George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

As war loomed in 1914, National City Bank began reorganizing the U.S. arms industry.
Percy A. Rockefeller took direct control of the Remington Arms company, appointing his
own man, Samuel F. Pryor, as the new chief executive of Remington.
The U.S entered World War I in 1917. In the spring of 1918, Prescott's father, Samuel P.
Bush, became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War
Industries Board.@s2 The senior Bush took national responsibility for government
assistance to and relations with Remington and other weapons companies.
This was an unusual appointment, as Prescott's father seemed to have no background in
munitions. Samuel Bush had been president of the Buckeye Steel Castings Co. in
Columbus, Ohio, makers of railcar parts. His entire career had been in the railroad
business-- supplying equipment to the Wall Street-owned railroad systems.
The War Industries Board was run by Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street speculator with
close personal and business ties to old E.H. Harriman. Baruch's brokerage firm had
handled Harriman speculations of all kinds.@s3
In 1918, Samuel Bush became director of the Facilities Division of the War Industries
Board. Prescott's father reported to the Board's Chairman, Bernard Baruch, and to
Baruch's assistant, Wall Street private banker Clarence Dillon.
Robert S. Lovett, President of Union Pacific Railroad, chief counsel to E.H. Harriman
and executor of his will, was in charge of national production and purchase "priorities"
for Baruch's board.
With the war mobilization conducted under the supervision of the War Industries Board,
U.S. consumers and taxpayers showered unprecedented fortunes on war producers and
certain holders of raw materials and patents. Hearings in 1934 by the committee of U.S.
Senator Gerald Nye attacked the "Merchants of Death" -- war profiteers such as
Remington Arms and the British Vickers company --whose salesmen had manipulated
many nations into wars, and then supplied all sides with the weapons to fight them.
Percy Rockefeller and Samuel Pryor's Remington Arms supplied machine guns and Colt
automatic pistols; millions of rifles to Czarist Russia; over half of the small-arms
ammunition used by the Anglo-American allies in World War I; and 69 percent of the
rifles used by the United States in that conflict.@s4
Samuel Bush's wartime relationship to these businessmen would continue after the war,
and would especially aid his son Prescott's career of service to the Harrimans.
Most of the records and correspondence of Samuel Bush's arms- related section of the
government have been burned, "to save space" in the National Archives. This matter of
destroyed or misplaced records should be of concern to citizens of a constitutional
republic. Unfortunately, it is a rather constant impediment with regard to researching
George Bush's background: He is certainly the most "covert" American chief executive.