Bernard Baruch | |
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| Born | Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-08-19)August 19, 1870 Camden, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | June 20, 1965(1965-06-20) (aged 94) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | City College of New York (BA) |
| Occupations |
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| Spouse | Annie Griffin |
| Children | 3, includingBelle W. |
| Father | Simon Baruch |
| Honors | Bernard Baruch Handicap atSaratoga Race Course |
| Signature | |
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Bernard Mannes Baruch[nb 1] (August 19, 1870 – June 20, 1965) was an American financier andstatesman.
After amassing a fortune on theNew York Stock Exchange, he impressed PresidentWoodrow Wilson by managing the nation's economic mobilization inWorld War I as chairman of theWar Industries Board. He advised Wilson during theParis Peace Conference. He made another fortune in the postwar bull market, but foresaw theWall Street crash and sold out well in advance.
InWorld War II, he became a close advisor to PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt on the role of industry in war supply, and he was credited with greatly shortening the production time for tanks and aircraft. Later he helped to develop rehabilitation programs for injured servicemen. In 1946, he was the United States representative to theUnited Nations Atomic Energy Commission, though hisBaruch Plan for international control of atomic energy was rejected by the Soviet Union.
Bernard Baruch was born on August 19, 1870, inCamden, South Carolina to aJewish family.[3][4] His parents were Belle (née Wolfe) andSimon Baruch, a physician, Confederate soldier and a member of theKu Klux Klan.[3][5][6][7] Bernard was the second of four sons, including brothersHerman B. Baruch, Sailing Wolfe Baruch, and Hartwig Nathaniel Baruch.[8][9]
In 1879, the family moved from Camden to New York City, where Bernard and his brothers attended local schools. He studied at and graduated from theCity College of New York.
Baruch became a broker and then a partner inA.A. Housman & Company.[when?] With his earnings and commissions, he bought a seat on theNew York Stock Exchange for $19,000 (equivalent to $720,000 in 2024).[10] There, he amassed a fortune before the age of 30 speculating on the sugar market, which was booming in Hawaii. Baruch founded the Intercontinental Rubber Company of New York, which dominated theguayule rubber market in the U.S. with holdings in Mexico. His partners in the enterprise were SenatorNelson Aldrich,Daniel Guggenheim,John D. Rockefeller Jr.,George Foster Peabody and others.[11] By 1903, Baruch had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of "The Lone Wolf of Wall Street" because of his refusal to join any financial house. By 1910, he had become one of Wall Street's best-known financiers.[citation needed]
After 1924, Baruch made millions in thebull market. He began to anticipate a crash as early as 1927 andsold stocks short periodically in 1927 and 1928.[12] On September 25, 1929, after the 1929 post Labor Day peak of the Dow, Baruch refused to join a bull pool of financiers to support the declining market.[13] He advised humoristWill Rogers to exit the market before the crash. "I did what you told me," Rogers told Baruch when the two met after theBlack Tuesday crash of October 29, 1929, "and you saved my life".[14]
In 1916, Baruch left Wall Street to adviseWoodrow Wilson on national defense and terms of peace. He served on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense and, in January 1918, became the chairman of the newWar Industries Board. With his leadership, this body successfully managed the US's economic mobilization during World War I. In 1919, Wilson asked Baruch to serve as a staff member at theParis Peace Conference. Baruch did not approve of thereparations that France and Britain demanded of Germany, and he supported Wilson's opinion that there needed to be new forms of cooperation, as well as the creation of theLeague of Nations.[15]
For his services in support of the war effort, Baruch was awarded theArmy Distinguished Service Medal with the following citation:
The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Mr. Bernard M. Baruch, a United States Civilian, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services to the Government of the United States, in a duty of great responsibility during World War I, in the organization 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 mobilization and equipment of the military forces and the continuity of their supply. War Department, General Orders No. 15 (1921)
In the 1920s and 1930s, 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 theWar Industries Board, which he saw as the only way to ensure maximum coordination between civilian business and military needs.[16] Baruch remained a prominent government adviser during this time, and supportedFranklin D. Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policy initiatives after his election.[citation needed]
Baruch was also a major contributor toEleanor Roosevelt's controversial initiative to build a resettlement community for unemployed mining families inArthurdale, West Virginia.[17]
This relationship did not stop the congressionalNye Committee from investigating Baruch's role inwar profiteering.[citation needed]
In 1940, responding to pleas to helpHarry Truman's shoestring bid for reelection to the U.S. Senate, Baruch provided crucial funding.[18]
When the United States enteredWorld War II, Roosevelt appointed Baruch a special adviser to the director of the Office of War Mobilization. His offices at this time were at120 Broadway.[19] 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 it. Baruch's ideas were largely adopted, withJames Byrnes appointed to carry them out. It is estimated that these policies cut two years off the time taken to produce tanks, bombers, etc. and caught Hitler totally by surprise.[20] During World War II, Baruch remained a trusted adviser and confidant of Roosevelt, who in 1944 spent a month as a guest at Baruch's South Carolina estate,Hobcaw Barony.[citation needed]
