Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T07:21:45.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bernard Baruch: Symbol and Myth in Industrial Mobilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Robert D. Cuff
Robert D. Cuff
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, University of Rochester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Professor Cuff casts a critically dissenting eye at one of American history's most cherished myths: Bernard Baruch's role in United States' mobilization during World War I.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 1969 , pp. 115 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1969

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Barck, Oscar T. Jr., and Blake, Nelson M., Since 1900: A History of the United States in Our Times (New York, 1965), 226–227.Google Scholar For further references to Baruch as an industrial or economic dictator in recent textbooks see: Link, Arthur S., American Epoch (New York, 1963), 203Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, Miller, William, Aaron, Daniel, The United States, The History of a Republic (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), 677Google Scholar; and McDonald, Forrest, The Torch is Passed, The United States in the 20th Century (Reading, Mass., 1968), 163.Google Scholar See also, March, Peyton C., The Nation at War (Garden City, 1932), 174Google Scholar, and for a recent restatement of March's opinion see Coffman, Edward M., The Hilt of the Sword: The Career of Peyton C. March (Madison, 1966), 64, 155.Google Scholar

2 Clarkson, Grosvenor B., Industrial America in the World War, The Strategy Behind the Line, 1917–1918 (Boston, 1923), 51.Google Scholar

3 Clarkson was the son of James S. Clarkson, a Republican party wheelhorse whom Theodore Roosevelt appointed Surveyor of the Port of New York. Blum, John Morton, The Republican Roosevelt (New York, 1964), 43–45, 48–50Google Scholar; Raucher, Allan R., Public Relations and Business, 1900–1929 (Baltimore, 1968), 72–73Google Scholar; Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, 12–14.

4 Clarkson to Baruch, February 10, 1920, Papers of Bernard M. Baruch, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

5 Clarkson to Baruch, September 28, 1921, Baruch Papers.

6 Beaver, Daniel R., Newton D. Baker and the American War Effort, 1917–1918 (Lincoln, 1966)Google Scholar, chs. III, IV. There are many references to the WIB in secondary accounts. Most of the fullest descriptions were published before the end of World War II, For a sampling see, in addition to Clarkson: Crowell, Benedict and Wilson, Robert F., The Giant Hand: Our Mobilization and Control of Industry and National Resources, 1917–1918, Vol. I of How America Went to War (New Haven, 1921)Google Scholar; Herring, Pendleton, The Impact of War, Our American Democracy Under Arms (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; Tobin, Harold J. and Bidwell, Percy W., Mobilizing Civilian America (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; Paxson, Frederick L., America At War, 1917–1918 (Boston, 1939)Google Scholar; Kester, Randell B., “The War Industries Board, 1917–1918; a Study in Industrial Mobilization,” American Political Science Review XXXIX (August, 1940), 655–684CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hippelheuser, Richard H., ed., American Industry in the War (New York, 1944)Google Scholar, which was the final report of the WIB. Margaret Coit's biography, Mr. Baruch (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar makes the WIB virtually a reflection of Baruch's personality. See chapters 6–9, especially pp. 147–48, 165, 168. See also, Field, Carter, Bernard Baruch, Park Bench Statesman (New York, 1944)Google Scholar for the same effect. It should be emphasized in passing that there are real limitations in trying to understand an agency by studying it from one individual's point of view. As students of public administration have pointed out, “While [studying an organization as biography] may add drama to the story, it generally exaggerates the influence that a single person has over an organization.” Simon, Herbert A., Smithburg, Donald W., Thompson, Victor A., Public Administration (New York, 1961), 209.Google Scholar

Some recent writings, in addition to Beaver's, shed new light on the WIB. See Edward M. Coffman, Hilt of the Sword, 63–65, 88, 138–139; Cuff, Robert D., “A ‘Dollar-a-Year-Man’ in Government: George N. Peek and the War Industries Board,” Business History Review, XLI (Winter, 1967), 404–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galambos, Louis, Competition & Cooperation: The Emergence of a National Trade Association (Baltimore, 1966), 64–67Google Scholar; Himmelberg, Robert F., “The War Industries Board and the Antitrust Question in November, 1918,” Journal of American History, LII (June, 1965), 59–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State (Boston, 1968)Google Scholar, ch. 8. Koistinen's, Paul A. C. “‘The Industrial-Military Complex’ in Historical Perspective: World War I,” Business History Review, XLI (Winter, 1967), 378–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is the best single piece available on the relationship between the military services and the WIB.

