Bernard Mannes Baruch (August 19, 1870 - June 20, 1965) was a self-made US millionaire, financier, philanthropist, statesman, political consultant, stock trader and venture investor. For most of the first half of the 20th century, he epitomised the "good side" of Wall Street in the public mind. Celebrated as "Adviser to Presidents" and "The Park Bench Statesman," he also became known as "The Man Who Sold out before the Crash." Baruch, after his success in business, devoted his time toward advising US Presidents Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) on economic matters and became a philanthropist.
Baruch became a broker and then a partner in A Houseman and Company. With his earnings and commissions, he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $18,000 ($434,000 in today's dollars). There he amassed a fortune before the age of 30 via speculation in the sugar market. By 1903 Baruch 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 became one of Wall Street's best-known financiers. During the Great Crash in 30s, Baruch became a prudent player in the Wall Street. The classic way to profit in a declining market is via a short sale -- selling stock you've borrowed (e.g., from a broker) in the hope that the price will drop, enabling you to buy cheaper shares to pay off the loan. Baruch profited in the run-up to the crash because he kept his greed in check. Bernard Baruch got out of the market in early 1929 sensing trouble. His fortune intact, Baruch remained a respected figure and advisor to US Presidents till the end of his long life.
In 1913, Baruch and Stephen Wise, Woodrow Wilson's other adviser, got him to start the Federal Reserve System. In 1916, Baruch left Wall Street to advise President Wilson on national defence. He served on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defence and, in 1918, became the Chairman of the new War Industries Board. With his leadership, this body successfully managed the US's economic mobilisation during World War I. In 1919, Wilson asked Baruch to serve as a staff member at the Paris Peace Conference. Baruch did not approve of the reparations France and Britain demanded of Germany, and supported Wilson's view that there needed to be new forms of cooperation between nations, and supported the creation of the League of Nations.
In the 1920s and 30s, Baruch expressed his concern that the United States needed to be prepared for the possibility of another world war. He wanted a more powerful version of the War Industries Board, which he saw as the only way to ensure maximum coordination between civilian business and military needs. Baruch remained a prominent government adviser during this time, and supported Franklin Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policy initiatives after his election. In 1925, he endowed the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) Mrs. Simon Baruch University Award in memory of his mother to support scholars who have written unpublished monographs for full-length books on Confederate history. His mother had been an early member of the organisation and supported their activities.
During President Roosevelt's New Deal programme, Baruch was a member of the "Brain Trust" and helped form the National Recovery Administration (NRA). NRA became a government agency established by President Roosevelt to stimulate business recovery through fair-practice codes during the Great Depression The NRA was an essential element in the National Industrial Recovery Act (June 1933), which authorised the president to institute industry-wide codes intended to eliminate unfair trade practices, reduce unemployment, establish minimum wages and maximum hours, and guarantee the right of labour to bargain collectively.
When the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt appointed Baruch a special adviser to the director of the Office of War Mobilisation. He supported what was known as a "work or fight" bill. Baruch advocated the creation of a permanent super agency 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 what. Baruch's ideas were largely adopted, and during the war Baruch remained a trusted adviser and confidant of President Roosevelt, who in 1944 spent a month as a guest at Baruch's South Carolina estate.
In 1946, President Harry S Truman appointed Baruch as the United States representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC). On Friday, June 14, 1946, Baruch 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 US already had nuclear weapons; it proposed that the US eliminate its nuclear weapons before a system of controls and inspections was implemented. A stalemate ensued. Baruch resigned from the commission in 1947. His influence began to diminish, as he grew further out of step with the views of the Truman administration.
The President of the United States authorised by Act of Congress, July 09, 1918, presented the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Bernard M. Baruch for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services to the government in a duty of great responsibility during World War I, in the organisation and administration of the War Industries Board and in the coordination of allied purchases in the United States. By establishing a broad and comprehensive policy for the supervision and control of the raw materials, manufacturing facilities, and distribution of the products of industry, he stimulated the production of war supplies, coordinated the needs of the military service and the civilian population, and contributed alike to the completeness and speed of the mobilisation and equipment of the military forces and the continuity of their supply.
Bernard M. Baruch -- one of the most remarkable men of the US stock market -- was an office boy at nineteen, a Wall Street partner at twenty-five, and a millionaire before he was thirty-five. For some men this success would mark the climax of a career; for Baruch it was only the beginning of a still greater one. In the fifty years since he made his first fortune, Bernard Baruch had been a trusted counsellor of Presidents, an adviser on social and economic reforms, a statesman who worked with two political parties and won the respect of both. In the first volume of his memoirs, Mr. Baruch analyses his personal philosophy and shows how it helped him solve the many problems that confronted him in his public life as Chairman of the War Industries Board during World War I and as United States representative on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. Informal yet penetrating, intimate yet never losing sight of major events and issues, his memoirs BARUCH: My Own Story is infused with the remarkable personality of a truly distinguished American.
Dr Muhammad Abdul Mazid is a former Secretary to the Government and a former Chairman of NBR
mazid.muhammad@gmail.com