Bernard Baruch

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

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.

(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.

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

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

This article contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. (March 2008)

Bernard Baruch
Born	August 19, 1870(1870-08-19) Camden, South Carolina
Died	June 20, 1965 (aged 94) New York City, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	City College of New York
Occupation	Speculator Financier
Awards	Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga Race Course

Bernard Mannes Baruch (pronounced /bəˈruːk/; August 19, 1870 – June 20, 1965) was an American financier, stock-market speculator, statesman, and political consultant. After his success in business, he devoted his time toward advising Democratic U.S. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt on economic matters.

Contents 1 Early life, education, and career 2 Presidential Adviser: First World War 3 Other Accomplishments 4 Presidential Adviser: Second World War 5 Park bench statesman 6 Thoroughbred racing 7 Quotes 8 Trivia 9 Bibliography 9.1 Primary sources 9.2 Scholarly secondary sources 10 References 11 External links

Early life, education, and career

Bernard Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina to Simon and Belle Baruch. He was the second of four sons. His father Dr. Simon Baruch (1840-1921) was a German immigrant of Jewish ethnicity who came to the United States in 1855. He became a surgeon on the staff of Confederate general Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War and a pioneer in physical therapy.^[1] His mother's Sephardic Jewish ancestors came to New York as early as the 1690s and were in the shipping business. In 1881 the family moved to New York City, and Bernard Baruch graduated from the City College of New York eight years later. He eventually became a broker and then a partner in A. A. Housman and Company. With his earnings and commissions he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $18,000 ($425000 in today's dollars). There he amassed a fortune before the age of thirty via speculation in the sugar market. In 1903 he had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of "The Lone Wolf on Wall Street" because of his refusal to join any financial house. By 1910, he had become one of Wall Street's best known financiers. A residential building is named after him on the Stony Brook University campus.

Presidential Adviser: First World War

During World War I he advised President Woodrow Wilson on national defense, during which time he became the chairman of the War Industries Board. (His stenographer was the then-unknown teenager Billy Rose). Baruch played a major role in turning American industry to full-scale war production. At the war's conclusion, he was seen with President Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference. He never competed for elective office. He supported numerous Democratic congressmen with $1000 annual campaign donations, and became a popular figure on Capitol Hill. Every election season he would contribute from $100 to $1000 to numerous Democratic candidates.

During President Roosevelt's "New Deal" program, Baruch was a member of the "Brain Trust" and helped form the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

Other Accomplishments

Baruch was instrumental in starting the Council on Foreign Relations along with the Rockefellers, Morgans, and Warburgs.

Presidential Adviser: Second World War

Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman, and Bernard Baruch, financier, converse in the back seat of a car in front of Baruch's home.

During World War II he was a consultant on economic issues and proposed a number of measures including:

• A pay-as-you-go tax (withholding) plan
• Rent ceilings
• Stockpiling of rubber and tin
• A synthetic rubber program to replace natural rubber; there was not enough of this strategic material.

Baruch argued that in modern warfare there was little use for free enterprise. He said Washington should control all aspects of the economy and that both business and unions should be subservient to the nation's security interest. Furthermore, price controls were essential to prevent inflation and to maximize military power per dollar. He wanted labor to be organized to facilitate optimum production. Baruch believed labor should be cajoled, coerced, and controlled as necessary: a central government agency would orchestrate the allocation of labor. He supported what was known as a "work or fight" bill. Baruch advocated the creation of a permanent superagency similar to his old Industries Board. His theory enhanced the role of civilian businessmen and industrialists in determining what was needed and who would produce it.^[2] Baruch's ideas were largely adopted, with James Byrnes appointed to carry them out. During the war Baruch remained a trusted advisor and confidant of President Roosevelt, and the President spent an entire month as a guest at Baruch's South Carolina estate, in 1944.

