Editing Leonard Read (section)

==Libertarian activism==

During this period his views became progressively more [[libertarianism|libertarian]]. Apparently, it was in 1933, during a meeting with [[William C. Mullendore]], the executive vice president of [[Southern California Edison]], that Read was finally convinced that the [[New Deal]] was completely inefficient and [[morally bankrupt]]. Read was also profoundly influenced by his [[religion|religious beliefs]]. His [[pastor]], Reverend [[James W. Fifield Jr.]], was minister of the 4,000-member [[First Congregational Church of Los Angeles]], of which Read was also a board member. Fifield ran a "resistance movement" against the "[[Social Gospel|social gospel]]" of the New Deal, trying to convince ministers across the country to adopt libertarian "spiritual ideals". During the period when he worked for the Chamber of Commerce, Read was also deeply influenced by more secular figures, such as [[Albert Jay Nock]], and later by [[Ayn Rand]] and the economists [[Ludwig von Mises]] and [[Henry Hazlitt]].

In 1945, [[Virgil Jordan]], the President of the [[National Industrial Conference Board]] (NICB) in New York, invited Read to become its executive vice president. Read realized he would have to leave the NICB to pursue full-time the promotion of free market, limited government principles. He resigned as a result.<ref>[[Gary North (economist)|North, Gary]]. (August 7, 2002) [http://archive.lewrockwell.com/north/north117.html "Leonard E. Read's Small Tent Strategy"], [[LewRockwell.com]]</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Opitz |first=Edmund A. |title=Leonard E. Read: A Portrait |journal=[[The Freeman]] |volume=48 |issue=9 |date= September 1998 |url= http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/leonard-e-read-a-portrait/ |access-date= 2011-03-22 |archive-url= https://archive.today/20130416011249/http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/leonard-e-read-a-portrait/ |archive-date=2013-04-16 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

One donor from his short time at NICB, David M. Goodrich, encouraged Read to start his own organization. With Goodrich's aid, as well as financial aid from the [[William Volker Fund]] and from [[Harold Luhnow]], Read and Hazlitt founded the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946, which, in turn, helped to inspire [[Friedrich Hayek]] to form the [[Mont Pelerin Society]] the following year. For a period in the 1940s, Rand was an important adviser, or "ghost", as they called it, to Read.<ref>{{cite book |last=Burns |first=Jennifer |author-link=Jennifer Burns (historian) |title=Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right |title-link=Goddess of the Market |date=2010 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=115–120}}</ref>

In 1950, Read joined the board of directors for the newly founded periodical ''[[The Freeman]]'', a free market magazine that was a forerunner of the conservative ''[[National Review]]'', to which Read was also a contributor. In 1954, Read arranged for the struggling magazine to be transferred to a for-profit company owned by FEE. In 1956, FEE assumed direct control of the magazine, turning it into a non-profit outreach tool for the foundation.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America |chapter= ''Freeman'', 1950– |last=Hamilton |first=Charles H. |editor1-last=Lora |editor1-first=Ronald |editor2-last=Henry |editor2-first=William Longton|location=Westport, Connecticut |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=1999 |isbn=0-313-21390-9 |oclc=40481045 |pages=321–327}}</ref><ref name="Doherty198-199">{{cite book |title=[[Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement]] |last=Doherty |first= Brian |author-link=Brian Doherty (journalist) |location=New York |publisher=Public Affairs |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-58648-572-6 |oclc=76141517 |pages=198–199}}</ref>

Read received an Honorary Doctoral Degree at [[Universidad Francisco Marroquín]] in 1976. He continued to work with FEE until his death in 1983.