Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (54 page)

38
. Although class need not play a primary role in Rand’s tale of individual heroism, its absence is telling. Her willingness to mount a critique of American society that elides class difference anticipates the later drift of political discussion in America and prefigures the right’s success at shifting the grounds of political debate from class to culture. See Daniel Bell, “Afterword (2001): From Class to Culture,” in
The Radical Right
, ed. Daniel Bell, 3rd ed. (1963; New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 447–503.

39
. Paterson,
God of the Machine
, 235. As Sumner put it, “The next pernicious thing to vice is charity in its broad and popular sense” (
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
, 135).

40
. AR to John Gall, July 29, 1943, ARP 044–15-A.

41
. Lorine Pruette, “Battle against Evil,”
New York Times Book Review
, May 16, 1943, 7, 18; Bett Anderson, “Idealism of Architect Is Background for Book,”
Pittsburg Press
, May 30, 1943; “Novel about a Young American Architect,”
Providence Journal
, May 16, 1943; “Varieties of Complaint,”
Times Literary Supplement
, November 15, 1947, 589; Diana Trilling, “Fiction in Review,”
The Nation
, June 12, 1943, 843.

42
. See Cox’s discussion in
The Woman and the Dynamo
, 311–12.

43
. “Varieties of Complaint,”
Times Literary Supplement
, November 15, 1947, 589.

44
. The total number of fan letters Rand received is impossible to determine, for at her death numerous unopened mail bags were destroyed. I have examined approximately one thousand of the surviving fan letters that are housed in her papers. About two hundred of these letters were exclusively concerned with
The Fountainhead
. (Later letters inspired by
Atlas Shrugged
also often mentioned
The Fountainhead
.) An exact breakdown of Rand’s readers is impossible to determine, but a random sample of letter writers from 1943 to 1959 collected in one archival box indicates the diversity of her appeal. Out of 107 letters written to Rand, seventy-six provided biographical details, with a breakdown as follows: twenty writers identified themselves as high school students, seven as college students, and thirty-nine as married adults. Letter writers were geographically diverse and did not hail from any particular region of the country. ARP, cartons 38 and 39.

45
. Jane E. Thompson to AR, August 21, 1944, ARP 036–01A; Betty Andree to AR, February 23, 1946, ARP 036–01C; AR to DeWitt Emery, May 17, 1943,
Letters
, 42.

46
. Thad Horton to AR, December 18, 1945, ARP 036–01H; Louise Bailey to AR, August 15, 1950, ARP 036–01H; Jane E. Thompson to AR, August 21, 1944, ARP 036–01A.

47
. Herbert A. Bulgerin, in Bobbs-Merrill to AR, August 23, 1943, ARP 102–17x; PFC Gerald James to AR, July 29, 1945 ARP 036–01B. For Rand–s response to James, see
Letters
, 228. Mrs. Leo (Edna) Koretsky to AR, January 10, 1946, ARP 036–01A.

48
. AR to DeWitt Emery, May 17, 1943,
Letters
, 73.

49
. Ayn Rand, “Dear Mr.____,” undated fund-raising letter, circa 1942, ARP 146-PO4.

50
. Ruth Austin to AR, undated, 1946, ARP 036–01F. Rand’s responses to Austin are in
Letters
, 287–89, 293–96, 303–4. Alden E. Cornell to AR, 1947, ARP036–01D; Edward W. Greenfi eld to AR, October 15, 1957, ARP 100–11x. As the historian Alan Brinkley notes, even at the height of the New Deal there was a strong popular impulse to “defend the autonomy of the individual and the independence of the community against encroachments from the modern industrial state.”
Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression
(New York: Knopf, 1982), xi. In 1935, 60 percent of Americans told the Gallup polling organization that government relief expenditures were “too great,” and during the recession of 1937, only 37 percent supported increased state spending “to help get business out of its current slump.” Although these early polls must be treated with caution, the antigovernment attitudes they register, across a variety of topics and years, cannot be ignored. See Alec M. Gallup,
The Gallup Poll Cumulative Index: Public Opinion, 1935–1997
(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999), especially 1–197. In his brief discussion of Rand, Michael Szalay links
The Fountainhead’s antistatism to similar attitudes
in Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. Szalay,
New Deal Modernism: American Literature and the Invention of the Welfare State
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 75–121.

