(1870–1965), financier and political adviser

In matters of war and national security, Baruch was a major administrator during World War I, an important influence on Democratic congressional leaders from 1918 to 1948, and an intermittent consultant to Democratic presidents. Son of a German Jewish immigrant and his southern wife, Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina, but moved with his family to New York City, where he graduated from City College in 1889. Successful on Wall Street, he was a millionaire by the age of thirty.

Baruch became a friend of Woodrow Wilson and many Democrats in Congress. In World War I, Wilson appointed Baruch to several mobilization posts, most importantly (1918) chair of the War Industries Board (WIB), then designated the major civilian agency for industrial mobilization. Not the “czar” described in the press, Baruch worked largely by persuasion rather than coercion. Furthermore, there were other agencies, and the military retained independent contracting authority. Nevertheless, at the WIB and on the President's War Council, Baruch was at the center of the government's mobilization. The WIB's success established Baruch's reputation as an industrial statesman. Wilson took him as an economic adviser to the Paris peace talks.

In the interwar years, Baruch—who believed in business‐government cooperation—encouraged industrial‐military planning through the new Army Industrial College and through the War Department's Industrial Mobilization Plan of 1930 and its subsequent revisions.

During World War II, Baruch urged a new WIB, but President Roosevelt, concerned with his own prerogatives, ignored this advice. Denied administrative power, Baruch still maintained political influence, primarily through his influence in Congress and friendships with the heads of mobilization agencies.

In 1946, President Truman asked Baruch to formulate a postwar international policy for atomic energy. The Baruch Plan proposed guarding America's atomic secrets and its production of atomic bombs until an international agency, over which the USSR would not have a veto, established full control of manufacturing plants anywhere in the world. The Soviet Union rejected it. During the Korean War, Baruch, fearful of inflation, tried unsuccessfully to get the Truman administration to impose price and wage controls. By then, however, Baruch had lost his great influence.

[See also Industry and War.]

Bibliography

• Bernard M. Baruch, Baruch: My Own Story, 1957.
• Bernard M. Baruch, Baruch: The Public Years, 1960.
• Jordan A. Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–1965, 1981

American statesman Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965), a successful financier, served as chairman of the War Industries Board during World War I. After World War II he was U.S. representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.

On Aug. 19, 1870, Bernard Baruch was born in Camden, S.C. His father, Simon Baruch, had been a surgeon in the Confederate Army, while Bernard's mother came from an old South Carolina family. The Baruchs left South Carolina for New York City when Bernard was a small boy, and he received his education in the public schools. He graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1889 and soon joined the Wall Street brokers A.A. Houseman and Company. Beginning as a "runner, " Baruch rose rapidly to partnership in the firm. He launched his own firm in 1903 and by 1910 had built a substantial and secure fortune.

Baruch married Annie Griffin of New York City in 1897. Three children were born to them. Baruch should have been a most contented man; his marriage was happy; his career prospered; he had time for sports and the theater. Yet there was another facet to Baruch that made him somewhat different from most Wall Street tycoons. His Jewish family placed more value on scholarship and service than on moneymaking and he was naturally drawn to a career of public service.

World War I

Woodrow Wilson first brought Baruch into Democratic politics during the presidential campaign of 1912, but it was not until 1916 that Baruch accepted a post in the intimate Wilson circle. Baruch was serving on the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense when war was declared in April 1917. In July he was named a member of the newly created War Industries Board. When the War Department fumbled its opportunity to control economic mobilization during the winter of 1917-1918, it became apparent to President Wilson that Baruch should become the chairman of the Board.

So many things were in flux in the War Department, in the operation of railroads, and in the control of fuel and food when Baruch became chairman that it is difficult to differentiate his work from that of others. Forces of reform converged from every direction. Although the United States did not complete its industrial organization and produce war material in quantity until the war's end, Baruch succeeded in coordinating American economic power for the first time in the nation's history. His work set precedents that were not overlooked by President Franklin Roosevelt when, in the 1930s, he organized the country to fight the Great Depression.

As the Versailles Treaty failed and the economic nationalism of the 1920s intensified, Baruch grew pessimistic about world affairs. He fought for industrial preparedness in a period when politically it was considered almost treasonous. He remained active in Democratic party politics, supporting William G. McAdoo for the presidency in 1924 and Al Smith in 1928. Malicious and false charges that he had profited personally from World War I hurt him deeply. He was also subject to anti-Semitic attacks. Perhaps the greatest blows were struck by the elder Henry Ford, who, in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, accused Baruch of being a part of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world's economy.

World War II

Baruch never recovered from Ford's insulting charges, and he refused public positions during World War II partly because of the terrible hurts inflicted by the auto magnate. Baruch may have served without portfolio during World War II, but he was not without influence. It was the "Baruch Report" that set the stage for the solution of the 1942 rubber crisis, so critical to Allied victory. It was Baruch who recommended James F. Byrnes of South Carolina for director of the Office of War Mobilization. Baruch, the "park bench statesman, " worked hard on plans for demobilization and post-war economic planning. He was on a mission to England as Roosevelt's personal emissary when he heard of the President's death.

