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I set out to tell a different tale than Birmingham—less a social history than a financial, political, and philanthropic one—that focuses on a handful of dynasties whose members were particularly close, whose legacies were startlingly profound, and whose lives form an elemental part of the story of how modern America, the modern world, really, came to be.
The tale in the Seligman family is that decades later, as Alabama struggled under the burden of its crushing Civil War debt, Joseph found a way to repay the favor. The witness who exonerated him, now an Alabama judge, had traveled to New York in search of financing for the cash-strapped state. One by one bankers declined Alabama’s business. The judge finally visited Joseph, not realizing that the silver-haired banker was the young, battered merchant he had once assisted. But Joseph recognized the Alabaman instantly. Without committing to a loan, he invited the judge to his home that evening
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Joseph doing Joseph.
Beginning in 1848, the year Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their Communist Manifesto, a series of bloody uprisings engulfed Europe. Like a lit fuse, the protests leaped from Italy to France to the independent states of Germany, to the Hapsburg Empire, until much of Western Europe was aflame with revolutionary fervor. The causes of the unrest, fueled in part by widespread economic hardships, differed from place to place, but a common thread running through the protest movements was a demand for democratic reforms and basic civil rights.
Many southern Jews came to accept, if not embrace, slavery—though the spiritual dissonance of this position, even at that time, was lost on no one. During one barbed congressional debate over slavery in the 1850s, an abolitionist senator inveighed against “Israelites with Egyptian principles”—a dart aimed at his slavery-defending colleague Judah Benjamin, the Jewish Democrat from Louisiana who would go on to serve in the cabinet of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War.[22]
The fire destroyed three-quarters of San Francisco. But when the smoke cleared, Jesse’s store and the Tehama House remained intact. The disaster proved lucrative for the Seligmans since it temporarily wiped out all of Jesse’s competitors.
Bubba Gump
The controversy resurfaced during his presidential candidacy and deeply influenced his presidency, where, in moves largely viewed as acts of contrition, he appointed Jews to senior posts and strongly denounced anti-Jewish violence in Russia and Romania.
She was also known for her hearty appetite and her unorthodox observance of Jewish holidays such as Yom Kippur, when Jews fast for twenty-four hours. “On that day she did not go near the dining table but had food brought to her…a cup of tea at eleven, a sandwich at one, and so on, eating more, I believe, than on any other day. But, since she was not sitting down at table, she felt she was fasting.”[26]
“Learn to say ‘No.’ You can then change your mind and say ‘Yes’ without breaking your word. But once you have said ‘Yes’ you are committed.”[32]
Unable to afford a bouquet when he began courting her, Marcus gave Bertha a bunch of radishes.[33]
To raise cash for construction, or just to line the pockets of unscrupulous railroad directors, these operations pumped a variety of debt-packed securities into the market. Frequently, these start-ups piled debt upon debt until they collapsed under the weight of their obligations.
Gold speculators infuriated Abraham Lincoln, who once remarked that “for my part, I wish every one of them had his devilish head shot off.”[9]
Isaac recalled once visiting Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, the son of the firm’s founder, at his home on a Saturday, where he was observing the Sabbath. Seated at a table covered with documents, the elderly banker took the occasion to remind Isaac of his superiority not only in financial matters but in spiritual ones, too: “I am a better Jew than you. You go to business on Saturdays. I do not. My office is closed.” Isaac, always quick with a riposte, replied: “I think you do more business in this little room on Saturdays than I do during the whole week in my office!”[41]
Catered by Delmonico’s, the French-inspired seven-course dinner—excluding the sorbet palate cleanser—featured oysters and stewed terrapin, squab and capon, lamb and foie gras.
Joseph’s beliefs were closer to Ingersoll’s than to Beecher’s, his Judaism more cultural than spiritual, but he remained fiercely loyal to his people, using his political and social influence to garner support for Jewish causes and charities.
