I recently acquired copies of a correspondence that occurred between the newspaper-mogul anarchist R.C. Hoiles and Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. It is a fascinating exchange albeit not a long one due to a rather bristly conflict over ideas. Over the next several days, I intend to transcribe the letters and, so, make them publicly available. For Hoiles' closely-related letters of September 7 and 8, 1949, please read the extended text below. (Tomorrow I will post Mises' reply.)

September 7, 1949

Ludwig von Mises
c/o Foundation for economic Education
Irvington-on-Hudson
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. von Mises:

I just finished reading "Human Action". I think you have furnished complete ammunition to refute any socialist's or interventionist's arguments. I have remarked several time that your observation on the causes of the decline of ancient civilizations--a little over two pages--was worth the price of the book to anyone.

it seems to me that you are not very clear and rather contradict yourself in your discussion on pages 716 and 717 as compared with your last complete paragraph on page 755. In the latter point you recognize that there are laws that man must obey. It seems to me in the former pages you rather imply that man makes his own laws. If he makes them and they are out of harmony with laws that no manmade and no man can unmake, or eternal principles, he is going to suffer.

The part of the book that you really did contradict yourself, and which is rather serious, is on page 872 where you make this statement: "In countries which are not harassed by struggles between various linguistic groups public education can work very well if it is limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic." I have repeatedly contended that even if pubic education was limited to these branches, the fact that some people were compelled to pay who did not want to have their children taught or who had no children, was teaching by example that the majority had a right to coerce the minority to pay for anything the majority wanted. If that is not the worse kind of government intervention, I do not know what intervention means. As Isabel Paterson said: "It is tyranny naked." And as Rose Wilder Land said: "It is primary tyranny." When you get the people to believe that they can send the sheriff to make a man pay for what he doesn't want, you are certainly taking away from the consumer his right to spend his money the way he wants to.

When you make this one concession you are denying that our government is limited in what it has a right to do. It seems to me that intervention by the government is just the same thing as initiating force. Understand, I am not opposed to the use of force to stop someone from initiating force, but the government has no right to initiate force. The only purpose of a government is to stop people from intervening in an unhampered market and to stop people from initiating force to make someone pay for anything he doesn't want to pay for.

I am wondering whether Leonard Read read this and didn't call it to your attention that you were in this particular statement advocating something that was entirely contradictory to everything else you have said in the book. I would certainly be glad to have you explain how you can harmonize such a statement with the rest of the book. When you make such a statement, it looks to me as though you are setting yourself up as God, and that you know how far the government should go and how far it should not go. It is so serious that I think you should have a little slip printed up correcting this and have it put in the back of the book.

I think public schools are bound to destroy the country because they create public opinion that sanctions and endorses government intervention in an unhampered market.

I think with this exception the book is so sound that I hate to see its influence lessened by this mistake.

I think I will tell our columnists that I will send them this book and if they read it completely through I will make them a gift of the book, but if they do not read it through completely that they are to return it to me. I especially want to call their attention to the two pages starting on 761 giving your observations on the causes of the decline of ancient civilizations.

Enclosing check for $90.00 for which please send me nine copies.

Kindest regards, I am
Yours very truly
R.C. Hoiles

P.S. You quote "Thou shalt not kill". The original of this was "Thou salt not murder". I am enclosing an article I ran on this very subject in our issue of June 18. I am also enclosing an article in today's issue on "Public Schools and Unemployment". This is in complete refutation of your statement that "public schools can work very well if they are limited to reading and writing and arithemetic."

*****

September 8, 1949

Ludwig von Mises
c/o Foundation for Economic Education
Inrvington-on-Hudson
New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. von Mises:

I meant to ask you in my last letter why you spelled praxiology with an "e" when the Webster's dictionary spells it with an "i".

Further regarding your statement that "public education can work very well if it is limited to reading, writing, and arithematic". I wonder whether you ever read Read's letter to a big industrialist friend on how far public education should go. I am enclosing a copy of it. Any education that does not teach the pupil who is learning to read and write that there are certain immutable laws that govern human relations can do a great deal more harm than good.

The world would have been better off if such men as Stalin and Hitler and Roosevelt and even Dewey and Governor Warren never had learned to read. They could not have been such successful demagogues if they could not read. Of course, they would have learned to read whether it was by way of the state or not. But as the late Albert Jay Nock said, it has never been demonstrated yet that it was to the interest of society to have everybody read. If they only read to excite their envy and hate and passions and to be better robbers, our material well-being would be better off if they could not read.

Yours very truly,
R.C. Hoiles