In 1946 he was appointed the United States representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) by President Harry S. Truman. As a member of the newly created UNAEC, Baruch suggested the elimination of nuclear weapons after implementation of a system of international controls, inspections, and punishment for violations.

On Friday, June 14, 1946, Baruch - widely seen by many scientists and some members of Truman's administration as unqualified for the task - presented his Baruch Plan, a modified version of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan, to the UNAEC, which proposed international control of then-new atomic energy.

The Soviet Union rejected Baruch's proposal as unfair given the fact that the U.S. already had nuclear weapons, instead proposing that the U.S. eliminate its nuclear weapons before a system of controls and inspections was implemented. A stalemate ensued.

Park bench statesman

Baruch was well-known, and often walked or sat in Washington D.C's Lafayette Park and in New York City's Central Park. It was not uncommon for him to discuss government affairs with other people while sitting on a park bench: he became known for this.

In 1960, on his ninetieth birthday, a commemorative park bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House was dedicated to him. He continued to advise on international affairs until his death on Sunday, June 20, 1965, in New York City, at the age of ninety-four.

Thoroughbred racing

Bernard Baruch owned a string of Thoroughbred racehorses and raced under the name, Kershaw Stable. In 1927 his horse, Happy Argo, won the Carter Handicap. The Saratoga Race Course named the Bernard Baruch Handicap in his honor.

Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bernard Baruch

Bernard Baruch is oft-remembered for his many thoughtful and humorous quotations, many of which are usually misattributed.

Mr. Baruch was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1997.

Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (October 2007)

• Baruch's faith helped him make his fortune. During his Wall Street days, Baruch sold short, to the limit of his resources, a stock he believed to be overvalued. He expected a quick profit on the next business day, believing the directors would not declare the regular dividend since the company could not afford it. He knew, however, that if the directors bluffed and declared a dividend, the stock could rise, and he would have to cover instantly or lose everything. The day before the dividend declaration day, his mother reminded him that the next day was the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, and he had promised to maintain the solemnity of the annual occasion and "keep" the holiday holy. Keeping his promise, Baruch ignored the multiple phone calls and telegrams from his friends who urged him to take his profit and cover. After Yom Kippur had passed, he read the telegrams and learned that, indeed, the dividend had passed. Rather than rising as a result, however, the stock had fallen precipitiously.

Keeping his promise, he had become a millionaire.^[3]

• In his teenage and college years, Baruch was quite good at sports, especially baseball and there was the possibility of his playing baseball professionally. But during a game for City College, he suffered an ear injury that impaired his hearing, taking away any possibility of playing in the majors^[4]
• His winter residence was his 17,500 acres (71 km²) Hobcaw Barony on the coast of South Carolina, which he purchased between 1905 and 1910. At Hobcaw House he was host to such world leaders as Winston Churchill. Other guests included General Pershing and Edith Bolling Wilson wife of Woodrow Wilson.

• In 1931, Sir Winston Churchill was hit by a taxi, while on his way to meet Bernard Baruch.

• He made a $50,000 contribution to Woodrow Wilson's 1912 presidential campaign.

• Upon appointment to his first post by Woodrow Wilson, he divested his considerable financial holdings and sold his New York Stock Exchange seat to serve in government unencumbered.

• Baruch endured days of grilling from Alger Hiss, Counsel for the Senate Munitions Committee (the Nye Committee), answering innuendos about personal finances and wartime profiteering.

• Bernard Baruch was the first to use the term "Cold War" in reference to the rivalry between United States and the Soviet Union while giving a speech on April 16, 1947. By September 1947 it was used by journalist Walter Lippmann and became famous. See Origins of the Cold War on more information about the origin of the term.

• Baruch owned a tungsten (wolfram) mining community named Atolia in California's Mojave Desert. During the years 1906 to 1926, Baruch spent one month a year at Atolia. The once thriving community of 4,000 individuals became deserted when, after World War I, tungsten was no longer considered a strategic material, and lower-cost sources were developed.

