An Interview with Mary Sennholz

0:00We're here with Mary Sinholtz at her home in Grove City, it's July 10th, 2013, and Mrs. Sinholtz, of course, has lived a long and fruitful life, and we're here to interview her about her life. Oh, it's been long! And you know, your husband once told me that he married very well and he had a premonition that you would outlive him. Oh, really? That's what he told me. Well, he didn't tell me that. He always thought that because American women live longer than the man, he said, well, we should come out even.

0:52I was eight years older than he, and he thought we should come out even, but here it is, six years beyond his death. Well let's start out with this question. How did you become involved with the Austrian economists? Well I didn't know anything about Austrian economics until I went to the Foundation for for Economic Education. And as I mentioned before, Leonard Reed interviewed me and then said, when would you like to start? And I said Monday. So it was then my education began as far as economics was concerned.

1:37And what were you doing in your career before you went to FEED? I just worked, worked at one job or another. I worked, when the war began, I said, well, I'm going to have to, my brother was, my younger brother was going to be in the war effort, he was in the Air Force. And so I thought, maybe I would be a whack or something like that. And my older brother said, oh, no, you don't, you're not going to join that. So I, at the time, was working for a man who was the national president of general contractors.

2:26And he said, we have an office in Washington, D.C., why don't I take you there? and he did, and the lady who was in charge said, I think I'll find you a job. But she said, I think you've got to work in the executive office of the president. And I said, that sounds good to me. And the next thing I knew, she had the interview all lined up. And so I started working for the executive office of the president. And I worked there for six years. I was selected to be one of the staff members of the group that went to London and set up the United Nations.

3:18Wow, so did you meet the President? No, I didn't, but I didn't have to. And anyway, I went to London and I called back every Friday evening with a report back to Washington and I was in London for three months. So when you went to Fee, what was it like working at Fee? Well, it was delightful really. Leonard Reed had this feeling that he wanted to have an organization that would promote free enterprise. That's what his aim and purpose was. One One of the people he had on board was Mises, but he had a board of trustees and the head of the board of trustees was J. Howard Pugh.

4:39You couldn't find anybody that was more in favor of free enterprise than J. Howard Pugh. We had a very kind of a family sort of relationship among the people that worked there. But as I said before, we had a formality that is missing in a lot of offices nowadays. Mr. Reed never called me Mary. He always called me Miss Holman, and the girls that came to work there never wore slacks, they wore skirts and suits.

5:31The men too were properly dressed. Some of them were ex-professors, Baldy Harper, Charlie Curtis. We had, the facility, the housing was a beautiful mansion built by a physician. And when he died and the estate head charge of the building, they kept a woman by the in the name of Mrs. Campbell as a kind of caretaker.

6:16And so she came with the building so that when Leonard Reed decided to have his office there, he kept Mrs. Campbell and she made our lunch every day. And it was a delightful setup. Did you participate in some of the workshops or the seminars that they had there? Oh yes, I was oftentimes in charge. Okay, great. So did they assemble a large group of faculty? Would they have Mises and say your husband, Dr. Sennholz and others all at the same time? He was not there. He was not there at the beginning.

7:02But it was, as I mentioned, Charlie Purtis and Baldy Harper. Every each person had an office and we had meetings every day. Every day we had meetings of the whole staff. Was Hazlitt there at the beginning? Well, he was never at the foundation. He was on the list of trustees and he came frequently. But no, Henry Hazlitt was never at the Foundation itself. So do you remember your first encounter with Ludwig von Mises? As I say, he was a consultant and he would come up to the Foundation in his little Chevy, little black Chevy, and then he would come in and come up the stairs and had to go through to my office to get to Leonard Reed's.

8:06And so we'd always had, we always greeted each other and he wanted to know what language I had besides English. And I told him proudly, I had French. Well, I had had high school French. I had some college French. I had private lessons in French because Dean Russell was going to translate the law into English from the French, and I helped him. So I was proud of my French until I met Hans, and then I found out he'd taught French.

8:52Yeah, he was hard to keep up with.

9:04So you saw Mises lecture at Fee. Did you ever attend his New York University seminar? Yes. He invited me to come. And then Bettina joined the staff. Dr. Bettina Biem was at that time, and the two of us would go to his classes. He had a regular class, which I attended, even got a B, I think, in the course. But then he had the seminars too, and we went to the seminars, Bettina and I. We didn't miss many seminars.

9:52As a matter of fact, Bettina I think kept notes and she has been working on some of those notes trying to transcribe them. I never was that ambitious about it all, but I enjoyed. And we had a large seminar. I would say 30, 30 people around a table, and so we had this big table, but Mises sat at one end, but then there were other chairs, and I sat in one of the other chairs. One day, a young man sat in a chair right close to me and said, have you selected your topic for your dissertation? And I wasn't in a dissertation mood. I said, no, I haven't, but have you? And he said, yes, I had a meeting with Dr. Mises today.

