Background
He was born on August 1, 1893 in Rossien, Lithuania, the son of Samuel Sachs, a religious scholar, and Fay Alexander, an entrepreneur. The Sachs family came to the United States as Jewish refugees in 1904.
He was born on August 1, 1893 in Rossien, Lithuania, the son of Samuel Sachs, a religious scholar, and Fay Alexander, an entrepreneur. The Sachs family came to the United States as Jewish refugees in 1904.
Alexander Sachs completed studies at Columbia University in three years, receiving his bachelor of science degree in 1912 at age nineteen. In 1916, he entered Harvard University as a Francis Parkman Fellow in philosophy and subsequently received a Henry Rogers Fellowship for further study in jurisprudence and sociology. (Although he did not receive a doctoral degree from Harvard, he was commonly referred to as "Dr. " Sachs by the press and colleagues throughout his life. )
He worked as a clerk for the Wall Street firm of Lee Higginson in 1913 and 1914 before returning to Columbia.
After completing his studies, he returned to Wall Street to join Lehman Brothers as an economist. On June 17, 1919, he became a naturalized American citizen. As an analyst, Sachs developed a. reputation as a contrarian due to his doubts about the Coolidge-era economy. Sachs had been on casual terms with Franklin Roosevelt since 1932 when he had provided some of the economic research for the New York governor's presidential campaign. In 1933, Sachs organized and administered the economic research and planning division of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) under the direction of Hugh S. Johnson.
He also developed the first labor codes for southern textile mills in 1933, which he hoped would balance the needs of workers and producers. This action led to the release of a torrent of additional codes for other industries, most of which Sachs considered unnecessary. Discouraged by proliferating regulation, he considered resigning and did reduce his commitment to the NRA. By January 1934, he had all but left the NRA because he was disappointed to see it being used as an economic stabilizer when in his opinion it needed to be fostering expansionism.
He maintained his contact with Roosevelt, however, and served on the National Policy Committee.
In 1936, he returned to the private sector as a vicepresident and director of the Lehman Corporation, an investment trust managed by Lehman Brothers. He also lectured to policy organizations and academic institutions. In the spring of 1939, Sachs, Einstein, Szilard, and Eugene P. Wigner of Princeton began discussing the role of atomic weapons in a world girding for war. Einstein and Szilard agreed that Sachs would be the man to see the president and explain the situation.
On Oct. 11, 1939, six weeks after the German invasion of Poland, Sachs visited Roosevelt at the White House, warning him about the potential destructive force of atomic weapons and the need for an American nuclear program. The so-called Uranium Committee, on which Sachs served, submitted a report to the president in November 1939, recommending that uranium research for both bombs and powering submarines be supported by the government. However, in 1940 only $6, 000 was allotted to the research, instead of the $100, 000 Sachs suggested. Sachs also recommended the establishment of a Scientific Council of National Defense "composed of executives, engineers, and economists" to promote technical national defense projects.
In 1942, Sachs resigned from Lehman Brothers to become an independent economic consultant. He offered his consulting services, for free, to the War Emergency Pipelines Corporation and the Petroleum Industry War Council, and the Office of Strategic Services, among other government agencies.
At the end of the war, according to Henry Wallace, Sachs felt that the United States had made itself morally culpable by dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. He said the original plan discussed with Roosevelt was to detonate one atomic bomb in the presence of representatives of all the neutral nations, who could then report the effect of the weapon to the world. A second bomb was to be dropped on an island off Japan after the United States advised the Japanese to evacuate all civilians. Sachs felt that American moral prestige was very low for having used the bomb.
He continued to lecture and contributed to many books on economics as well as to financial and economic periodicals. In 1968, Sachs was named a special consultant to the under-secretary of state for political affairs. He died in New York City.
He himself advocated tax reform based on the British system. He criticized the NRA approach as akin to "state capitalism. " He offered instead a system of pluristic planning suited to a political and economic democracy.
He advocated international control of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear power for peaceful projects.
Quotations: He had long described himself as a "lone wolf New Dealer in the menagerie of economists" in the Roosevelt administration.
He was known as a cumbersome writer who often wrote sentences of fifty to sixty words.
Sachs married Charlotte A. Cramer on August 30, 1945; the couple had no children.