The conference’s primary funder directly controlled the program as a condition of financing

Evidence

Because he raised the money for the conference, Crane believed that he had the right to ultimately determine its program. As he wrote to his friend Rose Wilder Lane—the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and a conservative writer and activist in her own right with whom Crane conducted a voluminous correspondence—he “had no reluctance at all … to insist on sound statements from the speakers at the Mont Pelerin conference.” He explained that while he did not want to be “tactless so as to defeat my very purpose,” he had told Hayek that “I must thoroughly approve of the program if I am to raise the money for the meeting.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1469

Categorization

• QUESTION: How unusual was this donor-control model compared to other mid-century think tanks and conferences? Did Crane’s bargain set a precedent for later funding arrangements?