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Bernard
M. Baruch
(1870–1965)
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Bernard
M. Baruch, the "Park Bench Statesman," made his fortune on Wall Street,
but his greatest challenge and his greatest satisfaction were his
service to his country as an economic adviser during both World Wars
I and II and as a confidante to six presidents. |
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Bernard
Mannes Baruch was born August 19, 1870, in Camden, the son of Simon
and Isabelle Wolfe Baruch. His father was a German immigrant who came
to America in 1855 to avoid Prussian conscription. He was 15 years
old and knew only one person in America, Mannes Baum, the owner of
a general store in Camden, who was married to an aunt of Baruch's
mother. |
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Young
Simon Baruch worked for Baum as a bookkeeper and, with Baum's help,
taught himself English. Mrs. Baum persuaded her husband to send Simon
to South Carolina Medical College and the Medical College of Virginia
in Richmond.
He became a renowned
surgeon chief on Robert E. Lee's
staff during the Civil War. It was Mannes Baum who gave Simon the
uniform and sword he wore when he joined the Third Battalion, South
Carolina Infantry, in 1862.
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Bernard's
mother, Isabelle, was the daughter of Sailing Wolfe, a young merchant
and planter of Winnsboro, and Sara Cohen, daughter of Rabbi Hartwig
Cohen of Charleston. Baruch's family moved to New York when he was
about 10 years old. While his remarkable accomplishments came in New
York, Washington, and abroad, his roots were always in South Carolina.
Seventy years after he went to New York, he still had not relinquished
a trace of his Southern accent. |
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Baruch
graduated from City College of New York in 1889, and his first job
was as an office boy earning $3 a week. He ran errands in the banking
and financial district and became enamored of the potential Wall Street
held. |
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He
became a runner for a brokerage house and invested all his effort
and time in learning the business, eventually becoming a broker and
then a partner in the firm of A. A. Housman and Company. His earnings
and commissions afforded him the opportunity to buy a seat on the
New York Stock Exchange, and by the time he was 30 years old, he had
become a millionaire. |
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Baruch
left Housman to open Baruch Brothers, in partnership with one of his
brothers, Hartwig "Harty" Baruch. In succeeding years he lost his
fortune and made it back several times.
In 1907, he and Harty bought
H. Hentz and Company, an international commodity firm with offices
on Wall Street and in Paris, London, Berlin, and other cities. By
1910, Bernard Baruch had become one of Wall Street's financial leaders.
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When
Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president and war was looming, he called
on Baruch for advice because of the latter's understanding of the
nation's economy and industrial resources.
Baruch was chairman of
the War Industries Board, which controlled the industrial establishment
of the country for three years. With the end of the war imminent,
he helped President Wilson negotiate the peace agreements in Paris.
When Baruch joined Woodrow Wilson's War Industries Board, he had left
H. Hentz and Company to speculate on his own. His two other brothers,
Sailing and Herman, joined H. Hentz and Company as managing partners.
Herman Baruch, a doctor and banker, later became ambassador to Portugal
and Holland.
After World War I, Baruch continued as an adviser to
Presidents Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman.
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He
often conferred with officials on a bench in Washington's Lafayette
Park because of the privacy and relaxed atmosphere. Thus, he became
known as the "Park Bench Statesman."
In 1905, he had bought Hobcaw
Barony, a 17,000-acre plantation about three miles by water from Georgetown
in South Carolina. It originally was part of the barony granted Lord
Carteret by King George II. Baruch would permit no telephone lines
to be strung to Hobcaw. The plantation was his retreat for the hunting
season and the month of May each year.
Baruch took great pride in
his Southern heritage, as he once demonstrated during World War II
when President Roosevelt, who delighted in the historic details about
the area, was visiting Hobcaw.
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William
Ball, editor of The News & Courier in Charleston and a bitter foe
of the New Deal, wrote editorials each day of Roosevelt's visit, lambasting
the president. Baruch traveled the 60 miles to Charleston and told
Ball he thought the editorials should stop while the president was
visiting. He explained that it had nothing to do with Ball's right
to express his opinion, but it was not a gracious way of treating
a guest in South Carolina.
Roosevelt had come to Hobcaw tired and
with a cough, but he left tanned and in better health than he had
enjoyed in many years, according to his physician, Admiral Ross McIntire.
The president was a guest at Hobcaw for an extended period only a
few months before his death.
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Baruch
was married to Annie Griffin in 1897. They were the parents of three
children: Belle, who was named for his mother; Bernard Mannes, Jr.;
and Renee.
Bernard Baruch died June 10, 1965, in New York. He had
spent the month of May 1965 at Hobcaw Barony.
During a 30-year period,
Belle Baruch purchased Hobcaw Barony from her father. The property
remains privately owned by the Belle W. Baruch Foundation, but the
University of South Carolina and Clemson University use it as an environmental
research center.
Baruch was inducted into the South Carolina Business
Hall of Fame in 1985.
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©
1999 South Carolina
Business Hall of Fame
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