• Secretary of Defense James Forrestal had this diary entry about a lunch meeting with Baruch on February 3, 1948: "He took the line of advising me not to be active in this particular matter and that I was already identified, to a degree that was not in my own interests, with opposition to the United Nations' policy on Palestine. He said he himself did not approve of the Zionists' actions, but in the next breath said that the Democratic party could only lose by trying to get our government’s policy reversed, and said that it was a most inequitable thing to let the British arm the Arabs and for us not to furnish similar equipment to the Jews."^[5]

• The 1949 Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies cartoon Rebel Rabbit features a scene in which Bugs Bunny uses paint to vandalize a park bench, changing it from "Barney Baruch's Private Bench" to "Bugs Bunny's Private Bench".

• Baruch College, in Manhattan, New York has a statue of Bernard Baruch sitting on a bench inside of its entrance center. This statue is often mistaken for a real person.

• He was on the cover of Time magazine three times in his life.

• "In Wall Street it is always ba-rook', but his friends say bahr'ook [with the stress on the first syllable]." (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)

• His grave is at Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, New York City, USA

• Mentioned in the musical Annie by Oliver Warbucks in Act 1 Scene 5

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Bernard M. Baruch Baruch: My Own Story (1957) two volumes. ISBN 1-56849-095-X
• Bernard M. Baruch; The Making of the Reparation and Economic Sections of the Treaty 1920.
• Bernard M. Baruch; American Industry in War: A Report of the War Industries Board (March 1921) ed by Richard H. Hippelheuser; 1941.

Scholarly secondary sources

• Coit, Margaret L. (2000). Mr. Baruch. Washington, DC: BeardBooks. ISBN 1587980215. 
• Cooper, Mary H.; Marshall, Patrick (2007). "Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism". Global Issues: Selections from CQ Researcher. Washington, DC: CQ Press. ISBN 087289410X. 
• Field, Carter (1944). Bernard Baruch, Park Bench Statesman. New York: McGraw-Hill. 
• Grant, James L. (1997). Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend. New York: Wiley. ISBN 0471170755. 
• Irish, Kerry E. (2006). "Apt Pupil: Dwight Eisenhower and the 1930 Industrial Mobilization Plan". The Journal of Military History 70 (1): 31–61. doi:10.1353/jmh.2006.0051.  Eisenhower worked closely with Baruch in 1930.
• Schwartz, Jordan A. (1981). The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807813966. 
• White, William Lindsay (1971). Bernard Baruch: Portrait of a Citizen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0837133483. 

References

1. ^ Blum, Nava.(2006). "The Development of PM&R in the USA" in the book: ha -Shikum asah historia: maarakhot shikum refui be Yisrael 1940-1956.(Tsefat)pp. 25-26.
2. ^ Baruch, The Public Years, 321–28; Kerry E. Irish, "Apt Pupil: Dwight Eisenhower and the 1930 Industrial Mobilization Plan" The Journal of Military History 70.1 (2006) 31-61.
3. ^ The book "Pinchhitter for Presidents" by Beverly Smith, cited in Reader's Digest April 1947 pg. 75.
4. ^ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/baruch.html
5. ^ The Forrestal Diaries, Walter Millis, editor, 1951, p. 364.) Correspondence from Baruch to his friend, Forrestal, can be found in the Forrestal papers collection at Princeton for every year from 1940 to Forrestal's death in 1949. [1]

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bernard Baruch

• Bernard Baruch Portrait
• Bernard Baruch - Jewish Virtual Library
• - Bernard Baruch Bench Of Inspiration
• Baruch College of the City University of New York
• Investment Banking Club - Bernard Baruch College
• Annotated bibliography for Bernard Baruch from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• FBI file on Bernard Baruch

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Eleutherios Venizelos	Cover of Time Magazine 25 February 1924	Succeeded by Reginald McKenna

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)