11:05And so, that was the beginning of our conversation, and then he liked to tell how I always sat there with my legs crossed, one leg would be going up and down, and then I'd turn them this way and go down, and he says he couldn't see the professor on a couple of things, legs going up and down. But that was just to make fun. So was the debate in the seminar very vigorous? It wasn't a debate. No, no.

11:50He spoke. I see. And then there were questions. But no, he would address the class and then, as I say, he opened it up for questions. Did you ever see a Mises lecture at the Mont Pelerin Society? Oh, sure. How was that? Well, there were a number of people from other countries at the Mont Pelerin Society, and some of them I felt knew what they were talking about, and others I felt they didn't know. But it was open for discussion.

12:40When Dr. Mises spoke, I think everybody really paid attention. He was well liked and well respected. You had to listen carefully because his accent was rather heavy. But it being a group of people from a number of different countries, they were used to listening to accents. So you must tell us about the personal relationship between the Sennholz's and the Mises's. Mrs. Mises was a very good, I hate to use the word cook, but she knew how to present a meal and she liked to do it.

13:33She would have them, occasionally would have the members, and there were around 30 or so, She would have them at their apartment for a meal, and oftentimes she would come to the seminar, but not always, like Bettina and I were regulars, but she didn't come as so often. She was always very careful about Dr. Mises. He had to eat just certain things. she felt, and do just certain things, and so she was very careful about him.

14:19I thought sometimes she especially paid attention to the ladies, and she thought, no wonder they get that close to Dr. Mises. So tell us about the story of how she came to be the godmother of your son. It was at one of the meetings that she had had in their apartment in New York. She had had a nice meal, and Bettina and I were the only ladies.

15:05Finally, Dr. Mises said, would you like to see my library? And Bettina and I said yes, we would. And so he took us to the room in which he had his library. And it was, the shelves were chock full of books in several, at least four or five languages. I didn't say it, but I felt like saying, do you read all these? It was really very crowded with books of all languages.

15:51When we came back from having been out to look at his library, February. Everybody seemed to have moved around in the room. Bettina and I were the only women. And so all these men had just kind of moved around, shifted around and sat somewhere else. And I looked around and there was a settee, a man sitting there and a man sitting there. When I sat down in the middle and said, man, I sit here, and Mrs. Mises nodded her head. That was the place for me to be, I guess.

16:37She felt that she had really helped to get us together, but probably one of the biggest One of the most things that happened was that Hans was having this interview with Mises. He had written his dissertation, pretty much so. He had 200 pages and he had learned to type. So he had these pages typed and he needed help with the English language. I think he said he had four or five different people who had said that they were editors.

17:31He knew enough about English to know whether they were changing the thought that he wanted to get across. So he fired one after another and got rid of five editors and finally said to Dr. Mises, I need an editor, do you have a suggestion? And Dr. Mises said, well, have you tried Miss Holman? And he said no. Well, he said, she has done some work for me and I found it very satisfactory. So the next thing I knew, he was calling me on the phone and saying that he would like to bring me a hundred pages to look at his dissertation.

18:29And I said, well, why don't you come to my apartment for a meal? And I always thought it was a Sunday. But I found when he wrote his autobiography that he said it was a Saturday. And so I guess it was a Saturday, he was a little bit more precise. And then if I heard it once, I heard him say four or five times that he came to my apartment with his hundred pages in his hand and handed them to me. I took them and laid them down, went and got a bottle of wine and a bottle opener, handed it to him and went to the piano and played Beethoven.

19:20He said, I never left. At least that's the way he liked to tell it because it made a good story. I think it was probably a week or so before I had the nerve to look at this thing. And then I did and I saw what had happened. I saw that most of the people that he had had had decided that they were going to change the sentences in such a way that it made good sense to them.

20:09But it wasn't what he wanted, it wasn't what he was trying to say. And so I did it the way I thought he wanted it, and I finally had the nerve to say, do you want to look at it? And he came up to my apartment and looked at it. I had crossed out things, I had circled them, I put them here and down there, and he looked I looked at me and said, is it so bad? And I felt so bad that I hadn't done it in the clear. I should have done that whole thing in the clear.

20:56I didn't. So next time he came, I had it all done in the clear for him. But he decided that he would keep me as an editor. and then well the more we worked together we felt we found we were thinking alike about things and I don't know just one time he said thought we ought to get married and so he went and and asked my father for my hand now this isn't something you you find in going on nowadays. But he did. When he got a job at Iona College, I said, no, we can get married.

