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He is very wealthy. What change the war made in his wealth, if it made any change at all, is a matter on which nothing may be said now. Certainly many of his friends and closest associates reaped great quantities of money from their activities during the war.
Now, as to the point of his business connections just prior to the war, this testimony appears:
- Mr. Graham—“You continued in the operation of these various businesses, in the formation of companies and the flotation of their stocks, and in your business in the Stock Exchange and elsewhere up until the time of the beginning of the war?”
- Mr. Baruch—“I was gradually getting myself away from business, because I had made up my mind to retire, and I had been getting less active with that end in view, and I was not very much in sympathy with the organization of companies. I am not criticizing other men who engage in business that resulted in profits even before we had gotten into war. I had made up my mind to leave and do some other things that I hope to be able to do now; but that process was interrupted by my appointment as member of the advisory commission without any suggestion or without any knowledge or idea it was coming.”
Does he mean that the process of getting out of business was interrupted by his appointment on the advisory commission, which appointment led straight to his complete rulership of the United States at war?
- Mr. Jefferis—“Had any of the members of the advisory commission been engaged in the production of raw materials or in manufactured products, or not?”
- Mr. Baruch—“I had.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“In what way?”
- Mr. Baruch—“I had made a rather deep study of the production and the distribution and manufacture of many of these raw materials. I had to make an intensive study of these things in order to do the things I was engaged in.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“You were not running any raw material production?”
- Mr. Baruch—“I was interested in concerns—I was interested in the study and production of a
