14 Facts About Leonard Read

Leonard Edward Read was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, one of the first free market think tanks in the United States.

Leonard Read wrote 29 books and numerous essays, including "I, Pencil".

Leonard Read moved to California where he started a new career in the tiny Burlingame Chamber of Commerce near San Francisco.

Leonard Read gradually moved up the hierarchy of the United States Chamber of Commerce, finally becoming general manager of the Los Angeles branch, the US's largest, in 1939.

Apparently, it was in 1933, during a meeting with William C Mullendore, the executive vice president of Southern California Edison, that Read was finally convinced that the New Deal was completely inefficient and morally bankrupt.

In 1945, Virgil Jordan, the President of the National Industrial Conference Board in New York, invited Leonard Read to become its executive vice president.

Leonard Read realized he would have to leave the NICB to pursue full-time the promotion of free market, limited government principles.

One donor from his short time at NICB, David M Goodrich, encouraged Read to start his own organization.

In 1950, Leonard Read joined the board of directors for the newly founded periodical The Freeman, a free market magazine that was a forerunner of the conservative National Review, to which Leonard Read was a contributor.

In 1954, Leonard Read arranged for the struggling magazine to be transferred to a for-profit company owned by FEE.

Leonard Read received an Honorary Doctoral Degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in 1976.

Leonard Read continued to work with FEE until his death in 1983.

Leonard Read authored 29 books, some of which are still in print and sold by FEE.

Leonard Read kept private journals from 1949 to 1978, all of which are available in archive form from FEE.