Foundation for Economic Education

FEE's mission is inspire, educate, and connect young adults with the economic, ethical, and legal principles of a free society.
These principles include: individual liberty, free-market economics, entrepreneurship, private property, high moral character, and limited government.

[Mises] stimulated the interest, and then the understanding of all the people he met. And he did even more. He stimulated them to action ... Think of Leonard Read, the late founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, who—after meeting my husband and reading all of his books—gave students as well as teachers the opportunity to learn about individual freedom and the free market. Out of his foundation came great men like Baldy Harper, who founded the Institute for Humane Studies, and George Roche, who is now president of Hillsdale College ...

In 1946 Leonard [Read] had raised the money, set up the Foundation for Economic Education here at Irvington, [New York] and invited me to become one of his original trustees and officers ... Other libertarian foundations were set up in emulation ... The original officers were David M. Goodrich, chairman of the Board ...; Leonard Read, president; myself, vice-president; Fred R. Fairchild, ... secretary; and Claude Robinson, treasurer ... FEE opened its doors on March 16, 1946. Most of the spring and summer was spent in the library, as renovation continued on the main building.

Ever since he came to the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946 as its chief economist and theoretician, Baldy Harper, in a very real sense, has been the libertarian movement ... Baldy simply set out ... to create a body of students and followers. In those early days at FEE, for example, almost every staff member had been brought into the movement by Baldy: W.M. Curtiss, Paul Poirot, Ivan Bierly, Ellis Lamborn, all students of Baldy at Cornell ... [O]ne time I was visiting him at FEE and he quietly pulled out a copy of Tolstoy's anarchist Law of Love and the Law of Violence ...

Has the Foundation for Economic Education, in its first twenty-five years, succeeded in its mission? ... Throughout this country, throughout the world there is "activity of soul" underway that would never have been undertaken but for the work and the inspiration of Leonard Read and [FEE]. Some of it all of us in this room know about and can identify with FEE; some of it is known to only one or two of those in this room; the greater ... probably the most important part, is totally unknown as yet to any of us (including Leonard Read) and will come to light only in the decades and centuries ahead ...

In 1946, former Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce General Manager Leonard E. Read established the Foundation for Economic Education and resolved to make Bastiat's work better known. He persuaded economics scholar Dean Russell to prepare a new translation of The Law. Over the years, it has sold several hundred thousand copies.

In 1946 ... Harper left the academy and joined the libertarian Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) ... While at FEE, Harper produced a number of significant works. In 1951, FEE published Harper's powerful antiwar pamphlet, In Search of Peace ... Harper's most remarkable work ... was his earlier book, Liberty: A Path to Its Recovery, published by FEE in 1949, in which he laid out his comprehensive, natural law-tinged libertarian philosophy ... Harper ... became increasingly disenchanted with FEE president Leonard Read, who, in a widely distributed pamphlet, had vigorously defended the government's power to tax.

Benegas Lynch had led the center in the direction of the Foundation of Economic Education (FEE), in Irvington-on-Hudson ... [I]t would be Leonard Read and Sennholz who were to have the biggest influence on my road to liberty. When I met them, as a late teenager, I had read all the books, or at least 90%, of the books published and disseminated by FEE. A small group of Argentines have been carrying the FEE torch in Argentina ... I believe that it was in 1978 when I asked Bettina Bien Greaves and Bob Anderson, then at FEE, if they could give me [Ayn Rand's] address so I could go and see her.

One set of writings impressed me in particular. A man named Leonard Read had organized a Foundation at Irvington-on-Hudson in New York ... The Foundation ... was issuing a series of tracts, which, in simple, understandable terms spelled out logical and scientific reasons why private enterprise is superior to a centrally controlled system ... The organization was housed ... in a magnificent old mansion where Read had assembled some of the finest brains in the country ... such persons as Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Frank Chodorov, Suzanne LaFollette, John Chamberlain, James Rogers ...

At the Foundation for Economic Education in the mid-1980s, she served as editorial director of the book publishing program and as an editor of its venerable monthly magazine, The Freeman.

But Read finally realized that it was not sufficient simply to show the fallacies of the interventionist schemes. What was needed, he believed, was an organization which developed and advanced the positive moral and philosophical case for individual liberty and limited government. In 1946, at the age of 47, he founded FEE. FEE began by publishing pamphlets on different aspects of the freedom philosophy. Among the many authors were two young men from the University of Chicago—Milton Friedman and George Stigler ... In the 1950s, FEE took control of a national publication called The Freeman ...

Leonard E. Read was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, one of the original pro-freedom think tanks. Through his tireless efforts in that organization ... he was largely responsible for the revival of the liberal tradition in post-World War II America. ... After that he went to work for the California Chamber of Commerce where he became a vocal critic of policies limiting freedom and expanding government. His struggles in these fights prompted the idea of the Foundation for Economic Education, which promoted the freedom philosophy through lectures, seminars, research, and its publication The Freeman.

Leonard finally came to the conclusion that the institution he envisioned as a proper vehicle to advance the freedom philosophy could not operate as a facet of another type of institution ... it had to be autonomous. The bout with Bill Mullendore started it all ... He firmly grasped the profound truth that the advancement of human liberty is a learning process and not a selling problem. What the freedom philosophy needed was "a local habitation and a name." Fifty-two years ago, in 1946, it found both in Irvington, New York. FEE has been a wellspring of ideas of liberty since its inception—and the tradition continues.

