William Volker Fund - Harold Luhnow and The Post-Volker Management of The Fund

Harold Luhnow and The Post-Volker Management of The Fund

When William Volker died in 1947, his nephew Harold W. Luhnow took control of William Volker & Co. and also became the head of the William Volker Charities Fund’s board of directors. Under the Luhnow’s administration the fund shifted its focus away from charities in the Kansas City area and began pursuing a number of strategies for increasing the acceptance of Old Right and Austrian economics thought in the United States. As Luhnow's dedication to right-wing and libertarian ideas grew from his association with Loren “Red” Miller at the Bureau of Government Research, a Detroit-based “good government” foundation. During the 1930s, Miller helped Luhnow undermine the Pendergast machine in Kansas City and Miller introduced Luhnow to intellectuals and public figures who shared the businessmen’s hostility to machine politics. During this period, Luhnow read books like F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and became a proponent of classical liberalism.

As Luhnow’s commitment to liberal economic ideas grew, he used the Volker Fund to give sizable contributions to libertarian and conservative causes. The Fund was instrumental in bringing Friedrich Hayek to the University of Chicago. It also helped support many other classical liberal scholars who at the time could not obtain positions in American universities, such as Ludwig von Mises and Aaron Director. Through its subsidiary the National Book Foundation, the Volker Fund gave away books authored by libertarian and conservative academics to college libraries throughout the U.S. The National Book Foundation distributed books by wide range of influential authors, including Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Gordon H. Clark, Hayek, Mises, Roscoe Pound, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and many others.

Under Luhnow’s management, the fund helped the then small minority of Old Right scholars to meet, discuss, and exchange ideas. Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, Bruno Leoni's Freedom and the Law, and Hayek's Constitution of Liberty were all influenced by the ideas discussed at such meetings. Among its most significant contributions to such academic conferences, the fund supported North American participation at the first Mont Pèlerin Society meeting in 1947.

Under the directorship of "master recruiter" F. A. Harper, the fund systematically recruited a number of young libertarian and conservative scholars. These researchers and staffers who eventually became important figures in American right-wing. Notable staffers included a young Murray Rothbard who began working for the Volker Fund in 1951 and wrote book reviews for the Fund until 1962. Rose Wilder Lane also contributed book reviews. Prominent Christian Right pioneers Rousas John Rushdoony and Gary North also gained early notoriety because of their association with the fund.

In addition to its own activities, the Volker Fund also helped support the formation of various complementary institutions, including the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), which was later renamed Intercollegiate Studies Institute; the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). It also worked closely with similar charitable endeavors, such as the Earhart Foundation; and the Relm Foundation.