Leonard Read
Encyclopedia
Leonard E. Read was an American economist
and the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education
, which was the first modern free market
think tank
in the United States
.
After a stint in the United States Army Air Service
during World War I
, Read started a grocery wholesale business in Ann Arbor, Michigan
, which was initially successful but eventually went out of business. He moved to California
where he started a new career in the tiny Burlingame
Chamber of Commerce
near San Francisco
. Read gradually moved up hierarchy of the United States Chamber of Commerce
, finally becoming general manager of the Los Angeles branch
, America's largest, in 1939.
During this period his views became progressively more libertarian
. Apparently, it was in 1933, during a meeting with William C. Mullendore, the executive vice president of Southern California Edison
, that Read was finally convinced that the New Deal
was completely inefficient and morally bankrupt. Read was also profoundly influenced by his religious beliefs
. His pastor
, Reverend James W. Fifield, was minister of the 4,000-member First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, of which Read was also a board member. Fifield ran a "resistance movement" against the "social gospel
" of the New Deal, trying to convince ministers across the country to adopt libertarian "spiritual ideals." During the period when he worked for the Chamber of Commerce, Read was also deeply influenced by more secular figures, such as Albert Jay Nock
, and, later, by Ayn Rand
and the economists Ludwig von Mises
and Henry Hazlitt
.
In 1945, Virgil Jordan
, the President of the National Industrial Conference Board (NICB) in New York, invited Read to become its executive vice president. Read realized he would have to leave the NICB to pursue fulltime the promotion of free market, limited government principles. He resigned as a result.
One donor from his short time at NICB, David M. Goodrich, encouraged Read to start his own organization. With Goodrich's aid, as well as financial aid from the William Volker Fund
and from Harold Luhnow
, Read and Hazlitt founded the Foundation for Economic Education
in 1946, which, in turn, helped to inspire Friedrich Hayek
to form the Mont Pelerin Society
the following year. For a period in the 1940s, philosopher Ayn Rand was an important adviser, or "ghost," as they called it, to Read. In 1950, FEE published The Freeman
, an early free market periodical, considered an important forerunner of the conservative National Review
magazine, to which Read was also a frequent contributor. He continued to work with FEE until his death in 1983. Read authored 29 books, some of which are still in print and sold by FEE. He wrote numerous essays, including the well-known "I, Pencil
" (1958).
Read received an Honorary Doctoral Degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín
in 1976.
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education
Foundation for Economic Education
The Foundation for Economic Education is one of the oldest free-market organizations established in the United States to study and advance the freedom philosophy. Murray Rothbard recognizes FEE for creating a "crucial open center" that he credits with launching the movement...
, which was the first modern free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
After a stint in the United States Army Air Service
United States Army Air Service
The Air Service, United States Army was a forerunner of the United States Air Force during and after World War I. It was established as an independent but temporary wartime branch of the War Department by two executive orders of President Woodrow Wilson: on May 24, 1918, replacing the Aviation...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Read started a grocery wholesale business in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
, which was initially successful but eventually went out of business. He moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
where he started a new career in the tiny Burlingame
Burlingame, California
Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. The city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. It is renowned for its many surviving examples of Victorian architecture, its affluence, and...
Chamber of Commerce
Chamber of commerce
A chamber of commerce is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community...
near San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
. Read gradually moved up hierarchy of the United States Chamber of Commerce
United States Chamber of Commerce
The United States Chamber of Commerce is an American lobbying group representing the interests of many businesses and trade associations. It is not an agency of the United States government....
, finally becoming general manager of the Los Angeles branch
Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce is southern California's largest not-for-profit business federation, representing the interests of more than 235,000 businesses in L.A...
, America's largest, in 1939.
During this period his views became progressively more libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
. Apparently, it was in 1933, during a meeting with William C. Mullendore, the executive vice president of Southern California Edison
Southern California Edison
Southern California Edison , the largest subsidiary of Edison International , is the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California, USA. It provides 14 million people with electricity...
, that Read was finally convinced that the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
was completely inefficient and morally bankrupt. Read was also profoundly influenced by his religious beliefs
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
. His pastor
Pastor
The word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
, Reverend James W. Fifield, was minister of the 4,000-member First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, of which Read was also a board member. Fifield ran a "resistance movement" against the "social gospel
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
" of the New Deal, trying to convince ministers across the country to adopt libertarian "spiritual ideals." During the period when he worked for the Chamber of Commerce, Read was also deeply influenced by more secular figures, such as Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...
, and, later, by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
and the economists Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
and Henry Hazlitt
Henry Hazlitt
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American economist, philosopher, literary critic and journalist for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times...
.