7 This quotation is taken from an interview which Clarkson had with Shaw in May, 1920, while Clarkson was researching his book. He took interviews with over thirty participants in industrial mobilization. The transcripts of these interviews are on deposit in the Baruch Papers and offer an excellent insight into the personal side of the process. See Cuff, Robert, “The Dollar-a-Year Men of the Great War,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, XXX (Autumn, 1968), 10–24Google Scholar, for a brief introduction of these documents. For the part which the Dean of Harvard's new Graduate School of Business Administration, Edwin F. Gay, played in Shaw's Board see Heaton, Herbert, A Scholar in Action, Edwin F. Gay (Cambridge, 1952), 98–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the “Statement of Edwin F. Gay,” Baruch Papers. More material on conservation is available in Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, ch. XI.

8 “Statement of Le Roy Clark,” Baruch Papers.

9 Gifford had been drawn into the war administration through his work with Howard Coffin's Preparedness Committee in 1916. (See Scott, Lloyd N., Naval Consulting Board of the United States (Washington, 1920)Google Scholar, ch. II, for an accurate account.) Reflecting his background in a consumer industry, Gifford wanted wide-spread business participation in industrial mobilization in a systematized, institutionalized manner. Baruch, who was from a business world marked by high risk and sudden, intuitive action, favored an informal method of well-placed phone calls. Gifford's approach was not practical in the spring of 1917, but he pondered the problem through these months, and after the conflict of interest issue was raised in the summer of 1917 over the existing informal system, his chance came and he presented his plan to the United States Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber, which had long been anxious to participate in mobilization in an official capacity, embraced this opportunity with enthusiasm. See Walter S. Gifford, “Organized Industry,” address delivered before the War Convention of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States at Atlantic City, press release, October 14, 1917, in the Records of the Council of National Defense, File 3-A5, Box 171, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md. The Nation's Business, V (September, 1917), contains a comprehensive report of this Convention. See also Walter Gifford, The Council of National Defense, lecture delivered before the Army Industrial College, Washington, D.C., June 11, 1925, in the Records of the War Industries Board, File 21A–A4, Box 1, Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md.

10 This quotation is taken from the Eugene Meyer, Jr., memoir at the Columbia Oral History Collection, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. See also, Baruch, Bernard M., My Own Story (New York, 1957), 194–195, 229–230Google Scholar; Baruch, , The Public Years (New York, 1960), 30Google Scholar; Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, 85–86. Baruch, Yeatman, and Meyer had all been engaged by the Guggenheims at various times before the war. Baruch also later called on Daniel C. Jackling, a former chemistry professor at the Missouri School of Mines, and prewar associate of the copper magnates. O'Connor, Harvey, The Guggenheims, The Making of an American Dynasty (New York, 1937), 368–369Google Scholar; Hammond, John Hays, The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond (New York, 1935), II, 519Google Scholar; Hoyt, Edwin P., The Guggenheims and The American Dream (New York, 1967), 87, 139, 149, 152, 157–159, 188, 194, 244.Google Scholar

11 Testifying before the War Policies Commission some eighteen years later, Commander John Hancock, who in 1917 was Paymaster General of the Navy, commented: “Mr. Baruch's strength in the war lay in the fact, primarily, that he knew where to go to get the right kind of men to do the job. That was the great contribution, I think, he made.” U.S. Congress, Hearings before the Commission Appointed Under the Authority of Public Resolution No. 98, Res. 251, 71 Cong., 2 Sess. (3 parts, Washington, 1931), I, 153. Chandler Anderson, an international lawyer who became part of the coterie later in the war, notes in his diary that members of Baruch's informal group would get together regularly with “the Chief” to talk over various problems. See the Diary of Chandler P. Anderson, December, 1917, in the Papers of Chandler P. Anderson, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. For the importance of informal groups in large organizations see Simon et al., Public Administration, 92–97. See Porter, John, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto, 1965), 218–219, 221–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for comments on the collegial principle of decision-making; and Thompson, Victor, Modern Organization (New York, 1961), 169Google Scholar, for a comment on the importance of problem-solving by experts in the early stages of World War II mobilization, the stages that preceded the full development of an emergency bureaucracy. For similar observations also based on the World War II experience, see Galbraith's, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State (Boston, 1967), 67.Google Scholar

