 We're having today for the Mises Institute Oral History Project, we're interviewing the distinguished historian of classical liberalism, Ralph Rayco, who was the closest associate of Murray Rothbard and we're going to ask him a number of questions about his early life and career. And Ralph, I'd like to start off by asking, I believe you were born in the Bronx, can you tell us something about what it was like growing up there? Well, no, I wasn't born in the Bronx, I was born in what was then Italian Harlem, now Spanish Harlem. And David, you must know this, here in the 17th century, he dated the creation of the world from October 23rd, 2004 B.C. Well, I don't know about the 2004 B.C., but that October 23rd, I think, is very auspicious. I was born on October 23rd, 1936, 107th Street in Italian Harlem. My parents made a couple of real good decisions. My Italian relatives were probably working people, some of them on small shops, but very warm hearted people. But nonetheless, when I was very young, we moved up to the Bronx. And that was a whole different world. The good thing my parents did was put me in the public schools. I don't think I would have been very happy with their fists and so on. It was much better than being in the public schools. Well, not so much the old tenured teacher or German, but all my friends and we lived in the Bronx also, in my apartment building. There was the Greeks on the fourth floor, on 4B, displaying certain political views. And I sent a letter to, I think it was the Daily News, where I said that to the Bolsheviks and the Corpuses and Georgia, letter to the editor, Stalin could sue you for that. And I panicked. He had the periodic table of the elements, got the Daily Mirror, so anyway, pretty much a right wing. And on the radio, I started to listen to Fulton Louis Jr. He had a 15-minute program every weekday. One thing that came of it was that one day at our headquarters, I forget some hotel downtown, the general staff headquarters, Leonard Ligio, drew in my life. And also, I met George Reisman, because George had said to me, was on your small mind. But we became good friends. And Leonard Ligio went on to college in Georgetown, but George and I were buddies for quite a while. And heavily into my letter writing, I got a letter from them to get my address. One of the great stories. One question I had was, it appears that although the dominant culture, when you were growing up, it was very left-wing, you started being interested in more classical, liberal and conservative views quite early on. What do you think accounted for your reaction against the predominant views? There are no leftists. And then all of these other resources. Yes, it is. Yes. We spent endless nights up to two, three o'clock in the morning, Murray Books and Joe and Rita Sampasic from it, read us a lot of Mankin. And we would do other things, go to play board games. Favorite board game was... And as I say, Joey was a terrific visit that website that the logo is one of the few photos that was ever taken of all of us that Joey took it. And if anybody wonders, half got off is Leonard because he was the tallest of us. He was a great woman, not the greatest photographer. When I entered college, he was at Columbia, I was at this, and a very intensive study of German, of the German language. You know that, you know this P. J. L. Rourke? You know, he's a neocon. He's very popular at the Cato Institute. And he said that bit into the face of the person you're talking to. I'm in Amsterdam, I would say, because right away, George got books on a book on epistemological problems of economics and also another history book that Mises thought was important on liberalism. And that book is come on by a number of different titles. It was finally published, I think, in 1967. But it's never been out of print. And that got me into a closer relationship with Mises because talked over his book at the time. And it was a feather in my cap when I started applying for positions as a college instructor. Meanwhile, a couple of things happened while I was in grad school in Chicago. We set up a faculty advisor. We had a couple of other faculty advisors, Ben Rogie from Wabash, Stegler. And we didn't do very much money, but Friedman was able to raise what we needed among some businessmen in Chicago. It was very easy for him. And there was about a four or five year run of the magazine. I see that Liberty Fund has brought up the copyright to the magazine, but it's available in hardcover and available from Liberty Fund. And we got some very good articles. Well, the first article, the first issue was by Capitalism and Freedom. It became then the name of a book of his. And Hayek wrote for us, Armin Alchin has just passed away. Alchin wrote for us, Demsets, many other people. And so that was something that partly while in grad school. Another thing that happened was back in New York. And that was a split between Murray and Ein Rand, apartment personal Murray. She was a borough of what they called the collective, his Iranians of America. Murray was very enthusiastic about it. He met one of the brilliant people like Henry Haslett, Leonard Reed, Rose Wilder Lane, people who were in some to her equal together or they gathered around her. A group of Canadians, Daniel Brandon, his wife, Barbara Brandon, Peacock, the Ein Rand Institute now. That is Peacock. And they were simply her former friends. And she was surrounded by these people. And I think that that's what finally led to things in her life. One thing that led to this is enough to be his mother. So naturally, he had to break off and go with a younger woman. That's the way those people. There was one time when Ein came down to the Mises seminar. And that was a really very hard for me. Mises was giving one of his lectures and then he started talking about the importance of spreading our ideas through literature. And he said, and I mentioned this