ABSTRACT
Brain Trust was a group of professors, intellectuals and business men who, since the winter of 1931-1932, had served him as advisers and general staff. The foolish and the wise alike turned towards the Brain Trust: the foolish because they always turn the way the wind is blowing and because their secret demon always whispers to them which way it is blowing. The Brain Trust does not suffer comparison with Mr. Hardings's "best minds", nor even with Mr. Coolidge's experts, nor yet with Mr. Hoover's futile but brilliant committees. The Brain Trust is, first and foremost, a working tool, and Mr. Roosevelt's considers that the most important quality in a working tool is that it should be manageable. Mr. Roosevelt, a man of the upper New York society, a patrician of the biggest banking city in the world and a distinguished lawyer, had innumerable ties, at once regular and intimate, normal and solid, with the big New York banks.
