Apparently young Baruch knew exactly what he wanted to do, and set out to do it. He says he spent “many years” after his graduation in certain studies, “particularly economics” as related to railroads and industrial propositions. “I tried to make Poor’s Manual and the financial supplement of the Financial Chronicle my bible for a number of years.”
He could not have spent very “many years” in these pursuits, for after going down to Wall Street as a clerk and a runner, and when he was “about 26 or 27” he became a member of the firm of A. A. Housman & Company. “In about 1900 or 1902” he left the firm, but he had meanwhile gained a seat on the Stock Ex¬ change.
He then went into business for himself, a state¬ ment which must be taken literally in view of his testi¬ mony that he “did not do any business for anybody but myself. I made a study of the corporations en¬ gaged in the production and manufacture of different things, and a study of the men engaged in them.”
In answer to questions intended to disclose the ex¬ act nature of his operations before he suddenly appeared as the man who “had more power than perhaps any other man did in the war,” he stood off from any in¬ timations that he perhaps engaged in mere buying and selling of stock. “My business then became the or¬ ganization of various enterprises,” he said, “and in connection with that, I, of course, did buy and sell stocks * * * If I organized any concern, I naturally took a large interest in it, or I would not organize it if I did not believe in it, and I stayed with the develop¬ ment of that concern; and then if I cared later on to sell it, I would sell it.”
Pressed by the examiners for a still more detailed account of his activities in business, he said:
“Well, I was instrumental in the purchase of the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company; in the purchase of Selby Smelter, Tacoma Smelter,