Baruch Moves Uptown

Next August, Bernard Mannes Baruch will be 64. About that time, when he returns from Vichy, France, he will go to work in a new office in midtown Manhattan, four miles north of the office at No. 120 Broadway which he has occupied for the last six years. That move will mark a major milestone in the Baruch career. Last week Mr. Baruch explained the reason to an Associated Pressman: he is going to give up finance for literature, to write three books, The Autobiography of an American Boy, The Way That Lies Ahead for the Youth of America, Man's Conquest of Nature. Wall Street will see him less and the public will hear him more.

Mr. Baruch scoffed at the idea of retiring: "I guess no one will say I won't be plenty busy. . . . There'll be no ghost writing. I'm going to do it myself." But no one was more aware than "Bernie" Baruch that he was announcing the end of a unique business career. The U. S. has had a multitude of daring and successful speculators but it has no other Baruch.

Son of a Confederate surgeon who left South Carolina after the carpet bag regime to teach hydrotherapy at Columbia's College of Physicians & Surgeons, young Baruch accompanied his father to New York, graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1889. His first notable job was with A. A. Housman & Co., stockbrokers. Thereafter Baruch's business was that of making money by his wits in Wall Street. His teachers and friends were rugged individualists of famed memory: James Keene, Thomas Fortune Ryan, Henry Huddleston Rogers.

One of Baruch's first coups was to buy control of Liggett & Myers for Ryan who was then forming his notorious Tobacco Trust. In 1901 he made a killing on the short side of Amalgamated Copper. Early in his career he was almost wiped out on the short side of American Sugar. In 1904 he got a commission of $1,000.000 for buying the Selby and Tacoma smelters for the Guggenheims. He added to his fortune by buying into the immensely successful Texas Gulf Sulphur Co. in 1909 shortly after it was founded. He made nearly half a million by selling U. S. Steel short during the "peace scare" in the late months of 1916. All these events might have been part of the career of any famed speculator but Baruch was more than that.

Least of his differences from "the ferocious cigar-chewing men" who taught him his trade was that he usually played an independent hand in his speculations. More than that, he had a philosophical as well as a speculative cast of mind. After his killing in Amalgamated Copper, when he was only 32, he seriously considered retiring with his profits to study law and enter public life as a reform politician. For gambling for gambling's own peculiar thrill he had no love. His speculations were for profit only. More than that he was a speculator on moral principle. His credo: "I am a speculator and make no apologies for it. The word comes from the Latin speculari--to observe. I observe.. "

His attitude of mind caused him in 1912 to become instantly a friend of that reforming politician, Woodrow Wilson. Five years later when Baruch was accused of using that friendship to make his killing in Steel. Congressional questioning showed a new side of him. Reading between the lines of utterances by Germany's von Bethmann-Hollweg and Britain's Lloyd George -- reading matter for the whole world --he had almost alone foreseen developments, made his huge profit without inside information from the White House. The dates of his operations confirmed his claim.

Thus, unlike other speculators, he came through with clean skirts. Moreover he did his friend Wilson able service as head of the War Industries Board and, never petty, gave freely of his economic advice when succeeding Republican Presidents asked it. His free advice is still available when Franklin Roosevelt wishes it, but that is not often now, for Baruch opposed abandoning the gold standard ("Make no mistake about it: abandoning the gold standard is cheating."); opposes huge public expenditures ; favors a budget balanced more than in a bookkeeping sense.

At its peak Baruch's fortune may have been about $25,000,000. He laughed openly when people referred to him as the third or fourth richest man in the U. S. What is unique for a speculator, he probably has most of his winnings today. His suite of offices was small; he kept no stock ticker beside his desk and held no directorships. Nor did he employ a large staff of economic analysts. When he bought into companies he relied on personal investigations or investigations by a few men he trusted. Notable among such men was General Hugh S. Johnson whose talents were devoted to Mr. Baruch's private affairs before they were devoted to NRA. In all business Baruch banked heavily on his judgment of men, backing companies whose managers he trusted, instantly abandoning those whose bosses lacked his faith. He carried his likes and dislikes into Democratic politics; Al Smith could have had his last dime if it would have helped the Brown Derby win in 1928 or 1932.

Back of Baruch's success was his own shrewd economic judgment, of which the ultimate triumph was foreseeing the debacle of 1929. He got out in advance--liquidated a large part of his investments. Later, before Franklin Roosevelt was elected President, Baruch put some of his millions into gold. Subsequently that investment became unpatriotic and he had to change it but at the time it showed sound foresight. Other speculators at one time or another may have made bigger fortunes, but in his way Baruch had had few peers. More than most men, he had earned his chance to write his memoirs, give advice to the young and spread his philosophy on paper.

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