Jacob Schiff and His Cohort

Gower, Adam

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90266-1_3

Adam Gower⁶

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance ((PSHF))

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Abstract

The area of Frankfurt where Schiff was born in 1847 was the epicentre of the Jewish community in that city, and, due to restrictions on Jewish ownership of property, houses had historically been partitioned to allow for multiple families to live under one roof. Intriguingly, a property his family had occupied a century before Schiff was born had also been owned and lived in by an earlier generation of the Rothschilds.

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Notes

1.
Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, pp. 1–6.
2.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 2.
3.
Ibid., p. 3. Cohen does not state which brother-in-law or which banking firm.
4.
Redlich, The Molding of American Banking, Vol. 2, p. 386.
5.
Supple, ‘A Business Elite’, p. 164. See also Investment Banking Through Four Generations, p. 7.
6.
See Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), for discussion of the endogamy and cousin marriage strategies that were commonplace within the German Jewish community.
7.
Ibid., p. 157.
8.
Supple, ‘A Business Elite’, p. 163.
9.
Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861–1901 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934), p. 439.
10.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 100.
11.
Cravath as quoted in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 2, p. 46.
12.
Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 171.
13.
Collins, Otto Kahn, p. 51.
14.
Pat Thane, ‘Cassel, Sir Ernest Joseph (1852–1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32323, accessed 1 August 2016.
15.
Takahashi in Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 1, p. 217.
16.
Thane, ‘Cassel, Sir Ernest Joseph’, p. 2.
17.
Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, Vol. 2, p. 367.
18.
Anthony Allfrey, Edward VII and His Jewish Court (London: Thistle Publishing, 2013), p. 152.
19.
See Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of the Period of Absolutism in Central Europe (Piscataway: Transaction, 1984). In the context of Stern’s work, Grunwald’s description of Cassel as a Court Jew could be seen as an ahistorical exaggeration.
20.
Kurt Grunwald, ‘“Windsor Cassel”—The Last Court Jew: Prolegomena to a Biography of Sir Ernest Cassel’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, Vol. 14 (1969), p. 120.
21.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 138.
22.
Abraham Yarmolinsky (trans. and ed.), The Memoirs of Count Witte (Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921), p. 164.
23.
Letter from Schiff to Paul Nathan, 10 October 1906, as quoted in Szajkowski, ‘Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff’, pp. 3–26.
24.
Szajkowski, ‘Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff’, pp. 77–78.
25.
Jacob H. Schiff, ‘Peace and Friendship with Japan’, Advocate of Peace, Vol. 72, No. 11 (1910), p. 268.
26.
Schiff, ‘Japan After the War’, pp. 161–168.
27.
Ibid., p. 161.
28.
Metzler, Lever of Empire, p. 47.
29.
Isaac Markens, The Hebrews in America: A Series of Historical and Biographical Sketches (New York: Published by the Author, 1888), p. 148.
30.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, pp. 41–81.
31.
Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 1, p. 354.
32.
Ibid., p. 230.
33.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, pp. 29–30.
34.
Ibid., p. 324.
35.
Ibid., p. xiii.
36.
Ehud Manor, Louis Miller and Di Warheit (‘The Truth’): Yiddishism, Zionism and Socialism in New York, 1905–1915 (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), p. 109.
37.
Diner, The Jews of the United States, p. 168.
38.
Supple, ‘A Business Elite’, p. 167.
39.
Diner, The Jews of the United States, p. 164.
40.
Ibid., p. 169.
41.
See Raphael Langham, 250 Years of Convention and Contention: A History of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1760–2010 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010). Langham describes how the British Jewish establishment has generally focused on defending Judaism rather than defending Jews.
42.
Diner, The Jews of the United States, p. 175.
43.
John Hay to Theodore Roosevelt, 23 July 1903, as quoted in Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), p. 152.
44.