12 This phrase, “local notables,” is derived from an essay by Seymour M. Lipset. Commenting on early American political parties, Lipset notes that, “The Federalist party organization could be described as parallel to those patron parties in Africa that are national but which represent a linking of local notables rather than an organization designed to mobilize the common people.” Seymour M. Lipset, “The Crisis of Legitimacy and the Role of the Charismatic Leader,” Bendix, Reinhard, ed., State and Society: A Reader in Comparative Political Sociology (Boston, 1968), 605.Google Scholar Similarly, Baruch was interested only in linking a small business elite rather than attempting a mass mobilization for industrial participation.

13 Mills, C. Wright, White Collar: The American Middle Classes (New York, 1956), 94.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 96.

15 This statement closely resembles a theoretical definition of power proposed by Lasswell and Kaplan: “Power, is, specifically, a deference value: to have power is to be taken into account in others' acts (policies).” Lasswell, Harold and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven, 1950), 77.Google Scholar

16 Baruch to Gifford, May 10, 1917, Records of the Council of National Defense, File 2-A8, Box 86; Baruch to Gifford, April 27, 1917,Ibid.; Joseph P. Cotton to Baruch, April 9, 1917, Records of the War Industries Board, File 21A-A4, Box 784. For a complete list of the committees related to the Council of National Defense as of June, 1917, including Baruch's network, see the Congressional Record, 65 Cong., 1 Sess., Vol. LV, Pt. 5, 4661–4679.

17 “Statement of L. L. Summers,” Baruch Papers.

18 Scott was rather unhappy in postwar years because his contributions were ignored in the general analysis of industrial mobilization. Former Secretary of War Baker sympathized with Scott and the two men consoled each other while Baruch's name dominated the interwar discussion. They were joined by Palmer Pierce, the former Army General who represented the War Department on the early WIB, and by Walter Gifford, the first director of the Council of National Defense, who had clashed with Baruch in the early days of the war over how best to organize industry. The morose correspondence of the four men can be found in the Papers of Frank A. Scott, Box 4, Princeton University, and in the Papers of Newton D. Baker, Box 205, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. This paper partially substantiates a point of view developed in this postwar correspondence. Frothingham's, Thomas G.The American Reinforcement in the World War (Garden City, 1927)Google Scholar was written at the request of Scott's group in an effort to counteract Grosvenor B. Clarkson's Industrial America in the World War, commissioned by Baruch. The principals went over the text; Frothingham practically reproduced parts of letters they wrote him. As could be expected, Frothingham gives more attention to the early days of mobilization than Clarkson, and he stresses continuity in the Board's development. In the battle of books, posterity of course has given the prize to Clarkson. See Box 4 of the Scott Papers and Box 205 of the Baker Papers for the correspondence relating to Frothingham's project. See also, “Statement of Frank A. Scott,” Baruch Papers; Frank A. Scott, Industrial Mobilization for a Great War, a lecture given to the Army Industrial College, October 29, 1926, available in the Scott Papers.

19 Minutes of the Meeting of the Advisory Commission, March 30, 1917, Records of the Council of National Defense, File 1B–1, Box 25; New York Times, January 15, 1918; U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Military Affairs. Investigation of the War Department, Hearings …, 65 Cong., 2 Sess., 8 Pts. (Washington, 1918), Pt. 3, pp. 1836–1847; Beaver, Newton D. Baker; Koistinen, “Industrial-Military Complex.”

20 Victor Thompson argues that students of organizational behavior have too often conceived organizations in monocratic terms and have thereby overlooked their pluralistic features. Thompson, Modern Organizations, 77–79.

21 Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, 36–64; Beaver, Newton D. Baker, 71–109; Koistinen, “The Industrial-Military Complex.”

