American Industry in the War: A Report of the War Industries Board (March 1921)
New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1941. Reprint edition. Hardcover. 498 pages. Fold-out chart. Appendices. Index. Some foxing on fore-edge. There is a rough spot inside rear board and slight discoloration insides the boards. Bernard Mannes Baruch (August 19, 1870 – June 20, 1965) was an American financier, stock investor, philanthropist, statesman, and political consultant. After his success in business, he devoted his time toward advising U.S. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt on economic matters. 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 ($552,960 in 2016 dollars). There he amassed a fortune before the age of 30 by profiting from speculation in the sugar market; at that time plantations were booming in Hawaii. By 1903 Baruch had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of "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. In 1916, Baruch left Wall Street to advise President Woodrow Wilson on national defense and terms of peace. He served on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense and, in 1918, became the chairman of the new War Industries Board. With his leadership, this body successfully managed the US's economic mobilization during World War I. In 1919, Wilson asked Baruch to serve as a staff member at the Paris Peace Conference. Besides a reprint of the report of the War Industries Board of WWI, this book includes Bernard Baruch's program for total mobilization of the nation as presented to the War Policies Commission in 1931, and material on priorities and price fixing. This is a timely and valuable compilation of the writings of B. M. Baruch on industrial mobilization for war, a subject to the study of which he has devoted most of his spare time for many years. As the director and genius of our trail-blazing organization along these lines in World War I, he had a more intense experience with these principles than any other living man --and it was successful. This pioneer work created a pattern of organization and method for war-regulation of industry which both the Germans and the British have acknowledged and adopted as far as it is adaptable to their systems. At the close of the First World War, this work was applauded by nearly all the great war leaders--Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Clemenceau, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Pershing, to name only a few. Year after year after, Mr. Baruch collaborated, lectured, or advised with the War College, the Industrial College, and the General Staff of the Army, with Committees of Congress, in the press, and at civilian colleges, to try to help keep the economics of the Industrial Mobilization plan alive and adaptable to the changing circumstances of a world in almost constant turmoil. This important work was reprinted shortly before the United States became a formal belligerent in the Second World War. Condition: good.
Keywords: WW1, War Industries Board, Mobilization, Selective Service, Commodity Controls, Price-fixing, Newton D. Baker, War Department
[Book #2681]
Price: $75.00