because we have an RR company tonight, a great novelist who has an implicit come out by that time. It was, in fact, many, many thousands of people at a rate. He was like a little girl, really. And it was very sweet, free in an education, I think, mine and perhaps to others. But I never actually found out about that. But Brandon confronted Murray one time and said that he had to divorce Joey. But he had to divorce Joey, a diligent woman, a very corrupt, busy group of bozos. And either with Murray or with the Randians. And a peasant went with the Randians and Leonard went with Murray. When we went up, before you could argue that the Post Office should be privatized, and Leonard just went to sleep. That was a survival mechanism he had. Frank O'Connor was the best of, as far as a human being goes, was the best on the wall in their apartment. One of their, one of the Rand Roids, at one point, said that this particular, this watercolor by looking disorder for men. He said something along with the iron, I think. He loved her. They'd met out in Hollywood, I think, when she was a wardrobe consultant. I think he was a part-time actor. He'd been very good looking when he was a young man. And I think that was the model of her heroes in her novels, their role in looking wasp types. Can you say something about Hayek and your relationship with him at Chicago? Oh, yeah, sure, all the time. But tutorials with the committee on social thought had a system that they called having tutorials on particular books with particular members of their staff. But Hayek once, frankly, told me the only reason he taught was so that he could have an income to do is he had very little interest in students. There's always a polite, super polite gentleman, a aristocrat, really, and a learned man. I have disagreements with him on the history of thought, the history of thought, other issues, but doesn't take away the least from his greatness. Bees is on the other hand. Love students. That's why he would go out for coffee very often afterwards with me to a particular student, students who were bright and who were interested in his work. And he was always extremely friendly, always extremely accessible of his ideas. And I said, what do you think about Murray's idea about... And he said, and of a totally violent... Really, for nuts, but I'm still in touch with her from time to time, although Bruce is gone. And in corporate school, there was an old boys' school that still is, I think it's the only old boys' school in the country. But they were very bright kids, most of them. They were going to be doctors and lawyers and take over their dad's business when the time came and so on. So from that point of view, it was quite good. And it was my first teaching experience, so I learned a lot from that. But I still hadn't gotten through with my PhD. So after a few years, they let me go. And then I got to written and finished it quite soon. But in Buffalo, at Buffalo State College, or as they like to sometimes say, State University of New York College at Buffalo, pretending that they're the University of Buffalo across the town. But they're for a long time, whatever, five, 30 years. It was a good time. And some of the students were okay, but they were all best kids and not like the kids. I met at the Summers of the Mises Institute. In the meantime, I did a lot of foundations or by the people that invited me all over the US, in Canada, a few times also. But mainly in Europe, down to Krakow, Warsaw, Gdansk, as they call it now, and Russia. That was funded by the Cato Institute. I gave a talk in Moscow and then went to Leningrad. And met a couple of Russian students. Although the communist educational system was terrible from the ideological point of view, but otherwise it was excellent. Their English was better than the English of my students back in Buffalo. And three at Igor, and they were showing off a little. One was maintaining that Hemingway was greater than Forkner. The other was saying Forkner was greater than my students. And Russia, all over Germany, I see that the Cafe Hyatt has an old talk of mine that I gave on the industrial revolution in Stockholm. Really like every American across, I forget how. Genesis of my book on German liberalism, that Eder, whose one then translated into German. Yes, it was a cologne, but at some point that I met Edo, that the Mises Institute to Vienna, when was that? Well, there have been two of them, the one most recently last year. Late 1990s? Well, the first one was in the late 1980s. And the second one was 2011. I think 2011 now. Please, yes. You're not. Yes. He is, he's doing, he's responsible for this session today, in fact. You know, it does a fantastic job, I mean. Tell us about your doctoral dissertation, speaking of Christianity. Oh, yes. Yes, it came out in Route 31. Ralph, you mentioned Bruce Goldberg. Isn't it right that you converted Bruce Goldberg to libertarianism? And that Princeton, I think I have a little piece on that happened with Bob Nosik. IHS was a great institution and you were long times associated with them. What led to your disassociation from them? Why did you move away from the IHS? One thing, is this right in your, you were influenced quite a bit by Paul Goodman. Could you tell us a bit about him? One other question. Great many of your writings, you've done very important work in revisionist history. Could you say something about how you can claim to do that? Could you talk a little bit about the relationship at Chicago between Friedman and Hayek and the rest of the economics department? Yeah, well, Friedman and what they thought it was had much to do with anybody in the economics department. Last time I saw Hayek was in Freiburg, retired from the company on social floor, and I don't remember too much of the conversation. Did you ever tend personally? Ralph, this was magnificent. That sounded great. Take care. Thank you, Ralph. Bye, Ralph.