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Henry Hazlitt

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Henry Stuart Hazlitt

Henry Hazlitt
Born	November 28, 1894 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	July 9, 1993 (aged 98)
Nationality	American
Field	economics literary criticism philosophy
School/tradition	Austrian School
Influences	Benjamin Anderson, Frédéric Bastiat, David Hume, William James, H.L. Mencken,Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Herbert Spencer,Philip Wicksteed
Influenced	Steve Forbes, Milton Friedman, Ron Paul, George Reisman, Murray Rothbard,Paul Samuelson, Peter Schiff,Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, Gene Callahan

Henry Stuart Hazlitt (November 28, 1894 – July 9, 1993) was an American journalist who wrote about business and economics for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times. He is widely cited in both libertarian and conservative circles.^[1]

Biography[edit]

Henry Hazlitt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He was a collateral descendant of the British essayist William Hazlitt,^[2] but grew up in relative poverty, his father having died when Hazlitt was an infant. His early heroes wereHerbert Spencer and William James, and his first ambition was for an academic career in psychology and philosophy. He attended New York's City College, but left after only a short time in order to support his twice-widowed mother.^[3]

Hazlitt started his career at The Wall Street Journal as secretary to the managing editor when he was still a teenager, and his interest in the field of economics began while working there. His studies led him to The Common Sense of Political Economy by Philip Wicksteed which, he later said, was his first "tremendous influence" in the subject.^[4] Hazlitt published his first book, Thinking as a Science, at the age of 21. During World War I, he served in the Army Air Service in Texas. He returned to New York, residing atWashington Square Park for many years.^[5]

In the early 1920s, he was financial editor of The New York Evening Mail, and it was during this period, Hazlitt reported, that his understanding of economics was further refined by frequent discussions with former Harvard economics professor Benjamin Anderson who was then working for Chase National Bank in Manhattan. Later, when the publisher W. W. Norton suggested he write an official biography of their author Bertrand Russell, Hazlitt spent "a good deal of time," as he described it, with the famous philosopher.^[6] Lord Russell "so admired the young journalist's talent" that he had agreed with Norton's proposal,^[7] but the project ended after nearly two years of work when Russell declared his intention to write his own autobiography.^[6]