21:52And that's what happened. We set our time for the 25th of July. And he got a job, as I say, at Iona College. And he had just taught there one year, but he was voted the most popular professor on campus. People liked him and students liked him because he didn't read from a book. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what the material was that he wanted to cover on that day or in that class and then he covered it and he never stood around reading books or reading the script that he had. He never did that. You always felt as though he knew what he was talking about and you wanted to know more about about it. So that was his method of teaching and I think most of the students that had him felt that he was the best teacher they ever had. I'm sure that that's, that was true.

23:17He was the best teacher they ever had. So your husband tells of the trips that that you two took together when he was flying to various places in the country to deliver lectures so he was a very He was a very good pilot. He never had an accident and never got into trouble. He was a very good pilot. He knew what he had to do and he knew how to get it done. We had some rather scary things happen, but we always got through them.

24:09I remember one time we were going through the Rocky Mountains and he looked at all the maps before we took off through one of the passes. And we hadn't gone far in this pass when we met a thunderstorm. That's a no-no. So, Bob was sitting beside his dad, he was eight years old, I remember, and he was sitting beside his dad and saying, he was turning around, turning the plane, and he said, Daddy, you're going to hit the trees, but he didn't hit the trees.

25:04We turned around and went back and landed on an emergency strip that he had seen. Only a good pilot would see that, but he had seen this emergency strip and he landed there. It really rained. We had a thunderstorm. It really rained, but Hans said, come on, Bob, we're going to find something to eat. and off they went and presently Bob came back and said we found a restaurant so of course I must mention that the whole time I was saying the Lord's Prayer, the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want, I was doing all those things and anyway Bob came back and said we're going Time to have lunch.

26:01And I tell you, at the time, I thought it was the best lunch I'd ever had. It was ham and a potato salad and all kinds of good things. After we had had our lunch and the rainstorm was passed, we went back to the plane and Well, we were still at the restaurant. An older man said, oh, I'm sorry, I should have had that grass cut, but I just didn't and it's pretty long. And so, of course, with the rain on it, it was really dragging.

26:47We started and he realized that he wasn't getting the speed he needed. And so he cut the motor and we went back and revved it up again and tried again and didn't get the speed we needed. So he cut the motor and went back. Then he said to me, if we don't take off this next time, you're going to have to get out of the plane, take one of the big suitcases, find a ride and go to the airport in, I think it was Seattle, go to the airport and find a ride and we'll pick you up there.

27:42Well, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. I sat back and there was the try, the try, the revving up of the loader to see whether we could take it off this time, and I was so happy when I felt it lift off, and I wasn't I'm going to have to take the suitcase and find a ride to the airport. But this was just one of the instances in which he handled things properly. They were right.

28:27He did them right. I also understand that you traveled with the Mises's in Guatemala, to Guatemala and to Mexico. Yes, they wanted Dr. Mises there, but they also wanted somebody else that would be a backup, sort of. And I don't know whether they selected or whether Dr. Mises selected Hans. But at any rate, we went to Guatemala and Mises, when he spoke, spoke as though, well, this is economics and this is the way it is.

29:17And it wasn't as though there was a question. This is the way it is. And he didn't get very excited about it, really. He just announced it, that's the way it was, and so if they, if somebody, if an audience wanted fireworks or anything, they had to have somebody besides Mises, and Hans could provide some of that. He was very good at it, and yes, we had an interesting meeting at Guatemala, but that was like, well, most of the meetings that we did with the Mises were very interesting.

30:14I think Hans provided the liveliness that was needed. Ludwig von Mises would just pronounce it and then it was over, whereas Hans could give him a few examples and so forth. Ludwig von Mises must have really appreciated the Fescherich volume. Yes, I think he did. It was a great contribution. And Mrs. Mises liked traveling with us too. So tell us about J. Howard Pugh. So you also did some writing. You have a book about, well, kind of a biography, right? Well, J. Howard Pugh was a very interesting man and a very important person.

31:07But he found that his staff at Sun Oil was going to write a book and they were gathering material for it. and when he discovered that they were doing this he said no I don't want anything published not while I'm not alive so that that was the end of that finally I remember the Mises were we and the Mises were together and we were at the Foundation and Mr. Reed and I were in the Chao Line and he said, how would you like to write a book about JR2? And I said that would be fun, and so that I had some The material that the people at the Sun Oil had gathered together, they were willing to let me have that, and it was that that I started with and then did a lot of my own research.

32:25But no, that was the way that one turned out. I had done some work before that for Leonard Reed and I suppose that's why he asked whether I would like to do it. Were you able to interview J. Howard Pugh for the material? No, he was already gone. Already gone. Well, you had mentioned he was on the board at Fee, so I thought maybe you would... He was on the board. One time, just after Hans and I came to Grove City, we went to the president's office to before one of the meetings, and what was the name of the man who, he was kind of in in Charge of Money from Grove City.