In 1945, Virgil Jordan
Virgil Jordan
Virgil Jordan was an economist and author. He was a past president of the National Industrial Conference Board and editor with BusinessWeek.-Bibliography:* Freedom in America , 1945...
, the President of the National Industrial Conference Board (NICB) in New York, invited Read to become its executive vice president. Read realized he would have to leave the NICB to pursue fulltime the promotion of free market, limited government principles. He resigned as a result.
One donor from his short time at NICB, David M. Goodrich, encouraged Read to start his own organization. With Goodrich's aid, as well as financial aid from the William Volker Fund
William Volker Fund
The William Volker Fund was a charitable foundation established in 1932 by Kansas City, Missouri, businessman and home-furnishings mogul William Volker. Volker founded the fund with the purposes of aiding the needy, reforming Kansas City’s health care and educational systems, and combating the...
and from Harold Luhnow
Harold Luhnow
Harold W. Luhnow was an American businessman, philanthropist, and political activist. He is most well known for his management of the influential William Volker Fund during the period between 1947 and 1964 in the United States...
, Read and Hazlitt founded the Foundation for Economic Education
Foundation for Economic Education
The Foundation for Economic Education is one of the oldest free-market organizations established in the United States to study and advance the freedom philosophy. Murray Rothbard recognizes FEE for creating a "crucial open center" that he credits with launching the movement...
in 1946, which, in turn, helped to inspire Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...
to form the Mont Pelerin Society
Mont Pelerin Society
The Mont Pelerin Society is an international organization composed of economists , philosophers, historians, intellectuals, business leaders, and others who favour classical liberalism...
the following year. For a period in the 1940s, philosopher Ayn Rand was an important adviser, or "ghost," as they called it, to Read. In 1950, FEE published The Freeman
The Freeman
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty is one of the oldest and most respected libertarian journals in the United States. It is published by the Foundation for Economic Education . It started as a digest sized monthly study journal; it currently appears 10 times per year and is a larger-sized magazine. FEE...
, an early free market periodical, considered an important forerunner of the conservative National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
magazine, to which Read was also a frequent contributor. He continued to work with FEE until his death in 1983. Read authored 29 books, some of which are still in print and sold by FEE. He wrote numerous essays, including the well-known "I, Pencil
I, Pencil
"I, Pencil" is an essay by Leonard Read. The full title is "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read" and it was first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman. It was reprinted in The Freeman in May 1996 and as a pamphlet entitled "I... Pencil" in May 1998. In the reprint,...
" (1958).
Read received an Honorary Doctoral Degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
in 1976.
Works
- Romance of Reality (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc., 1937)
- I'd Push the Button (New York: Joseph D. McGuire, 1946)
- Pattern for Revolt (1948)
- Students of Liberty (FEE, 1950)
- Outlook for Freedom (1951)
- Government - an Ideal Concept (FEE, 1954; 2nd edition 1997) ISBN 1-57246-061-X
- "I, Pencil" (FEE, 1958 & 2008) http://fee.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/I-Pencil-2006-edition.pdf
- Why Not Try Freedom? (FEE, 1958)
- Elements of Libertarian Leadership (FEE, 1962)
- Anything That's Peaceful: The Case for the Free Market (FEE, 1964; revised edition 1992; 2nd edition 1998) ISBN 1-57246-079-2
- The Free Market and Its Enemy (FEE, 1965)
- Deeper then you Think (FEE, 1967)
- Where Lies This Fault? (FEE, 1967)
- Accent on the Right (FEE, 1968)
- The Coming Aristocracy (FEE, 1969)
- Let Freedom Reign (FEE, 1969)
- Talking To Myself (FEE, 1970)
- Then Truth Will Out (FEE, 1971)
- To Free or Freeze, That is the Question (FEE, 1972)
- Instead of Violence (FEE, 1973)
- Who's Listening (FEE, 1973)
- Free Man's Almanac (FEE, 1974)
- Having My Way (FEE, 1974)
- Castles in the Air (FEE, 1975) ISBN 0-910614-52-0
- The Love of Liberty (FEE, 1975)
- Comes the Dawn (FEE, 1976)
- Awake for Freedom's Sake (FEE, 1977)
- Vision (FEE, 1978)
- Liberty: Legacy of Truth (FEE, 1978)
- The Freedom Freeway (FEE, 1979)
- Seeds of Progress (FEE, 1980)
- Thoughts Rule the World (FEE, 1981)
- How Do We Know (FEE, 1981)
- The Path of Duty (FEE, 1982)
- Clichés of Socialism (FEE, various)
External links
- Books by Leonard Read at the Mises InstituteLudwig von Mises InstituteThe Ludwig von Mises Institute , based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises...
. - Foundation for Economic Education
- Honoris Causa Doctaral degrees at University Francisco Marroquín