7

complete my research on the Federal Reserve. Even though my 

foundation applications were sponsored by the three leading poets 

of America, Ezra Pound, E.E. Cummings, and Elizabeth Bishop, all of 
the foundations refused to sponsor this research. I then wrote up my 
findings to date, and in 1950 began efforts to market this manuscript 

in New York. Eighteen publishers turned it down without comment, 

but the nineteenth, Devin Garrity, president of Devin Adair 
Publishing Company, gave me some friendly advice in his office. "I 

like your book, but we can’t print it," he told me. "Neither can 

anybody else in New York. Why don’t you bring in a prospectus for 
your novel, and I think we can give you an advance. You may as 

well forget about getting the Federal Reserve book published. I 
doubt if it could ever be printed."

This was devastating news, coming after two years of intensive work. 
I reported back to Pound, and we tried to find a publisher in other 

parts of the country. After two years of fruitless submissions, the book 
was published in a small edition in 1952 by two of Pound’s disciples, 

John Kasper and David Horton, using their private funds, under the 
title Mullins on the Federal Reserve. In 1954, a second edition, with 
unauthorized alterations, was published in New Jersey, as The 

Federal Reserve Conspiracy. In 1955, Guido Roeder brought out a 

German edition in Oberammergau, Germany. The book was seized 
and the entire edition of 10,000 copies burned by government 
agents led by Dr. Otto John.

The burning of the book was upheld April 21, 1961 by judge Israel 
Katz of the Bavarian Supreme Court. The U.S. Government refused 
to intervene, because U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, James 

B. Conant (president of Harvard University 1933 to 1953), had 
approved the initial book burning order. This is the only book which 
has been burned in Germany since World War II. In 1968 a pirated 

edition of this book appeared in California. Both the FBI and the U.S. 
Postal inspectors refused to act, despite numerous complaints from 

me during the next decade. In 1980 a new German edition 

appeared. Because the U.S. Government apparently no longer 
dictated the internal affairs of Germany, the identical book which 

had been burned in 1955 now circulates in Germany without 

interference.

I had collaborated on several books with Mr. H.L. Hunt and he 

suggested that I should continue my long-delayed research on the 

Federal Reserve and bring out a more definitive version of this book. 
I had just signed a contract to write the authorized biography of