51
. Excerpt from James Ingebretsen letter to Leonard Read is included in Read to AR, December 17, 1943, ARP 139-F1x; John Chamberlain,
A Life with the Printed Word
, (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1982), 136.

52
. Ayn Rand and Oswald Garrison Villard, “Wake Up America: Collectivism or Individualism: Which One Promises Postwar Progress?,”
Cincinnati Post
, October 19, 1943. The article was part of a syndicated series developed by Fred G. Clark for the American Economic Foundation and it ran nationwide in October 1943. Ayn Rand, “The Only Road to Tomorrow,”
Reader’s Digest
, January 1944, 88–90. Rand was furious to discover that the published article had been altered from her original, primarily by softening her language and omitting mention of Stalin as a totalitarian dictator. See AR to DeWitt Wallace, December 8, 1943, ARP 138-C4x. Rand had sold the article to the Committee for Constitutional Government, a conservative organization headed for a time by Norman Vincent Peale. The CCG placed her article in
Reader’s Digest
and split the fee with her. See Ed Rumely to AR, November 1, 1943, ARP 138-C4x. The ideological orientation of
Reader’s Digest
is described in Joanne P. Sharp,
Condensing the Cold War:
Reader’s Digest
and American Identity
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). AR to Archie Ogden, May 6, 1943,
Letters
, 67.

53
. AR to DeWitt Emery, May 17, 1943,
Letters
, 73

54
. Ibid., 72.

55
. Biographical Interview 12, January 22, 1961.

Chapter 4

1
. AR to Henry Doherty, December 13, 1947,
Letters
, 382.

2
. AR to Rose Wilder Lane, December 1946,
Letters
, 356.

3
. Harry Hansen, “Writers Clash over Cain’s Five-man Marketing Authority,”
Chicago Sunday Tribune
, September 22, 1946; “Statement by Dorothy Thompson on Behalf of American Writers Association, which was to have been delivered at the Author’s League Meeting, Sunday, October 20, 1946,” press release, American Writers Association, October 20, 1946, Box 110–01A, ARP “From the Editor,”
The American Writer
1, no 2 (1946).

4
. See AR to R. C. Hoiles, November 6, 1943, ARP 036–01B; R. C. Hoiles, “Common Ground,”
Santa Ana Register
, December 27, 1943. Hoiles’s career, influence, and political views are covered in Brian Doherty,
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement
(New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 172–77.

5
. Biographical Interview 16, April 19, 1961. Details on Read, Mullendore, the L.A. Chamber of Commerce, and the Pamphleteers are taken from Greg Eow, “Fighting a New Deal: Intellectual Origins of the Reagan Revolution, 1932–1952,” PhD diss., Rice University, 2007. Read’s influence and the libertarian climate of southern California more generally is described in Lisa McGirr,
Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 34.

6
. The national business movement against the New Deal is described in Kimberly Phillips-Fein,
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan
(New York: Norton, 2009). For state activities, see Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, “Counter-Organizing the Sunbelt: Right-to-work Campaigns and Anti-Union Conservatism, 1943–1958,”
Pacific Historical Review 78, no. 1 (2009): 81–118. Interestingly, Rand later came out in opposition to right-to-work laws, which she saw as an infringement upon freedom of contract. Barbara Branden, “Intellectual Ammunition Department,” The Objectivist Newsletter 2, no. 6 (1963), 23. For labor’s gains during the war as causative of business activism, see Nelson Lichtenstein, “The Eclipse of Social Democracy,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, ed.
Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 122–52.

7
.
Anthem
was published as the entire contents of
Pamphleteers
3, no. 1 (1946). “Our Competitive Free Enterprise System,” Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Washington, D.C., 1946; Hart to AR, January 6, 1947, and Walker to AR, January 2, 1947, ARP 003–11x.

8
. Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf,
Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

9
. “Balzar’s Hot Bargains for Cool Meals,” August 5–7, 1946, Hollywood, CA, ARP 095–49x; Ralph C. Nehls to AR, December 18, 1949, ARP 004–15A;
The Houghton Line
, April-May 1944, ARP 092–12x.

