A New Yorker

After a brief return to Manhattan, Mises went to Mexico City for the month of August to lecture at the Asociacion Mexicana de Cultura. He and Margit arrived on the night of July 29, and he soon started his twelve-session course on economic theory, seasoned with a survey of the past 200 years of European history and excursions into the history of thought. Among other things, he explained “how Keynes was influenced by the German socialists of the chair and how he outdid them in many points.”⁸⁸ The seminar participants enjoyed the privilege of receiving advance copies of Human Action.⁸⁹

During this trip, Montes de Oca delicately raised the question again of whether Mises would stay permanently in Mexico. Mises apparently replied that he now desired “to stay in New York City because it has become the intellectual center of the present day.” Montes de Oca would have left it at that, but a few months later he felt the need to raise the question yet again in writing:

There has been what might be termed a movement among Mexican business men to invite you to become advisor for various business organizations, more or less in the capacity you performed this function in the Vienna Chamber of Commerce.⁹⁰

After serious reflection Mises again declined, referring this time to his advanced age, which would prevent him from acquiring a sufficient command of the Spanish language. But he emphasized that if he “were twenty years younger, I would not refuse your kind proposition” and he also said that the invitation was very tempting from another point of view: “My three visits to your country have shown me that the climate of opinion is today in Mexico more favorable to the acceptance of sound economic ideas than in any other country.”⁹¹ But this did not alter his decision.

Not only had Mises become an American—he was now a New Yorker.

Mises, top, vacationing in the White Mountains; hiking in Austria;and behind wheel of their car in 1950; left, Mises in 1955