The Freeman - History

History

During FEE's early years, it published essays, pamphlets and booklets, all dealing with some aspect of libertarian philosophy, by both classical liberals of the past, such as Frédéric Bastiat and Andrew Dickson White, as well as the early work of contemporary authors such as Milton Friedman, George Stigler and Ayn Rand. In 1955, FEE introduced a quarterly, Ideas on Liberty, which in January 1956 was merged with The Freeman, a bi-weekly free-market oriented news magazine which had been published in New York City since 1950. As the market for free market journals was limited in the 1950s, it ran into financial problems and in 1956 was taken over by FEE, an educational, tax-exempt Foundation. At the time of its take-over, it was transformed from a bi-weekly into a monthly titled The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty.

The editors of The Freeman have included Henry Hazlitt, John Chamberlain, Suzanne La Follette, Paul L. Poirot, Brian Summers, Charles Hamilton, and John Robbins. Henry Hazlitt, an economist and journalist, had been one of FEE's founders and his articles continued to appear regularly in The Freeman after its take-over by FEE. John Chamberlain became FEE's regular book reviewer and his reviews appeared in The Freeman until his death in 1995. Leonard Read, FEE's President, was also a regular contributor, as was FEE's economic adviser, the noted Austrian School economist, Ludwig von Mises. Other contributors in the 1950s included: Barbara Branden, James Burnham, Frank Chodorov, John Dos Passos, Max Eastman, John T. Flynn, F. A. Hayek, Frank Meyer, Raymond Moley, Roscoe Pound, Wilhelm Röpke, Murray Rothbard, Morrie Ryskind and George Sokolsky.

The Freeman is widely considered to be an important forerunner to the conservative publication National Review magazine, which was founded in 1955, and which from its inception included many of the same contributing editors.

FEE's Freeman is published monthly. During its more than half century of life it has published articles by economists, businessmen, professors, teachers, statesmen (domestic and foreign), students, housewives, free-lance writers, and budding libertarians. Many of its authors have gone on to become noted authors, teachers, and founders of other libertarian organizations. It continues to discuss current economic and governmental issues from the same pro-private property, free market, limited government, libertarian philosophy which sparked the founding of FEE and all its publications. Ronald Reagan was photographed reading The Freeman on an airplane when he was running for the Republican Party's presidential nomination.

On October 15th, 2012, it was announced that Sheldon Richman, who had been editor since 1997, was to be replaced by Max Borders. The move was seen as controversial and angered many readers due to pro-war views expressed by Borders. The writers whose work has appeared in The Freeman in recent decades include such libertarians as Charles W. Baird, Donald J. Boudreaux, Clarence Carson, Stephen Davies, Richard Epstein, Burton Folsom, Jr., David R. Henderson, Robert Higgs, David Kelley, Tibor Machan, Wendy McElroy, Lawrence W. Reed, George Reisman, Hans Sennholz, Bernard Siegan, John Stossel, George Leef, Thomas Szasz and Walter E. Williams.