throughout the country in order to relieve the ghetto and hasten the assi-
milatory process. The trustees agreed to earmark a portion of the fund for
temporary relief, but their prime focus was on aiding those who showed
promise of economic independence. Embarking on untried experiments,
they set out to chart the paths of the new arrivals. Problems worsened and
expenses mounted in direct relation to the immigrant tide. Where we for-
merly needed hundreds of thousands of dollars, we now need millions,
Schiff wrote in 1909. “I am still wondering that we have not been crushed
under the weight of these problems.”^10
Schiff, who was involved from the beginning in the establishment of the
fund, began a private correspondence with the baron. The two men met in
London in 1890, and common business interests as well as the Russian
question cemented their association. The American served as one of the
original trustees of the fund, and he actively cooperated in many of its en-
terprises. Although its work paralleled that of some agencies he supported,
Schiff never scaled down his independent activities. Publicly he called on
wealthy American Jews to support the fund, but privately he worried about
the wisdom of accepting European money for American philanthropy. To
be sure, it was desperately needed, and he frequently urged the ICA to
lighten the American load. But immigrant relief from foreign sources
could be interpreted by the American government and public as a form of
“assisted” and hence illicit immigration.^11
The heavy immigration that placed unusual burdens on the established
Jewish community magnified the role of American Jews in international
Jewish affairs. Baron de Hirsch’s endowment was, among other things, a
signal of a new respect on the part of Europe for American leaders. Until
then, according to Schiff, the Europeans had shifted the burden of the im-
migrants onto the Americans and, in the case of English Jewish leaders, re-
sponded only with “contempt” and “abuse.”^12 After the fund was estab-
lished, the American trustees grew restive under the domination of the
baron’s advisers in the ICA and the Alliance Israélite Universelle who
sought to control the entire emigration process, from the selection of emi-
grants to relief budgets. A sparring match developed between the two sides
that lasted some twenty years. While the Americans complained that the
Europeans largely ignored their appeals for financial support, the Euro-
peans retorted that since they funded Jewish rehabilitation in Europe, it
was the Americans’ responsibility to raise their own money.
Schiff, who in short order became the unofficial solicitor of funds and
protagonist of the Americans, was openly resentful, particularly of the
French Alliance. Despite his personal contributions to charitable institu-
tions in Europe and Palestine, the banker wondered at the gall of the Euro-
peans who appealed for American aid on behalf of their own projects. They
had to realize, he asserted, that no more than a dozen American Jews were
The New Immigrants 87