FRIEDMAN CLARIFIED

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

After hearing Milton Friedman tell how the daily newspaper at the University of California had refused even to publish an announcement of his recent visit there, we were delighted to find the CRIMSON featuring an article on his appearance at Harvard last week.

Our subsequent disappointment upon reading the article is understandable then, as we find that in attempting to condense Professor Friedman's broad and involved remarks, you staff has communicated inaccurate and perhaps misleading statements.

While correctly reporting Professor Friedman's objection to the so-called civil rights bill as a dangerous precedent in the face of over-riding prejudice of the majority of Americans, you reporter failed to mention what seem to be cogent historical parallels in the cases of Irish and Jewish emergence from the position of expressed minorities. Here Professor Friedman pointed out this rise in status as occurring not under the protection of governmental legislation, but, rather, under the function of the market mechanism.

By omitting this consideration, and, in so doing overlooking Friedman's arguments as to the existence of similar forces in the slow, but steady, rise of Negro prosperity over the last century, your reporter seriously distorted the context in which Professor Friedman's remark "If the free market is allowed to operate, prejudice will result in lower wages for Negroes," was made.

What Friedman meant--and made quite clear--was that a federal law requiring the fair employment of Negroes would be unenforceable in the face of popular bias, and that because of the resulting corruption of the market mechanism in this sphere, the Negro would continue to suffer serious underemployment. Under the conditions of a free market, he went on, the prejudiced employer would be free to refuse employment to Negroes, but by so doing he would force the price of Negro labor down and give incentive for less biased employers to hire more Negroes. In this context, Professor Friedman is saying that the Negro will receive lower wages than his white counterpart. It must be seen, however, that this is the case today in most industries even under the various forms of FEPC statues already operative in several states, and that the realization of Friedman's suggestion for total withdrawal of governmental jurisdiction in this area would represent no loss of income for the Negro, while making more jobs available to the Negro minority whose most pressing problem today is indeed a serious disproportion in employment opportunities.

It is impossible for us to reconstruct completely Professor Friedman's remarks on all the various subjects he breached while he was here, and we recognize this was perhaps the problem your reporter faced. It remains that all of us, liberal and conservative, who talked with Professor Friedman at Lowell House on Sunday and at 2 Divinity Avenue on Monday found his remarks far more profound and thoughtful than the article on Tuesday suggested. William E. Dunham '65   William C. Wooldridge '66   Editors, The Harvard Conservative   Carl F. Moxcy '56   President, H-R Conservative Club