22 Woodrow Wilson to Baruch, March 4, 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. This letter is reproduced in Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, 49–50.

23 Ibid.

24 Wilson to Herbert Bayard Swope, May 1, 1918, Letterbook 50, Wilson Papers.

25 For a brief description of Otis' work see: “The Statement of Charles A. Otis,” Baruch Papers; McKelvey, Blake, The Emergence of Metropolitan America 1915–1916 (New Brunswick, 1968), 25–26Google Scholar; and Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, 241–249.

26 Baruch to Scott, June 29, 1918, Records of the War Industries Board, File 21A-A2, Box 216.

27 Peek to E. B. Parker, June 20, 1918, and to Scott, July 26, 1918, Records of the War Industries Board, File 21A-A2, Box 215.

28 See Crozier's, MichaelThe Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago, 1964), 162–175Google Scholar, for a most illuminating discussion of the relationship between predictability and power in organizations.

29 Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston, 1967), 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Or, to quote Robert H. Wiebe on the wartime mobilization: “Rather than a bureaucratic order, it was actually a number of separate bureaucracies, barely joined in some areas, openly in conflict elsewhere.” Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967), 300.Google Scholar

30 Baruch to Colonel Edward M. House, October 23, 1915 and April 24, 1916; to Wilson, June 23, 1916; and to Josephus Daniels, March 13, 1917, all in the Journal of Bernard M. Baruch, Baruch Papers; Diary of Edward M. House, June 23, 1916, Edward M. House Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.; Wilson to Baruch, June 29, 1916, Baruch to Wilson, August 17, 1916, Wilson to Baruch, August 19, 1916, Letter-book 30, 32, Wilson Papers.

31 Baruch to R. R. Lydon, October 14, 1915, Journal of Bernard Baruch, Baruch Papers. See also, Baruch to Baruch Brothers, October 14, 1915, ibid. For Baruch's search for another role see Coit, Mr. Baruch, 109–116, 131–147; Baruch, My Own Story, 176–182, 188; and Baruch, The Public Years, ch. I.

32 Riggs, Fred W., The Ecology of Public Administration (New Delhi, 1961), 45.Google Scholar

33 Clarkson, Industrial America in the World War, 74–75.

34 For an informative discussion of decentralization in a similar context see Selznick, Philip, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization (New York, 1966).Google Scholar See also Simon, Herbert A., Administrative Behavior (New York, 1963), 38.Google Scholar

35 Victor Thompson challenges the myth of the “boss” in organization in his study of OPA rationing during World War II. He writes: “Rationing executives gave very few orders because they did not know what to order. The complete and technical information on which rationing actions had to be based was processed only by personnel in the rationing branches.” Thompson, Victor, The Regulatory Process in OPA Rationing (New York, 1950), 429.Google Scholar This comment applies equally well to Baruch, who coincidentally was referred to as “the Boss” by WIB members. See also, Simon, et al, Public Administration, 131.

36 “Statement of Samuel Vauclain,” Baruch Papers.

37 Bemard M. Baruch, “Address on Economic Mobilization before Corps of Cadets, West Point, May 4, 1929,” Public Papers of Bernard Baruch, Vol. I, Baruch Papers.

38 For an example of this practice by high officials in a similar context see Thompson, OPA Rationing, 420. See also Simon et al., Public Administration, 395–397, 534. See Coffman, Hilt of the Sword, 64, 88 for a glimpse of Baruch's representation of the WIB position at weekly meetings of the War Council.

39 Robert Presthus makes the point that the farther away one is from those in top positions, the greater the tendency to hold them in awe. President Wilson called upon Baruch to act as “the general eye of industry,” a phrase which would conjure up an appropriately awesome image to the general public. Presthus, Robert, The Organizational Society (New York, 1962), 32, 172–173.Google Scholar

40 Baruch's earlier irritation is evident in Baruch to Ambrose Monell ( president of International Nickel), July 7, 1917, Records of the War Industries Board, File 21A–A–1, Box 13.

41 The symbolic implications of an administrative system and of political leadership to gain public quiescence over their detailed operations is discussed by Edelman, Murray in The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana, 1964), esp. chs. 2, 3, 4.Google Scholar