John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), p. 508.
45.
Clymer, John Hay, p. 80.
46.
Tyler Dennett, John Hay: From Poetry to Politics (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1934), p. 396.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Dennett, John Hay, p. 396.
50.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, pp. 126–128.
51.
Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 2, p. 88.
52.
Diner, The Jews of the United States, p. 185.
53.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 85.
54.
See Pat Thane, ‘Private Bankers and Philanthropy: The City of London, 1880s–1920s’, in Youssef Cassis and Philip Cottrell (eds.), The World of Private Banking (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 247–262 for a discussion of a similar dynamic among Jewish philanthropists in England.
55.
Sorin, A Time for Building, p. 68.
56.
Berkowitz, ‘Between Altruism and Self-Interest’, p. 255.
57.
Matthew M. Silver, Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America: A Biography (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2013), p. 214.
58.
Berkowitz, ‘Between Altruism and Self-Interest’, p. 255.
59.
Diner, The Jews of the United States, p. 187.
60.
Feingold, A Midrash on American Jewish History, p. 204.
61.
For discussion see Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace, pp. 70–72.
62.
Ibid., p. 72.
63.
San Francisco Call (9 November 1905), p. 5.
64.
As quoted in Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 134.
65.
Allfrey, Edward VII and His Jewish Court, p. 241.
66.
Irving Katz, August Belmont, a Political Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 1.
67.
David Kranzler, ‘The Japanese Ideology of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust’, in R. L. Braham (ed.), Contemporary Views on the Holocaust (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1983), p. 82.
68.
Katz, August Belmont, p. 6.
69.
Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, Vol. 2, p. 66.
70.
Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, as quoted in Charles R. Geisst, The Last Partnerships: Inside the Great Wall Street Money Dynasties (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), p. 3. See also p. 103.
71.
Katz, August Belmont, p. 91.
72.
Birmingham, Our Crowd, pp. 152–153. See also Geisst, The Last Partnerships, p. 104; Supple, ‘A Business Elite’, p. 166.
73.
Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 76.
74.
Redlich, The Molding of American Banking, Vol. 2, p. 381.
75.
Niall Ferguson, High Financier: The Lives and Times of Siegmund Warburg (New York: Penguin, 2010), p. 11.
76.
John W. Dower (ed.), Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E. H. Norman (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 222.
77.
Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, Vol. 2, p. 66.
78.
Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 45.
79.
Katz, August Belmont, p. 113.
80.
Metzler, Lever of Empire, p. 9.
81.
Ibid., pp. 8–9.
82.
Matsumura, Baron Kaneko, Kindle Edition, 19%.
83.
Ibid., 47%.
84.
Kovalio, The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan, p. 7. There has been extensive discussion, with some disagreement, over where the Protocols originated.
85.
Best, ‘Ideas Without Capital’, p. 455.
86.
James H. Wilson, China, Travels and Investigation in the ‘Middle Kingdom’: A Study of Its Civilization and Possibilities, with a Glance at Japan (New York: D. Appleton, 1887), p. viii.
87.
Ibid., p. 1.
88.
Ibid., p. 13.
89.
Jacob Schiff’s Diary, Our Journey to Japan, p. 170, JSP: Box 1861, Folder 6.
90.
Best, ‘Ideas Without Capital’, p. 470.
91.
Maurice Collis, Wayfoong: The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), p. 113.
92.
Jacob H. Schiff, ‘Financial Progress in Japan’, Harper’s Weekly (30 June 1906), p. 911.
93.
Letter from Schiff to Warburg, 25 October 1900, JSP: Reel 676.
94.
Takahashi Memo, JSP: Box 1861, Folder 6.
95.
Schiff, ‘Financial Progress in Japan’, p. 911.
96.
Jacob H. Schiff, Our Journey to Japan: Printed as a Surprise to the Author, Jan 10, MGMVII (New York: New York Co-operative Society, 1906), p. 96.
97.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 136.
98.
Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, Vol. 1, p. 218; Takahashi Memo, JSP: Box 1861, Folder 6.
99.
Jim Zwick, ‘Mark Twain and Imperialism’, in Shelley F. Fishkin (ed.), A Historical Guide to Mark Twain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 235.
100.