[David] Goodrich, Chairman of B.F. Goodrich ... raised a simple question: "If you had an organization of your liking, what would it look like?" Leonard went home, dazed and puzzled, with renewed courage and hope. He went to his typewriter, and between 3 p.m. and midnight wrote a description of the organization he envisioned. On that day in January 1946, the idea of the Foundation for Economic Education was born ... [S]even founders ... met ... for the inaugural meeting ... Read, Donaldson Brown ..., Fred R. Fairchild ... Leo Wolman ..., Henry Hazlitt ..., Claude Robinson ... and Goodrich himself.

Stigler ... collaborated with Milton Friedman on a pamphlet called Roofs or Ceilings ... published by the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, about 30 miles north of New York City. Stigler suggested that Rothbard might be interested in visiting the place ... FEE had recently been established by former Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce General Manager Leonard E. Read as America’s first institute to promote ideas of liberty. At FEE Rothbard learned about contemporary libertarian journalists like H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov, Garet Garrett and John T. Flynn.

Around 1944, the National Association of Manufacturers sent Mises to California where he delivered some lectures. He was invited to a barbecue at the home of ... Leonard E. Read ... of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Two years later, Read established the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), a think tank for liberty, and Henry Hazlitt persuaded him to retain Mises as an advisor, author and lecturer ... Read explained, "I invited him to visit FEE—this was in the summer of 1946. I asked him to join the staff, at $6,000 a year, with the understanding that he was to continue his own work."

FEE has long stayed above the electoral fray ... For six decades the guiding lights at FEE have understood that at best politics is the trailing, not the leading, edge of social change. Until a critical mass of people understand that liberty is moral and practical, and demand that the state back off, the politicians will continue to give them shoddy theater instead of respect ... Without plenty of people insisting on liberty and limits on power, there will be nothing to gain for a politician ... Will a large enough mass of people ever demand freedom? That's where FEE and its supporters come in.

[A]n early associate of FEE, Friedman did more than any single person in our time to teach the public the merits of deregulation, privatization, low taxes, and free trade ... In 1947 Friedman was ... invited by F. A. Hayek to attend the founding meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society ... Leonard Read, FEE's founding president ... also participated in that meeting ... Friedman co-wrote (with George Stigler, who also later won the Nobel Prize) one of the first publications FEE released, the 1946 pamphlet "Roofs or Ceilings? The Current Housing Problem," a critique of rent control.

[T]his seeming paradox ... can provide us with the key ... to appreciating the special character and philosophy of the Foundation for Economic Education ... For Mises, economic education is the only tool we have with which to warn mankind ... The content of this education is science ... The purpose ... is to further human goals ... [T]hat human goal is of such overriding importance for the human race that passionate concern becomes well-nigh inevitable ... It is this fascinating fusion of austere objectivity with passionate concern that ... defines the philosophy of the Foundation ...

Paul Poirot edited ... The Freeman that was published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) ... He was one of several FEE employees who had come out of Cornell's program in agricultural economics, including F. A. "Baldy" Harper ... FEE was a place where small businessmen, high school teachers, and college undergraduates could come to hear a few lectures. There was no place in 1955 for them to extend their knowledge beyond what FEE provided ... There is a photo hanging in FEE's headquarters. Ronald Reagan is reading a copy of The Freeman, with Mrs. Reagan's head on his shoulder.

FEE has played a major role in this growing understanding of basic economics. In fact, it can be argued that The Foundation for Economic Education has been the wellspring of this understanding. One can make an impressive list of the educators, journalists, clergymen, and political leaders who have received our publications and attended our seminars ... [FEE] asks the important questions, and hundreds of thousands of lives have been influenced by this Foundation's work ... This ... is what has made The Foundation ... not only unique, but what makes it the hub of the entire freedom movement.

Read ... is best known for originating the oldest existing free-market nonprofit in the world, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) ... In 1946, he acquired property in Irvington-on-Hudson, a suburb of New York City, and he set up FEE. It was to be an organization that would inform people about the consequences of government meddling ... [He] was a firm believer that government should go no further than protecting everyone equally against aggression ... He also believed that, in addition to pointing out the perils of socialism, FEE should present "the positive free market alternative."

Bettina Bien Greaves is an extraordinary, unsung resource for liberty. Now FEE's Resident Scholar, a FEE Trustee, Freeman Contributing Editor ... [S]he spearheaded FEE's pioneering program to provide libertarian material for high school debaters—information which wouldn't be found in local libraries ... Bettina helped students further by ... editing Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader (1975) with 81 choice selections by such authors as ... FEE founder Leonard E. Read, and FEE president emeritus Hans F. Sennholz. Countless people have visited FEE and expressed heartfelt thanks to Bettina for helping them find their way.

In 1946, Read formed the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) ... FEE paid Ludwig von Mises's salary at New York University ... FEE's innocuous little magazine, The Freeman, has circulated in many unlikely places ... In 34 years, the foundation's influence has reached all over the world. FEE has given over 250 seminars in 22 foreign countries ... Centers modeled after FEE have sprung up by the hundreds all over the world ... In an interview in the September 1964 issue of Fortune, [Paulo Ayres] named FEE as the reason for the [1964 Brazilian] revolution.

When a child is born, his development is watched with anxious anticipation by those who wish him well. He begins to laugh and scream with pleasure and displeasure about more and more things ... This ... is a blessing. A child without any sense of discrimination is cursed with the threat of self-destruction ...
When one's fellow men interpose force ... it amounts to interrupting his self-improvement ... Man must be left free to discriminate and to exercise his freedom of choice. This freedom is a virtue and not a vice. And freedom of choice sows the seeds of peace rather than of conflict.

In coming years, I suspect that FEE will reassert its long-standing position as a kind of ideological mothership of the broader freedom movement.