restrictionists who ranted about the responsibility of immigrants for the
spread of pauperism, disease, and crime. Second, it stoked the fires of
American anti-Semitism. The immigrants did not cause Jew-hatred. Admit
it, Schiff once said, in many quarters Jews in general were regarded as
foreigners and outsiders. But the “peculiarities” of their manners and cus-
toms could conceivably exacerbate it. A symbol of the alien and hence un-
American Jews who by sheer force of numbers warned of the ultimate “ju-
daization” of New York, the ghetto appeared to threaten the security of the
older settlers as well as the newcomers.^6
The eastern European immigration catapulted Schiff the local Jewish phi-
lanthropist to national and international renown. While still a young man,
he became enmeshed in the immigrant problem, and for over thirty years
he grappled with many of its ramifications. Not only did he personally
overcome the typical German aversion to the immigrants, bearers of what
to them was an alien and inferior culture, but a sense of duty and a concern
for the American Jewish image drove him to new activities. So too did the
conviction that the problems, if not properly addressed, would influence
America to close its doors to future immigration. His logic dictated that he
employ his resources in ways calculated to turn the newcomers into pro-
ductive and loyal citizens as quickly as possible. More than ever he used
philanthropy as a calculated instrument of social control, in this case the
remaking of the immigrants. Always the heavy-handed benefactor, he
played the tutor and guardian to his wards, the eastern Europeans. Confi-
dent of the remedies he prescribed and the counsel he proffered, he epito-
mized paternalism in the grand manner. Yet another side emerged too, that
of a man who was receptive to new ideas and for whom the challenge of the
immigrant question proved a personal learning experience.
Schiff plunged with his usual intensity into relief activities for eastern
European refugees. In the thick of ad hoc committees and new societies
that sprang up after the 1881 pogroms, he subscribed to the Russian Emi-
grant Relief Fund and served as treasurer of the Russian Refugee and Col-
onization Fund. When refugee relief was largely absorbed by the Hebrew
Emigrant Aid Society, an organization that resolved to aid and advise im-
migrants “in obtaining homes and employment, and otherwise providing
means to prevent them from becoming burdens of the charity of the com-
munity,” he again responded. The banker donated $10,000 through that
society in 1882 for the renovation of an immigrant shelter on Ward’s Is-
land. A sort of halfway house, the shelter accommodated immigrants until
suitable employment was found for them. (The “Schiff refuge,” as it was
known, may have had good intentions, but its inadequacies bred immigrant
unrest.) The ever loyal American Hebrew, praising “a noble triumverate”
The New Immigrants 85