I regret that you are running the Union at a loss. I regret that you are making no headway in your wholesale departments in New-York and Chicago, and that even the Ninth-street retail store, so popular and prosperous under the management of the late Mr. Stewart, has lost its best patrons. A little reflection must show to you that the serious falling off in your business is not due to the patronage of any nationality, but to the want of patronage of all, and that you, dear Judge, are not big enough to keep a hotel, nor broad enough in your business views to run a dry goods store.[28]
It said something about the way Jews were perceived in America that Jay Gould, the widely reviled speculator, was regularly described as either being Jewish or possessing Jewish traits. Henry Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams, called Gould, a Presbyterian by birth, a “complex Jew.” Gould biographer Trumbull White noted, “Many who knew Mr. Gould intimately are in the habit of asserting that his origin must have been Hebraic….His habits of thought and his extraordinary intellect were both Jewish, these people assert.”[48]
(Schiff approached the new post with trademark boldness: the year after taking the role, he roiled New York by successfully advancing a controversial resolution abolishing the city’s “colored” schools, effectively integrating the public school system.)[1]
He wrote plays, never produced, that always seemed to conclude with an explosion,
During one Mount Sinai board meeting, Schiff learned that a fellow trustee, the forty-five-year-old coffee merchant Moses Hanauer, had declared bankruptcy due to some unwise speculation. Schiff was horrified. How could a man who was unable to manage his own financial affairs be trusted with the stewardship of a charitable institution? Schiff announced stiffly that he refused to serve on the same board as someone who was not good for his debts. He ultimately resigned from the board, as did his bankrupt colleague.[9] Hanauer, financially ruined and despondent, later traveled far uptown to Fort
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Schiff believed strongly that his privileged status gave him a responsibility to care for the less fortunate. “The surplus wealth we have gained, to some extent at least, belongs to our fellow-beings; we are only the temporary custodians of our fortunes,” he once said. And he looked down on the millionaires who hoarded their wealth during their lifetimes and became philanthropists only in death. Nor did Schiff believe in passive giving, as his tight control over the organizations he supported made clear. “Charity and philanthropy, to become effective, should have personal supervision….The
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In some cases, these gifts were intended to build bridges with the gentile world and to obtain a seat at the table, literally, for Jewish interests.
Bigotry, he believed, flowed down from above, not up from below; the people took their cues from the elites. Americans would not shed their prejudices until their leaders did.
“Would it be just and fair to now throw obstacles in the way of an unhappy people, solely because of the demand of a handful of demagogues, who not very many years ago themselves sought the hospitality of our country, or because of an unfortunate and largely magnified outbreak of an illness among a single shipload of emigrants?”[58]
“The Seligmans naturally retaliated and fought fire with fire, and for a time, seldom a day passed that one or more men was not killed,” Linton Wells wrote in “The House of Seligman.”
He rowed crew at Columbia and served on numerous committees and charitable boards, championing causes ranging from the regulation of child labor to the decriminalization of prostitution.
“You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,”
“Her boy is a darling, no beauty but a very healthy looking bit of humanity.”[51]
Both sides had much to lose and to gain in the epic clash to come over who controlled the main arteries of transcontinental rail traffic. Their struggle vividly showcased the unbounded financial clout these titans had amassed. It rattled Wall Street so fiercely that Harriman, Hill, Morgan, and Schiff would end up inadvertently making the case for restricting and regulating the outsize power they had exercised so freely in the past, permanently altering the relationship between corporations and the U.S. government.
“those enormous cut glass chandeliers” that “disfigure every room in which they are placed.”)[4]
The achievement was all the more significant because Hill completed his transcontinental line without a dollar of federal assistance.
Hill’s railroad (notwithstanding Morti’s report to his father about the low morale of his employees) was perhaps the nation’s soundest and best constructed. While other tycoons had looted their lines for quick profits, Hill built a system that withstood the financial maelstroms that had swamped his overcapitalized competitors. Now he watched as his rivals slipped one by one into receivership. As with most financial catastrophes, this one brought an opportunity.
Whatever else may have transpired during the meeting, Hill departed fully aware that his plans were in jeopardy. He also appeared to have given some indication that he was willing to deal, for he accepted an invitation to join the Schiffs that evening for their Sabbath dinner, after which Hill and Schiff stayed up past midnight discussing how to bring harmony to their competing fiefdoms.
“Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”[53]
During an era in which the default American foreign policy stance was isolationism, this was a bold statement, in part because it invited Russia and other nations to critique the internal politics of the United States, which had its own troubling history of violence against minorities. One prominent St. Petersburg paper explicitly made this point in an article titled “Pogroms in the United States,” noting the lynching of southern Blacks.[89]
The United States had traditionally enjoyed close diplomatic ties with Russia, but Kishinev and news of other anti-Jewish attacks had gradually turned the tide of public opinion. By working to make sure such assaults and oppression received widespread publicity, Schiff and his allies helped to transform a mostly Jewish affront into an American one.
