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THE REAL ROOT OF EVIL 103
matters, creating a vast new market for pro-capitalist writers. 8 Rand’s
principled defense of capitalism, which focused on individualism rather
than specifi c political issues, was a perfect fi t for these corporate efforts.
The editor of the Houghton Line, published by a Philadelphia company
that manufactured oils, leathers, and metal-working products, gave The
Fountainhead a glowing review. In a weekly circular sent to customers
the owner of Balzar’s Foods, a Hollywood grocery store, referenced
both The Fountainhead and Anthem and included a diatribe against
the New Deal–created Offi ce of Price Administration. A top executive
at the Meeker Company, a leather goods company in Joplin, Missouri,
distributed copies of Roark’s courtroom speech to his friends and business
acquaintances. 9 Much as Rand had always wished, capitalists were
fi nally promoting her work of their own volition.
Business conservatives were also drawn to another best-selling book
attacking state control of the economy, F. A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.
Written for a British audience, Hayek’s book unexpectedly caught the
attention of Americans, and he was mobbed by enthusiastic crowds when
he toured the United States in 1944. Hayek made arguments very similar
to those Rand had advanced during her post-Willkie activism. He tied
his laissez-faire beliefs to the broader international situation, arguing
that any movement toward state regulation of the economy would ultimately
culminate in full-blown socialism and dictatorship. Like Rand,
he warned, “The forces which have destroyed freedom in Germany are
also at work here.” 10 He shared her distrust of “the common good” and
titled one of his chapters “Individualism and Collectivism.” The reception
of their work was also similar, for Hayek was snubbed by intellectuals
yet embraced by businessmen and other Americans nervous about
the implications of the New Deal. Both The Fountainhead and Road to
Serfdom were even made into comic books, a testimony to their wide
appeal.
The Road to Serfdom launched Hayek on a remarkable career as an
intellectual and organizer that would culminate with his winning the
1974 Nobel Prize in Economics. The book’s popularity caught the attention
of the Kansas City–based Volker Fund, a newly active libertarian
foundation, which eventually helped Hayek secure a position at the
University of Chicago, a lone academic redoubt for libertarian ideas.
During the war the economists Frank Knight, Henry Simons, and Alan
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