My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST year in New York is not a happy memory for me. We
moved five times. We first stayed at the Hotel Park Chambers on
Fifty-sixth Street, where Dr. Schutz hadtaken rooms for us; then
we moved to a very nice private apartment on Riverside Drive,
loaned to us by a friend, then to the Hotel Park Crescent on Riverside
Drive and Eighty-sixth Street. For a while we lived in a furnished
apartment until, in 1942, I found the apartment on West
End Avenue where we lived for so many years and where I still
live today.
Lu:>s spirits were at a low point during this time. Very often he
would say: "If it were not for you, I would not want to live any
more.:>:> He missed his work, his books, and his income. He had a
very good salary in Switzerland, for in Europe teaching by a renowned
scholar like Lu was valued much more highly than ifwas
in the United States at that time-not only from the monetary point
of view, but also in the eyes of the public. A professor was a
learned man who. had dedicated decades of his life to studying,
reading, and writing, and this timespan of work had to be calculated
and paid for. Now, here in New York, we had to live from
Lu:>s savings, and to see his money dwindle is a sad sight for an
economist.
Lu did not talk about this to other people, but he had friends
who knew his situation without his ever having mentioned it. One
of these was Henry Hazlitt, who at that time was financial editor of
the New York Times. He knew Lu through his books. Hazlitt had
read the English edition of Socialism, which had been published
in London in 1936. He wrote to Lu about it, and since then they
had been in constant correspondence. Hazlitt was one of the first
people Lu met in New York and one of the first to take an active
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