Mental illness was prevalent in the Warburg family. Paul’s daughter, Bettina, influenced by the struggles of her uncles Aby Warburg and James Loeb, would grow up to become an accomplished psychiatrist; she annotated a Warburg family tree with the afflictions of its members—manic depression, epilepsy, mania, schizophrenia. “Idiot,” she scrawled next to the name of one relative.[18]
As Takahashi came to know Schiff better—struck by his “keen sense of justice which…went to the verge of severity”—he eventually understood why Schiff had taken a gamble on Japan. “He had a grudge against Russia on account of his race,” Takahashi said. Schiff, he noted, wanted to “admonish the ruling class of Russia by an object lesson,” and the country’s war with Japan offered an opportunity to do so.
Schiff replied that he would happily sit down with Plehve—and could be in St. Petersburg as soon as that fall—if the Russian government would meet several conditions. Refusing to appear before Plehve as a “suppliant,” he requested a direct invitation from the interior minister. And he also declined to enter Russia by special permission—the government would have to abolish its restrictions on Jewish-American passport holders before Schiff would consider setting foot in the country. The negotiations never progressed further.
Over the course of the war and in its immediate aftermath, Kuhn Loeb underwrote five Japanese loans, totaling $180 million. This amounted to more than 20 percent of Japan’s wartime expenditures.[45] The governments of both sides recognized Schiff’s pivotal role. Before the war had concluded, Japan’s emperor awarded him the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure, conferred on those who had provided distinguished service to the empire.
So adamant was Schiff against financing Russia that when the topic came up at a meeting of top New York bankers, he rose from his chair and announced that he had forbidden his firm to have any dealings with Russia not just during his lifetime but in perpetuity, so long as its anti-Jewish policies persisted.[69]
Russel’s real name was Nikolai Konstantinovich Sudzilovsky. A veteran socialist organizer, his revolutionary activities had forced him to flee Russia in the 1870s. Russel was in his mid-fifties, gray-bearded, and had most recently been living in Hawaii. Though he grew up in western Russia and attended medical school in Kyiv and Bucharest, he spoke flawless English.[71]
In the hands of conspiracy theorists, Schiff’s wartime activities—helping to finance the conflict and bankrolling revolutionary propaganda and proselytizing—formed the raw molding clay for a grotesque mythology of the supposedly all-powerful banker.
Of course, no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.”
“I believe it is as unpleasant to you, as it is painful to me, that when we meet from time to time, it need be as strangers to each other, and while it can be of no avail to review the cause, which has led to our estrangement, I am quite willing, if you are, that we should reestablish our former relations,” he wrote Ochs.[13]
But Schiff’s most important audience came several days into his trip, when he was escorted through the gates of the imperial palace to meet with Emperor Meiji, who had overseen the dramatic transformation of Japan from an isolated shogunate to a budding capitalist superpower.
I walked up to the group and said: “Watakushi wa Yudaya jin desu”—“I am a Jew.” That stopped them cold. Then I added that I am of the same people as Jacob Schiff. The next response was a spirited set of three banzais. Next, I was treated to a soda pop and a grand tour around the village and museum—all expenses paid.[24]
Earlier in their trip, during a visit with Takahashi and his family, Schiff had innocently asked Wakiko, “How would you like to come to America one day?” Takahashi and his daughter, however, took the pro forma invitation more seriously than Schiff realized. As Frieda Schiff recounted in her memoir, Takahashi appeared at Schiff’s hotel the following day, telling his friend: “My wife and I talked about your wonderful invitation to Wakiko. It is not customary for Japanese girls to leave home. But this is such an unusual chance, that we will be glad to let her visit you for two years.”
On June 9, 1906, the day after Schiff returned home, the Senate passed the Tillman Act, which would ban corporate contributions to political campaigns.
The president seemed to have a special talent for courting the wealthy businessmen he needed to fuel his political ambitions, while simultaneously clubbing them with anticorporate rhetoric and actions.
Founded in the early 1890s by Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck, the company had started out as a small mail-order business selling watches. The firm took advantage of the nation’s burgeoning railroad system to market and distribute its goods—at prices far lower than those of local stores—to a clientele composed largely of farmers. The demand was enormous, and the company was continuously adding new products to its inventory: sewing machines, farm equipment, hardware, furniture, buggies, clothing.
