract
from Yale arrived at the end of the year, and in a letter informing Mises of this, Regnery
reiterated his suggestion to make whatever changes you feel would be helpful. After some
delays in publication, Mises received the good news from Regnery on 20 December 1966
that the book was in print with two copies on their way to him and 500 to feed.
Although Regnery has purged Human Action of the second edition's many editorial mistakes,
the third revised edition was not a restoration of the purity of the first edition.
Mises had altered several important sections in problematic ways.
For example, he eliminated an important passage on immigration,
He reinforced his post-World War I argument in his book Nation, State and Economy. In both cases, Mises argued that in a post-World War, free immigration would be a move away from the classical liberal goal of peace and toward conflict and war.
He also took out an insightful analysis of German foreign trade policy in the 1930s.
Mises had used barter arrangements and exchange controls to enrich the governments of friendly
countries at the expense of their citizens. These trade blocs helped cause the Second
World War. Mises also struck out a key passage in section on monopoly. While admitting that
a monopoly price on the free market is theoretically possible, although empirically rare, he argued
that in the first edition that the distinction between the competitive and monopoly price
is merely conceptual. Only the economist can make this distinction. The business man, regardless
of the competitive situation, always aims at the highest price, given his demand. Effective
antitrust policy is therefore impossible. The change of greatest consequence in the later
edition concerns liberty. Mises has a well-deserved reputation as the 20th century's foremost
Freedom, he argued, in the first edition, must limit government power since such power is, by necessity, the opposite of liberty, and is a guarantor of liberty, and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom, that is, the defense of person, property and contract from aggression.
In later editions he wrote quote, we may define freedom as that state of affairs in which the individual's decision to choose is not constrained by governmental violence beyond the margin which the praxeological law restricts in any way, close quote.
With this qualifier, Mises allowed quote, the maintenance of the government apparatus of courts, police officers, prisons and of armed forces.
Since these functions require considerable expenditure, Mises reasoned, to levy taxes
for these purposes is fully compatible with the freedom the individual enjoys in a free
market economy.
Mises not only called for burdensome taxes to support a Cold War-sized armed forces,
but even for conscription.
He wrote, that the government of a free country forces every citizen to cooperate in its designs
to Repel the Aggressors and Every Able-Bodied Man to Join the Armed Forces. It does not
impose upon the individual a duty that would step beyond the tasks that the praxeological
law dictates." This view is at odds with all of his other writings about the state.
In Nation, State and Economy in 1919 and Liberalism in 1927, he argued for secession as consistent
The right of people to leave a state is the polar opposite of conscription. No state could consistently adhere to both principles.
Moreover, in National Konami, Mises claimed that,
Military conscription leads to compulsory public service of everyone capable of work.
The supreme commander controls the entire people. The mobilization has become total.
People and State have become part of the Army. War Socialism has replaced the market economy.
On its 50th anniversary, the time has come to fully restore Mises' classic first edition of Human Action.
Henry Hazlitt's review, which according to Davidson, stirred high winds when published in 1949, echoes again.
Human Action is, quote, a work of great originality, written in a great tradition, and destined to become a landmark in the progress of economics, close quote.
More than definitive and prophetic, Hazlitt's words have been a source of inspiration for reissuing the first edition.
Quote, Human Action is in short, at once the most uncompromising and the most rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism that has yet appeared.
If any single book can turn the ideological tide that has been running in recent years so heavily towards statism, socialism and totalitarianism, Human Action is that book.