10
. F. A. Hayek,
The Road to Serfdom
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 3. For the reception of
Road to Serfdom
, see Alan Ebenstein,
Friedrich Hayek
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Hayek’s career and thought are described in Bruce Caldwell,
Hayek’s Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

11
. It is hard to exaggerate the institutional centrality of the University of Chicago to diverse strains of conservative thought. The Volker Fund also helped sponsor the nascent law and economics movement at Chicago. See Steven Michael Teles,
The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008),
chapter 4
. Other activity at Chicago is described in Eow, “Fighting a New Deal”; John L. Kelley,
Bringing the Market Back In: The Political Revitalization of Market Liberalism
(London: Macmillan, 1987). The university was also home to the political philosopher Leo Strauss, an important influence on neoconservatives. See Shadia B. Drury,
Leo Strauss and the American Right
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

12
. AR to Rose Wilder Lane, August 21, 1946,
Letters
, 308.

13
. Juliet Williams argues that Hayek was more a pragmatist than an ideologue; see “On the Road Again: Reconsidering the Political Writings of F. A. Hayek,” in
American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in 20th Century America
, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

14
. Ayn Rand,
Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her Critical Comments on the Writings of Over 20 Authors
, ed. Robert Mayhew (Oceanside, CA: Second Renaissance Books, 1995), 151, 147, 150.

15
. Angus Burgin, “Unintended Consequences: The Transformation of Atlantic 1920”1970,” PhD diss., Harvard University, forthcoming; Rand,
Marginalia
, 146.

16
. Though essentially agnostic, Hayek was sympathetic to Catholicism, the religion of his birth. His views on religion were both ambivalent and closely held, for he wished to avoid offense to believers and found religion culturally useful. See Stephen Kresge and Leif Wenar, eds.,
Hayek on Hayek: An Autobiographical Dialogue
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 41; Rand,
Marginalia
, 148. Hayek apparently liked
Atlas Shrugged
but skipped the philosophical parts. Roy Childs,
Liberty against Power: Essays by Roy Childs, Jr.
, ed. Joan Kennedy Taylor (San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1994), 272.

17
. AR to Leonard Read, February 28, 1946,
Letters
, 260; Jörg Guido Hulsmann,
Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
(Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute Press, 2007). I discuss Rand’s relationship with Mises more fully in the next chapter.

18
.
Journals
, 245, 258.

19
. Barbara Branden,
The Passion of Ayn Rand
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1986), 218.

20
. “A Steel House with a Suave Finish,”
Home and Garden
, August 1949,54–57.

21
. My description of the O’Connors’ domestic life is taken from the oral histories cited, particularly Ruth Beebe Hill and June Kurisu, Rand’s secretary.

22
. Evan and Micky Wright, Oral History, ARP; Jack Bungay, Oral History, ARP.

23
. Rosalie Wilson, Oral History, ARP. The incident raises the issue of Rand’s relationship to her ethnic origins. Though her choice of name disguised her Jewish roots, she was always quick to identify herself as Jewish if anti-Semitic statements arose. Even so, since she had not chosen her religion she viewed it as largely inconsequential to her identity. As George Nash argues, this was a fairly common attitude among secular Jewish intellectuals during a time when religious and ethnic background was not celebrated as the key to authentic selfhood. Nash, “Forgotten Godfathers: Premature Jewish Conservatives and the Rise of
National Review,” American Jewish History
87, nos 2–3 (1999):123–57. Others have found Rand’s Jewish origins to be of some consequence. The conservative critic Florence King asserts, “Ayn Rand’s whole shtick was a gargantuan displacement of her never admitted fear of anti-Semitism,” though she offers no evidence to support this point. King,
With Charity toward None
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 127. Andrew Heinze makes the more compelling case that Rand should be considered part of the American tradition of female Jewish public moralists, akin to Joyce Brothers, Laura Schlessinger, and Ann Landers. Heinze,
Jews and the American Soul
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)300–301. Though in later years the majority of her close friends and associates were of Russian Jewish background and Rand made her first charitable donation to the state of Israel in 1973, she said and wrote virtually nothing on the topic of Judaism, nor did she mention the fate of European Jews during World War II. (Her frequent references to Hitler always came as part of a generalized discussion about totalitarianism and were usually twinned with reference to Stalin.) Rand may have had some vestigial loyalty to her birth religion, but as she stated, it seems to have been largely unimportant to her mature self-concept.