Baruch Back

Most of last month Vincent Astor and Raymond Moley shuttled between Hyde Park and Manhattan. To the President, his richest friend and his ablest adviser brought word that Business was developing a bad case of nerves at the New Deal's uncertainties. Back in town Editor Moley wrote inspired reassurances in Today and Mr. Astor closeted himself with one tycoon after another to relate how things were going to come out all right in the end. The biggest news that Mr. Astor brought back from the throne room was that President Roosevelt was going to make Bernard Mannes ("Bernie") Baruch head of the reorganized NRA.

This was the situation when, fortnight ago, Mr. Baruch returned from Europe. In 1918-19 Bernard Baruch, as head of the War Industries Board, was absolute dictator of U. S. business, an even greater autocrat than Hugh Johnson became under NRA. As generous with his advice and counsel to Republicans as to Democrats, Mr. Baruch was from time to time useful to the Hoover Administration. When Franklin Roosevelt went to Washington, "Bernie" Baruch was slated to be a trusted White House economic observer. "I am a speculator." he said once, "and make no apologies for it. The word comes from the Latin speculari--to observe. I observe." In June 1933, the hawk-eyed financier was around Washington so conspicuously that a friend addressed a telegram to him as "Unofficial President of the U. S." After that his visits to the White House became few and far between.

A year later, irrepressible "Bernie" Baruch ended his 64th year by pulling out of Wall Street, moving his office from No. 120 Broadway four miles uptown to the corner of 57th and Madison (TIME, July 2). He was resolved that the financial district should see less of him, the public hear more. To that end he addressed himself to writing three books, largely about Bernard Baruch. Biographer Marquis James (Andrew Jackson, the Border Captain) was hired to help in their preparation.

It vastly pleased the white-crested patriarch, therefore, to return home and find his name bruited about as the new national industrial coordinator, to read such newspaper headlines as BARUCH RISES AGAIN AS FORCE IN U. S. AFFAIRS. "I like to think of myself," the smiling Jew once told a friend, "as the Disraeli of America." The Disraeli image broadened when President Roosevelt invited him up to Hyde Park the third day he was home. Last week, when his onetime lieutenant resigned from NRA, Wall Street was offering even money that Hugh Johnson's boss would be Hugh Johnson's successor. Recalled was this Baruchism: "I've been like a good athlete who is always ready and always in training. And then some God-damned fool drops the ball and . . . they say, 'Baruch's a good fellow. Give him the ball.' " So many people believed that Baruch was about to pick up the NRA ball that he issued a statement: ''The answer is 'No!' Moreover, I have been offered none of the places described --'policy head,' executive or any other. I have no idea where these stories come from."

Two days later, when NRA's new set-up was announced, the answer was indeed found to be "No". But "Bernie" Baruch was happy that he was once more back in the political limelight, was well aware that even when Gladstone was Prime Minister, Disraeli was a potent figure in his country's politics.

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