Bernard Mannes Baruch

Bernard Mannes Baruch (August 19, 1870 – June 20, 1965) was an American financier and statesman.

After amassing a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange, he impressed President Woodrow Wilson by managing the nation's economic mobilization in World War I as chairman of the War Industries Board. He advised Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference. He made another fortune in the postwar bull market, but foresaw the Wall Street crash and sold out well in advance.

In World War II, he became a close advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the role of industry in war supply. 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 the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, though his Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy was rejected by the Soviet Union.

Bernard Baruch was born on August 19, 1870, in Camden, South Carolina, to a Jewish family. His parents were Belle (née Wolfe) and Simon Baruch, a physician and Confederate surgeon. Bernard was the second of four sons, including brothers Herman B. Baruch, Sailing Wolfe Baruch, and Hartwig Nathaniel Baruch.

At the age of 10, Baruch and his family moved from Camden to New York City. At the age of 14, he began attending the City College of New York in northern Manhattan. He later graduated from the college.

Baruch became a broker and then a partner in A.A. Housman & Company. With his earnings and commissions, he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $19,000 (equivalent to $740,000 in 2025). 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 the guayule rubber market in the U.S. with holdings in Mexico. His partners in the enterprise were Senator Nelson Aldrich, Daniel Guggenheim, John D. Rockefeller Jr., George Foster Peabody, and others. By 1903, Baruch had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of being "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.

After 1924, Baruch made millions in the bull market. By 1927 he had grown skeptical that the trend could continue, chastened by losses he had taken in the collapse of the Florida real estate bubble. A common anecdote holds that he sold his stock portfolio after a shoeshiner struck up a conversation with him about the market. In Baruch's own telling, a beggar whom he had often helped with money offered him a tip near the 1929 market peak, but by that time he had already reduced his market exposure. Unnerved by the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts in summer 1927, he confided his doubts to other businessmen and began selling his stocks in favor of bonds, cash and gold, also selling stocks short periodically. On September 25, 1929, after the peak of the Dow, Baruch refused to join a bull pool of financiers to support the declining market. He advised humorist Will Rogers to exit the market before the crash; Rogers did so and later told Baruch "you saved my life".

In 1916, Baruch left Wall Street to advise President 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 new War Industries Board. With his leadership, the body successfully managed the U.S.'s economic mobilization 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 which 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 the League of Nations.

For his services in support of the war effort, Baruch was awarded the Army 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 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 that time, and frequently advised Franklin D. Roosevelt on international finance and foreign policy after his election to the presidency.

Baruch was also a major contributor to Eleanor Roosevelt's controversial initiative to build a resettlement community for unemployed mining families in Arthurdale, West Virginia southeast of Morgantown. The relationship did not stop the congressional Nye Committee from investigating Baruch's role in war profiteering.

Baruch was well-known and often walked or sat in Washington, D.C.'s Lafayette Park. A popular story exists which claims that Baruch disliked being driven to the White House and would sit on a bench waiting for a signal light indicating the president was ready to see him. That led to him being nicknamed "the Park Bench Statesman". In 1960, on his ninetieth birthday, a commemorative park bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House was dedicated to Baruch by the Boy Scouts. A life-size bronze of Baruch sitting on a park bench is in the lobby of Baruch College's Vertical Campus in Manhattan.

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. His funeral at Temple Shaaray Tefila, the family synagogue, was attended by 700 people. His grave is in Flushing Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, New York City.

Baruch owned a string of thoroughbred racehorses and raced under the name "Kershaw Stable". In 1927, his horse, Happy Argo, won the Carter Handicap.

Winston Churchill and Baruch were personal friends. Churchill sometimes stayed in Baruch's New York home when visiting the United States after World War II.

According to historian Thomas A. Krueger:

For half a century Bernard Baruch was one of the country's richest and most powerful men. A great speculator, public official, presidential counselor, political benefactor, and indefatigable almoner, his public life provides a clear view of the inner workings of the American political system.

In 1925, Baruch endowed the Mrs. Simon Baruch University Award to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in memory of his mother, to support scholars who had written unpublished monographs for full-length books on Confederate history. His mother had been an early member of the organization and supported its activities.

Baruch (along with Adlai Stevenson II) chose to donate his personal papers to Princeton University out of admiration for Woodrow Wilson and Dean Mathey.

Baruch College of the City University of New York was named for him.