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

unimportant. More important was .that his name became familiar
to the general reader, and the numerous letters resulting from these
articles were surprising. These nine articles were titled: "Hitler's
. Achilles Heel," "The Nazis under Blockade," "Germany's Transport
Problems," "Reich Gets Big Shock," "The Problems of a Post­
War Union of the Democratic Unions," "A New World Currency,"
"Industrial Empires," "Inflation and Money Supply," and
"British Post-War Problems."
Another consequence of these articles was Lu's introduction to
the National Association of Manufacturers. On January 4, 1943,
Noel Sargent, secretary of NAM, and Vada Horsch, the assistant
secretary, invited Lu to come and see them in their offices on Fiftythird
Street. They had read Lu's articles in the Times and wanted
his views on how to terminate wage and price controls. These were
the golden days of the NAM, theirs was the leading voice for free
enterprise. Shortly after this first meeting, Lu was invited to work
with the Economic Principles Commission, which was authorized
by NAM's president and board of directors and which labored over
many years. Lu was a contributing member of the special group
that created a two-volume study called the Nature and the Evolution
of the Free Enterprise System. Lu's relations with the NAM
lasted from 1943 to 1954, giving him a forum where he met all the
important industrialists of the country, the most respected economists,
and the best known businessmen.
In 1943, besides·the numerous meetings and sessions with the
NAM on monetary reform and economic principles, he was amember
of a commission to study the organization of peace, and he
participated in CountCoudenhoven's Pan-Europe Conference in
March~ 1943. On March ·15, 1943, he spoke on "Aspects of American
Foreign Trade Policy" in the Faculty Club of New York University;
on April 10 he spoke in Boston at the Twentieth Century
Association (on "Economic Nationalism and Peaceful Cooperation"),
where he said in short: "Economic nationalism is the root
cause of the international conflicts which resulted in two world
wars. It was economic nationalism that on the one hand drove the
'dynamic' nations into agression and on the other hand prevented
the peaceful nations from stopping in time the rise of Nazism and
from erecting a barrier against a new German agression. All plans
for a better post-war order are futile if they do not succeed in
eliminating protectionism and establishing free": trade." On November
10 and 11 he gave two lectures at Princeton.
It was a great financial relief for us when William J. Carson, the
executive director of the National Bureau of Economic Research,
wrote to Lu that the Rockefeller Foundation had renewed his grant
for anot~er two years, to the end of November, 1944. Also by this
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