George Kennan, Vagabond Life: The Caucasus Journals of George Kennan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002), p. 10.
101.
Alice Stone Blackwell, ‘The Friends of Russian Freedom’, The Commons, March (1905), p. 171.
102.
Jane E. Good, ‘America and the Russian Revolutionary Movement’, Russian Review, Vol. 41, No. 3. (1982), pp. 273–287.
103.
‘Kennan Retells History Relates How Jacob H. Schiff Financed Revolution Propaganda in Czar’s Army’, New York Times (24 March 1917), http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/kennan/from19170324to19170324/, accessed 13 August 2016.
104.
Szajkowski, ‘Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff’, p. 14.
105.
Good, ‘America and the Russian Revolutionary Movement’, p. 275; Free Russia (1 September 1890), p. 12. At a presentation by George Kennan at the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1890, Mark Twain was said to have been compelled by the emotions elicited by Kennan’s speech to ‘tearfully’ rise from his seat; he reputedly stated, ‘If such a government cannot be overthrown otherwise than by the use of dynamite, then, thank God for Dynamite’.
106.
Matsumura, Baron Kaneko, Kindle Edition, 36%.
107.
See, for example, letter from Kennan to Major Yoshida (Ministry of War), 6 June 1905; letter from Kennan to Major General Smirnoff, 18 March 1905; Diary of Kennan, 31 May 1905 and 6 August 1905, GKP.
108.
Letter from Takahira to Kennan, 24 February 1904, GKP.
109.
San Francisco Call (9 November 1905), p. 5.
110.
Letter from Kennan to General Smirnoff, 18 March 1904, GKP.
111.
Max M. Laserson, The American Impact on Russia: Diplomatic and Ideological—1784–1917 (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p. 314.
112.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 139.
113.
‘Kennan Retells History’.
114.
The Outlook (January–April 1915), pp. 622–626.
115.
Ukrainian Quarterly, Vol. 15 (1959), p. 174.
116.
Elinor Slater and Robert Slater, Great Jewish Men (New York: Jonathan David, 2001), pp. 274–276.
117.
Szajkowski, ‘Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff’, p. 6.
118.
Letter from Kennan to Griscom, 5 June 1905, GKP.
119.
Letter from Kennan to Major Yoshida, 6 June 1905, GKP.
120.
Szajkowski, ‘Paul Nathan, Lucien Wolf, Jacob H. Schiff’, p. 8.
121.
Kennoske Nakamura, The Missionary Nikolai and Meiji Japan (Senkyoshi Nikorai to Meiji Nippon), as quoted in Kovalio, The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan, p. 81.
122.
Takahashi, International Law, pp. 146–147.
123.
Roustam Bek, ‘Military Review’, Soviet Russia, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1921), p. 80.
124.
Ibid.
125.
Frederick F. Travis, ‘The Kennan–Russel Anti-Tsarist Propaganda Campaign Among Russian Prisoners of War in Japan, 1904–1905’, Russian Review, Vol. 40, No. 3 (1981), p. 273.
126.
George F. Kennan, ‘How Russia Loses Good Citizens’, The Outlook, Vol. 104 (1913), p. 716.
127.
‘Guide to the Papers of Isaac A. Hourwich (1860–1924)’, Yivo Institute, http://findingaids.cjh.org/?pID=1358888, accessed 21 July 2016.
128.
Berkowitz, ‘Between Altruism and Self-Interest’, p. 267.
129.
John D. Moore speaking as a representative of the Friends of Irish Freedom during the Espionage and Interference with Neutrality hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary on 9 and 12 April 1917. Espionage and Interference with Neutrality: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty Fifth Congress, First Session on HR 291 (Serial 53, Part 2) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), p. 58.
130.
Cholly Knickerbocker, New York Journal-American (1 February 1949) (‘Cholly Knickerbocker’ was a pseudonym).
131.
Espionage and Interference with Neutrality, p. 59.
132.
Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 126.
133.
Cohen, Jacob H. Schiff, p. 59.
134.
Ibid.
135.
Manor, Forward, p. 10. Grigory Gershuni (1870–1908) led the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia, an underground anarchist organization, for which he was imprisoned in Siberia before escaping in 1906 and making his way through Japan to the USA. Shillony, ‘The Jewish Response’, pp. 393–400.

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Gower, A. (2018). Jacob Schiff and His Cohort. In: Jacob Schiff and the Art of Risk. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90266-1_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90266-1_3
Published: 20 June 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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