In February 1943, Roosevelt invited Baruch to replace the widely criticizedWar Production Board headDonald M. Nelson. Baruch had long coveted the job, and responded that he only needed to ask his doctor if he was healthy enough for the post. During the delay, however, presidential advisorHarry Hopkins persuaded Roosevelt that firing Nelson at the army's demands would make him look weak, and when Roosevelt and Baruch met at the White House, Roosevelt declined to discuss the job offer further.[21][22]
In 1944, Baruch commissioned a committee of physicians which developed recommendations for the formal establishment of the medical specialty ofPhysical Medicine and Rehabilitation and provided over a million dollars of funding to many medical schools to further this cause. Baruch's father, Simon Baruch, had been a surgeon and was the first teacher of physical medicine atColumbia.[23] In the same year, Baruch and Dr. Howard Rusk, an Air Force physician, advised Roosevelt to expand rehabilitation programs for injured soldiers within all the armed forces. After the war, these programs were adopted by theVeterans' Administration.[24]
In 1946, PresidentHarry S. Truman appointed Baruch as the United States representative to theUnited Nations Atomic Energy Commission. On Friday, June 14, 1946, Baruch presented hisBaruch Plan, a modified version of theAcheson–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; it proposed that the U.S. eliminate its nuclear weapons before a system of controls and inspections was implemented. A stalemate ensued.[citation needed]
Baruch resigned from the commission in 1947. His influence began to diminish, as his opinions grew further out-of-step with those of the Truman administration.[25]
Baruch was well-known and often walked or sat in Washington, D.C.'sLafayette Park. A popular story exists which claims Baruch disliked being driven to the White House, and would sit on a bench and wait for a signal light indicating the President was ready to see him. This led to him being nicknamed "the Park Bench Statesman".[26]
In 1960, on his ninetieth birthday, a commemorative park bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House was dedicated to Baruch by theBoy Scouts.[27][28][29] A life-size bronze of Baruch sitting on a park bench is in the lobby ofBaruch College's Vertical Campus.
He continued to advise on international affairs until his death from a heart attack on June 20, 1965 at his home in New York City, at the age of 94.[30] His funeral atTemple Shaaray Tefila, the family synagogue, was attended by 700 people.[31] His grave is atFlushing Cemetery,Flushing, Queens, New York City.
Baruch owned a string ofthoroughbredracehorses and raced under the name "Kershaw Stable". In 1927, his horse, Happy Argo, won theCarter Handicap.[32]
Winston Churchill and Baruch were personal friends, and Churchill sometimes stayed in Baruch's New York home when visiting the United States.[citation needed][33]
Baruch married Annie Griffin, anEpiscopalian, of New York.[when?] Annie's father did not consent to the marriage or attend their wedding but later reconciled with Bernard.[3][when?] They had three children:Belle Baruch; Bernard Baruch Jr.; and Renée Baruch. Their daughters were raised Episcopalian, while Bernard Jr. was allowed to choose his faith.[3][4]
His daughter,Belle Baruch, an avid sportsperson, never married. His son, Bernard Baruch Jr., married Winifred Beatrice Mann, but the marriage ended in a divorce.[34] They did not have any children. His daughter Renee married Henry Robert Samstag. They did not have any children.[35]
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Between 1905 and 1907, Baruch purchased approximately 16,000 acres (63 square kilometers) of the former 18th centuryHobcaw Barony, consolidating 14 plantations located onWaccamaw Neck,Georgetown County, South Carolina, between theWinyah Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. He developed sections of the property as a winter hunting resort and later sold the property to his eldest child, Belle. Upon her death in 1964, the property was transferred to The Belle W. Baruch Foundation as the Hobcaw Barony educational and research preserve.[36][37] The property also includes 37 historic buildings representing the 18th and 19th century rice cultivation industry, and early-to-mid 20th century winter resorts. The entire property was named to theNational Register of Historic Places on November 2, 1994.[38]
The Trustees of The Belle W. Baruch Foundation subsequently selected theUniversity of South Carolina andClemson University as educational institutions with a mandate to preserve and study the Hobcaw Barony, including the wetlands forest and coastal ecosystems. The University of South Carolina established the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences, and Clemson University established the Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences.[39] Both universities have also formed partnerships with other schools in South Carolina that carry out research and educational programs which contribute to knowledge of coastal ecosystems.
The Belle W. Baruch Foundation and theNorth Inlet-Winyah Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve jointly operate the Hobcaw Barony Discovery Center and provide tours and special programs.[40][41][42]
According to historian Thomas A. Krueger:
In 1925, Baruch endowed the Mrs. Simon Baruch University Award to theUnited Daughters of the Confederacy in memory of his mother, to support scholars who had written unpublished monographs for full-length books onConfederate history. His mother had been an early member of the organization and supported its activities.[44][45]
Baruch (along withAdlai Stevenson II) chose to donate his personal papers toPrinceton University out of admiration forWoodrow Wilson andDean Mathey.[46]
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Dr. Simon Baruch, noted physician and father of Bernard M. Baruch, financier died at 1:10 this afternoon from an of the lungs complicated by heart disease.
... brother of elder statesman Bernard Baruch, who died at his home here yesterday. Baruch, was a retired member of the New York Stock Exchange. He was the oldest charter ...
Mr. Baruch, died yesterday in Mercy Hospital of heart dis ease. He was the brother of Bernard Baruch, 92-year-old financier and advisor of presidents from ...[permanent dead link]
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| Preceded by | Cover ofTime magazine February 25, 1924 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Cover ofTime magazine March 12, 1928 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Cover ofTime magazine June 28, 1943 | Succeeded by |
