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The relationship between Milton Friedman's monetary economics and the views espoused by Chicago and non-Chicago quantity theorists in 1930-36 is examined. Contrary to recent interpretations, Chicago economists advanced the efficacy of monetary policy as the means of escaping from the Great Depression if such a policy was implemented with budget deficits to generate monetary expansion. The use of the quantity theory of money to provide a theoretical rationale for budget deficits distinguished the Chicago economists from other quantity theorists and left them less susceptible to the Keynesian revolution. The claim that Harvard was an important center for monetary research in the early 1930s is refuted. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.