Henry Hazlitt was a brilliant American economist during the 1920s until his death in 1993. He was born to a poor family in Philadelphia on November 28, 1894. Hazlitt's father died shortly after he was born; his mother then moved her little family to New York, and did what she could as a single parent to give her son a good education.
Although Hazlitt's education was not exceptional, he was a born learner as well as ambitious, and some of his greatest lessons came from teaching himself. He only attended college for a year and a half before he had to work to support his mother, and eventually his excellent writing skills found him a job with the newly established Wall Street Journal. It was Hazlitt's career in journalism that propelled him to the height of economic influence that he maintained throughout his life. Other news providers such as the New York Times and Newsweek received his services as a writer and staff member.
Among his countless editorials and articles, Hazlitt authored a score of books, including his famous Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt's conservative leanings brought him friendship with many other conservatives and libertarians, even the Austrian thinkers Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. A writer to the end, Hazlitt defended capitalism and conservative economics to his death on July 9, 1993.
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