power” is shown by a passage which occurred when he was trying to explain the very large profits made by some concerns with which he did business.
- Mr. Jefferis—“Then the system which you did adopt did not give the Lukens Steel & Iron Company the amount of profit that the low-producing companies had?”
- Mr. Baruch—“No, but we took 80 per cent away from the others.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“The law did that, didn’t it?”
- Mr. Baruch—“Yes; the law did that.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“What did you mean by the use of the word ‘we’?”
- Mr. Baruch—“The government did that. Excuse me, but I meant we, the Congress.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“You meant that the Congress passed a law covering that?”
- Mr. Baruch—“Yes, sir.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“Did you have anything to do with that?”
- Mr. Baruch—“Not a thing.”
- Mr. Jefferis—“Then I would not use the word ‘we’ if I were you.”
Whether Mr. Baruch slipped up there, he best knows. Just as he had power to give the workers wages, and take it away again by price-fixing, so he had power to allow the raw material corporations to make fabulous profits—and it would not be at all unthinkable that he also had something to do with taking part of it away again. He said once, “We took away 80 per cent”; then he confessed it was a slip. Of the tongue, or of his prudence?
Certainly, the profits he allowed were so large that even where the 80 per cent was paid back—where it was paid back (there were all kinds of evasions and frauds)—the profits were still enormous.
And 73 per cent of the “war millionaires” of New York, in spite of the 80 per cent, are Jews.
