A short work biography found here: An Early History of the General Accounting Office, 1921-1943 by May Hunter Wilbur March 1988
---A widely known personality in the auditing offices of the Treasury Department and subsequently in the General Accounting Office was Mr. James L. Baity, Auditor for the War Department and later Assistant to the Comptroller General of the United States (Executive and Budget Officer). As the War Auditor during the trying years of World War I Mr. Baity had jurisdiction over a greatly augmented force of clerks engaged in the audit of all accounts and claims arising by reason of military activity, also those relating in any way to the Military Establishment. Many of the personnel thus employed were transferred directly to the General Accounting Office upon its creation. Born in Missouri Mr. Baity served for a time as secretary to former Senator James A. Reed of that state before entering the departmental service. He was twice continued in service after reaching the age for automatic retirement but finally retired October 31, 1943.
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LA PLATA HOME PRESS, La Plata, Missouri
March 14, 1957
JAMES L. BAITY
---James L. Baity, an apprentice of the Home Press who became First Assistant Comptroller General of the United States, died in a Washington D.C. hospital Friday of pneumonia. He was eighty-five years old.
---James Lewis Baity, born July 11, 1871, was one of eleven children of William D. and Frances E. (Owenby) Baity. He was reared on the family farm near La Plata and educated in the public schools of this community. When he left school, Mr. Baity began work at the Home Press, then on the north side of the square as a "Printer's Devi," the apprentice who did all the dirty work and turned the handle on the unpowered newspaper press.
---Baity truly came up the 'hard way' from his dollar-a-day job at the Home Press, he worked his way up through the printing trade until, at the age of twenty-seven, in 1898, he bought the paper from Bill Banning.
---On December 27, 1896, he married Miss Martha M. Sanders, a native of La Plata. No children were born.
---As a publisher he broke away from a Republican family background to become a power in Democratic politics in Macon County. He was a member and treasurer of the County Central Democratic Committee for ten years and for eight years held appointments of "oil inspector" by Governors Dockery (1901) and Flak (1905).
---Local politics became politics as Baity was appointed assistant to the Hon. James T. Lloyd, representative from Missouri in the United States Legislature in 1908.
---In 1911 he became campaign manager for James Alexander Reed of Kansas City in a bid for a seat in the United States Senate. When Reed went into office he made Baity his Secretary. The publisher of the Home Press packed his belongings, sold his paper and left for Washington. After two years with Reed, Baity was appointed by president Woodrow Wilson as auditor for the War Department, working in the Treasury Department. In this position during World War I, Baity had the unique opportunity of approving or rejecting all the requisitions for money spent by the War Department.
---His obituary, printed in the Washington Star on Sunday, quoted Mr. Baity as having written to the Home Press at that time. The Lord only knows how much a million dollars is.
---In 1921 Baity became the First Assistant Comptroller General, an office he held until his retirement in 1945. Jack Barker of Kansas City, a friend of Baity's remembers that Senator, Harry Truman, spoke at the testimonial dinner for Mr. Baity. Senator Alben Barkley was there, along with Congressman Fred M. Vinson, later Chief Justice of the United States.
---Barker, who saw Baity on occasion on trips to Washington, said Baity had always loved La Plata, intended to return here to live but waited to long.
---Survivors include his wife, Martha May; a sister, Mrs. Lottie B. Doneghy of Washington, D.C.; and a brother, Frank M. Baity of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Another of the eleven children, Rev. George P. Baity, now deceased, attained national reputation as minister of a large Kansas City Presbyterian Church.
---Funeral services were Monday in a Washington Funeral Home. Burial was private.