33:31At any rate, he thought it would be fun to put us in the same room. JRP was in this room. Hans and I came in to attend a trustee meeting. And this fellow, whoever his name was, said, come here. and we came there and he opened the door and pushed us in. And there was Jay Howard too. And I think he must've been just as surprised as we were that here we were at the same woman. Well, okay, we found something to talk about. Hans had decided the first year we were at Grove City from Grove City that we should make sure that Mises got an honorary doctorate from Grove City College and he also decided that it would be nice if Mary and Hans would have a reception for the Faculty with Dr. and Mrs. Mises present.

34:51And so even though we had this house, pretty big house, but we didn't have it all completely furnished. And I remember this room over here with an open fireplace had one chair in it, and Jay Dr. J. Howard Pugh had been walking around in the house a little bit, kind of looking things over, and he finally had Mrs. Pugh sit down in this one chair in that room. But well, that's all we had in that room, and that was the first time we had a reception, we had a number of receptions through the years. It's a big house. Yes indeed. So Mr. Pugh was a was a big supporter of your husband's. I think it was Hans, Hans was speaking his language. And I, I think when Hans made some noises that perhaps he might leave Grove City College Mr. Pugh would find a special project because he really wanted Hans to stay.

36:20Well, I wonder if that in part is because of the way Dr. Sinholtz always kept economics and morality together. Yes, of course. And of course, that was a big thing for Mr. Pugh, too. But you can't be a good economist if you want to cheat and do things under the carpet and all that. You can't be a good economist that way. You have to be straight. You have to keep your promises. You have to do what you said you would do and not cheat.

37:05Hans lived a straight life and that's the way he tried to teach it. People often make promises, but they want a little bit of cheating here and a little bit of something else there, it won't matter. Nobody is going to know the difference. That isn't the way Hans felt about it, and that isn't the way Mr. Pugh felt about it. They felt that if you made a promise, you had to stay and live by it. In addition to Mises, what other economists did your husband admire?

37:51Well, of course he did some translating, and the books that he translated were all in the same, in the realm of Austrian economics. and he did some translation of Boehm-Bawerk and of course, Menger was one of them. And I would say that he was supportive or was eager to have everybody understand the works of those men.

38:42So, you started out with the Austrian School at Fee, and then after Dr. Sinnholz retired from Gross City, he went back to Fee and became president. So what was it like on your second time around? Well, it was different. It was different. But the organization had really gotten into trouble financially and otherwise. And so, Hans, I think, was just interested to see whether he could pull it off, whether he could really do it.

39:29Whether a lot of these things he was saying to people about how to run an organization, whether it was really true, whether it was practical, and he wanted to test himself, I think. But he did it by looking at the expenses and how the money was being spent, and you could see it was off track, so he put it back on track.

40:18He was able, it was in the red, but he was able to get it back in the black very quickly. Took a lot of people off of an insurance thing that they weren't working there anymore. But they were having all this insurance and it was expensive. and not only that, but he found a way to find, or found a place where they would ensure it would be just as good, but a whole lot less expensive. So as I say, he wanted to test himself and he found out he could do it. We had the foundation back in the black.

41:06We were very, I thought we were very fortunate in that while we were there, we had the 50th anniversary of the foundation. And Hans did a magnificent job there. I didn't know he had it in him, but he did, he really did a good job. I'll never forget, in 2004, when the Mises Institute gave Hans St. Holtz the Gary Schlarbom prize. Yes, I was there. I think I played happy birthday for somebody. I played happy birthday more times than you can count. Anyway, it was a nice occasion.

41:54Yes, it's kind of the Austrian Nobel Prize in economics, or lifetime achievement, which your husband certainly accomplished. Well, I think he was well-deserving of it, because you wouldn't, I may say, anything else. I would be interested if you recall Sir Mises' impressions on economists of his day. Did he have any interactions, say, with some of the Chicago School economists like Frank Knight or later on Milton Friedman or anything like that? Oh, Milton Friedman, you know, one of the most disgraceful things I ever saw take place was at the Mount Pelerin's meeting and Milton Friedman stood there a little bit off stage while there was, I don't remember who it was who was speaking.

43:01But Milton Friedman was a little bit off stage, but making signs and doing all kinds of things to take the audience's attention away from the speaker. It was, I still say, it was one of the most disgraceful things I've ever witnessed. I don't know why he did it. I don't think he had to do that to get his attention. I don't understand why he did it that way, but I witnessed it, and a lot of other people witnessed it. Well, this has been great. I think that's, unless you have other things you'd like to tell us.

43:47I don't think so. We certainly appreciate the interview. I don't think so. I hope I was helpful in some way. Absolutely. It's been wonderful.