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The presidential election of 1896 was a great national referendum on the gold standard. The Democratic Party had been captured, at its 1896 convention, by the Populist, ultra-inflationist, anti-gold forces, headed by William Jennings Bryan. The older Democrats, who had been fiercely devoted to hard money and the gold standard, either stayed home

[ A History of Money and Banking in the United States (2002)] “William Jennings Bryan and his pietist coalition seized control of the Democratic Party at the momentous convention of 1896. The Democratic Party was never to be the same again.”   Orthodox economic historians attribute the triumph of William Jennings Bryan in the Democratic convention

[In April 1993, Murray Rothbard wrote on the Texas water problem, explaining how the government policy was on a disastrous course that could lead to massive drought. That day has finally arrived.]   We all know how the environmentalists, seemingly determined at all costs to save the spotted owl, delivered a crippling blow to the logging industry

[ An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)]   One of the most powerful influences in the legal and political thought and institutions of the Christian West during the Middle Ages was the Roman law, derived from the republic and empire of ancient Rome. Roman law classically developed in the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD.

[ An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 2, Classical Economics (1995)] “The ideologues — Cabanis, DuPont, Volney, Say, and de Tracy — all sent Jefferson their manuscripts and received encouragement in return.” The leadership of the French Smithians was quickly gained by Jean-Baptiste Say , when the first edition of his

[May 1961] To Adam Smith and to his successors, “competition” was not a term defined with mathematical precision; it meant, generally, “free competition,” i.e., competition unhampered by governmental grants of exclusive privilege. And “monopoly” tended to mean such grants of governmental privilege. To Adam Smith, for example, “competition” was

[ Economic Controversies (20011). This paper was originally published by FEE in 1957.]   Seventy-five years ago, Henry George spelled out his “single tax” program Progress and Poverty, one of the best-selling economic works of all time. According to E.R. Pease, socialist historian and long-time secretary of the Fabian Society, this volume “beyond

[ From the Libertarian Forum , June 1971]   New Yorkers have recently had to suffer yet another irresponsible blackjacking at the hands of power-drunk labor unions. This time it was the bridge tenders and garbage-incinerator workers who, angered at the state legislature’s balking at their receiving pensions that no private industry could afford,

As happens on every new continent, the vast majority of Americans were engaged in transforming natural resources into use; in the case of New England, farming, fish, timber, and furs purchased from Indians located deep in the interior. Merchants and shippers largely exported this produce and in return imported other desired goods from abroad. It

[ Review of Austrian Economics (1988)]   Professor White’s Free Banking in Britain has already had a substantial impact on the economics profession. The main influence has been exerted by one of the book’s major themes: the “wonderful” results of the system of free banking in Scotland, a system that allegedly prevailed from 1716 (or 1727) until