This collection is made up of 60 letters between Bernard M. Baruch and Mark Sullivan, a testimony and several pamphlets by Baruch, and a signed, dedicated portrait photograph of Baruch. The majority of the collection consists of Baruch's letters to Sullivan. The correspondence addresses United States politics, beginning in the early 1920s with foreign policy, farm policy, and the long term outcomes of the Paris Peace Conference. Later letters contain Baruch's critiques of U.S. fiscal policy, foreign policy, and military preparedness, as well as general thoughts about the U.S. economy and the political environment following the Wilson administration.
Baruch and Sullivan discussed their writings and other works, offering critiques, recommendations, and congratulations. They discussed Sullivan's journalism and historic works, and Baruch's political career and treatment in the media. In one letter, Baruch gave a narrative account of his early education in South Carolina (January 21, 1927). The letters also contain discussions of more personal matters, holiday greetings, and invitations for Sullivan to vacation at the Hobcaw House. At various points in the correspondence Baruch expressed his perception of anti-Semitism in U.S. politics and education. The collection includes one photograph portrait of Bernard M. Baruch, signed and dedicated to Duane Norman Diedrich. See the Detailed Box and Folder Listing for more information.
Bernard M. Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina, on August 19, 1870. His family moved to New York City in 1881, and Baruch later graduated from City College of New York. Baruch, a Jew, married Anne Griffen, an Episcopalian, in 1897. In 1891, he started his career as a Wall Street financier, becoming one of Woodrow Wilson's chief financial supporters in 1912. His political influence in the Wilson administration grew into a career, and in 1917 Baruch became a chairman of the War Industries Board (WIB); he also served as an economic advisor to President Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
Baruch continued to advise and support Democratic candidates in the 1920s. His political commentary, particularly his remarks on economic policy, made him a significant public figure, and he remained an influential adviser through the Truman Administration. Throughout his life, he maintained a connection to South Carolina through his ownership of the "Hobcaw" plantation, where he vacationed and entertained influential political and media figures. He died on June 20, 1965.
Mark Sullivan was born in Avondale, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1874. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1903 and began his career as a journalist writing politically progressive articles for The Atlantic Monthly and Ladies Home Journal. In 1905, he began working for McClure's, and he served as an editor there from 1914-1917. In 1919, he joined the New York Evening Post as a Washington correspondent, and in 1923, he joined the editorial board of the New York Tribune (later the Herald-Tribune). As a syndicated columnist in the 1930s, he was popular for his political commentary and critical view of the New Deal. Between 1926 and 1935, Scribner's published the six volumes of Sullivan's Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925, a history of U.S. politics informed by Sullivan's work as a journalist. Mark Sullivan died on August 13, 1952.
