Corporate and family money funded the Mont Pelerin Society’s American meeting

Evidence

Many potential donors turned Crane down. But he was able to persuade thirty-three wealthy individuals to contribute to fund the American meeting (he himself contributed 5,000, the very amount that he had deemed too much only a few years earlier). The du Pont family and DuPont executives donated to the meeting. A small conservative foundation named the Relm Foundation gave 5,000, as did J. Howard Pew. New York financier Jeremiah Milbank (who would later play an important role in the small group of businessmen and conservative activists who drafted Senator Barry Goldwater to run for the presidency in 1964), the United Fruit Company, U.S. Steel, the Ford Motor Fund, and the Milliken Foundation (run by Roger Milliken, a textile manufacturer and major backer of Barry Goldwater, who shut down his factories entirely after a union drive won) each contributed 1,000. The Winchester Foundation contributed 3,000 at the behest of wealthy lawyer Pierre Goodrich, and the Frederick Nymeyer Foundation, run by a business consultant, gave 1,000. Smaller contributions came from Henning Prentis (of Armstrong Cork Company), Sterling Morton of Morton Salt, retired Chrysler chair of finance B. E. Hutchinson, the Beech Aircraft Corporation, and Grede Foundries, as well as foundations like the Kennametal Foundation. The total amount collected for the meeting was about 40,000. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1464

Categorization

• XREF: The donor roster — du Pont, Pew, Milliken, Milbank, Goldwater backers — shows the corporate funding networks underlying the neoliberal movement, connecting to later chapters on think tanks and Reagan-era policy. — connects to: Mont Pèlerin entrepreneurship scholarship was co-financed and steered by corporate interests. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 281; Corporate funding made the first Mont Pèlerin meeting financially possible — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 117; French employers’ federation CNPF financed the Mont Pèlerin Society’s European operations — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 292 (+4 more)
• SHARE: Roger Milliken shutting down his factories after a union drive won, then funding conservative causes, is a specific tidbit for anyone interested in anti-union corporate history.

Broader Connections

• Crane recruited American corporate executives into the Mont Pèlerin Society #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1470