United Nations

At 75 Baruch undertook his last public mission, as American representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. The Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy faltered on the matter of inspection and became quickly embroiled in the politics of the cold war. A few scholars have seen the proposal as an attempt by the United States to retain a monopoly of atomic weapons, but at the time even some Soviet statesmen saw it as a valid first position for important negotiations.

Baruch resigned from the Commission in January 1947. He remained interested in politics and international affairs but shunned the national spotlight. He could look back on a life of action and commitment. The "Wolf of Wall Street" had found a political mentor in Woodrow Wilson. He had surmounted prejudices surrounding his origins, his work on Wall Street, and his religion, to become an adviser of presidents and ultimately an American elder statesman. He died in New York City on June 20, 1965.

Further Reading

The best biography of Baruch is Margaret L. Coit, Mr. Baruch (1957). Baruch's My Own Story (1957) and The Public Years (1960) are also informative. For Baruch and World War I see Grosvenor B. Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War (1923). For his part in the World War II see Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy: The Story of American War Production (1946). Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords into Plowshares: The Problem and Progress of International Organization (1956; 3d ed. 1964), discusses Baruch's work with the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.

Additional Sources

Grant, James, Bernard M. Baruch: the adventures of a Wall Street legend, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

For more information on Bernard Mannes Baruch, visit Britannica.com.

(1870-1965), businessman called "adviser to presidents." Baruch, a minor adviser to Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a giant influence upon Democratic congressional leaders between 1918 and 1948. A man of great wealth gained from speculation on Wall Street, Baruch was a superb publicist whose influence with the press furthered the causes he favored, such as anti-inflation policies.

He was chairman of the War Industries Board (wib) in 1918, economic adviser to President Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, and an éminence grise with Democratic lawmakers from 1926 to 1932, helping to formulate the bipartisan consensus that passed President Herbert Hoover's antidepression program in 1932. Baruch's influence upon the New Deal was indirect in that President Roosevelt respected his power. Rexford Tugwell, a New Deal brain truster recalled Roosevelt's telling him that "Baruch owned--he used the word--sixty congressmen." It was that apparent power that compelled Roosevelt to add Baruch's crony, Hugh S. Johnson, to the brain trust during the 1932 campaign. Johnson later became head of the National Recovery Administration, a peacetime version of the War Industries Board. Later, Roosevelt told Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins that Baruch had "lots of influence on the Congress still.... He helps out tremendously in keeping the more wild members of Congress, the Southern members of Congress... reconciled."

A conservative opposed to New Deal welfare state legislation, Baruch nevertheless rationalized the New Deal as a humane and political necessity, and Roosevelt shrewdly saw to it that Baruch's influence was represented in industrial and agricultural recovery programs. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration was modeled on the cooperation strategy of the wib and was led by George Peek, another wib veteran and Baruch crony. Yet neither Johnson nor Peek lasted out Roosevelt's first term. Although by 1936 Baruch was only on the fringes of power, his support for the repeal of the undistributed profits tax in 1938 dealt a heavy blow to New Deal tax policy.

Baruch's influence with Congress endured, and in addition Eleanor Roosevelt and various New Deal administrators respected his views on rearmament to meet the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia. To symbolize his disagreement with the lack of speed and comprehensiveness of Roosevelt's preparedness program during 1938-1941 (and his exclusion from its policymaking and administration), Baruch told reporters that his Washington office was a park bench in Lafayette Square across the street from the White House. During World War II--while in his seventies--he was at the height of his fame as "adviser to presidents" and the "park bench statesman."

President Truman put aside his personal dislike of Baruch and appointed him chairman of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. Atomic Energy Commission, where he presented the "Baruch Plan" for creating an international atomic energy development authority. Truman hoped that Baruch would sell the idea to Congress and the American public, but the Soviets rejected it. An advocate of stabilization planning so as not to distort the economic system during a war, Baruch deplored Truman's unwillingness to resort to price controls during the Korean War. In 1952, although he had been a Democrat most of his life, Baruch endorsed Dwight D. Eisenhower for president.

Bibliography:

Bernard M. Baruch, The Public Years (1960); Jordan A. Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917-1965 (1981).

Author:

Jordan A. Schwarz

See also World War I.

(bərūk') , 1870–1965, U.S. financier and government adviser, b. Camden, S.C. He grew rich through stockmarket speculation before he was 30. In World War I he advised on national defense and was (1918–19) chairman of the War Industries Board; he helped frame the economic provisions of the Versailles Treaty (1919). In World War II he became (1942) special adviser to James F. Byrnes and wrote the report (1943) on postwar conversion. As U.S. Representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission (1946) he formulated plans for international control of atomic energy.

Bibliography

See his autobiography Baruch (2 vol., 1957–60); biography by W. L. White (1950, repr. 1971); J. Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–1965 (1981).

Quotes:

"I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am."

"If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right."

"The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves."

"In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves."

"Gold has worked down from Alexander's time... When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory."

"Two things are bad for the heart -- running up stairs and running down people."

See more famous quotes by Bernard M. Baruch

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