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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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had been reached. But Baruch knew that the plan was under way.

The greatest single holder of gold bricks was Bernard Baruch. Baruch had made his protest to the President about this being done. He had advised very strongly against calling in all the gold. The President had later learned, from whom I don't know, that Baruch was an enormous holder of gold bricks, and that during the period that he saw the depression coming, before it actually broke, during that few months before when anybody with experience ought to have known that it was coming, but people didn't, he had very carefully taken the largest part of his fortune out of common stocks and bonds, and all of it out of bank ownership, which he had had a lot of, and had bought plain gold bullion and gold bricks. He had rented an enormous vault in some bank in New York and had them stored there. It was a great fortune in gold bricks.

It was very embarrassing to Baruch, as well as very handicapping to him, to have that called in. After the President had listened to his economic and political reasons against the idea of calling in all the gold, which had been suggested to the President as one good thing to do, he had learned that Baruch was a great holder of gold. Baruch had learned, I suppose by inquiry, that the President knew it. Relations between them were strained, partly because





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