neighbor, who has been accustomed to work, new methods and better
ones.” In this case Christian opinion more than immigrant help appeared
to be the major consideration. For Schiff, too, the school was primarily an
exercise in image building. He, like other emancipated Jews, had internal-
ized Christian criticism of the unproductive Jew unfit for honest labor, the
Jew whose lack of skills and resulting lifestyle threatened to “develop only
the baser instincts of mankind.” Although they never applied the lesson to
their own vocational choices—banking certainly lay outside the accepted
meaning of “productive” labor—the established Jews sought to disprove
the negative stereotypes via the immigrants. To be sure, they recognized
the eastern Europeans’ bias against vocational training. “In Russia,” a re-
port of the institute noted, “the work of a carpenter is looked down upon as
one of the lowest.” But pateralism was as determined as it was benevolent,
and the German leaders pressed ahead, at times overemphasizing the
school’s success.^22
Schiff became an eager advocate of industrial training that would guide
young men into “respectable” employment, that is, jobs other than in small
shops or in the Jewish and often maligned needle trades, and raise their
image among Americans. Calling the typical graduate of the school “an
enobling agent... , a producer among those who, by inclination and train-
ing, have for generations been consumers only,” he thought that molding
immigrants into skilled workers would both Americanize them and
counteract the popular image of Jews as a “foreign element” in society. The
banker and his fellow trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund put vocational
training high on their list of priorities; and using the institute as a model on
which to expand, they increased the number of training classes, supplied
tools for mechanics, and ultimately found employment for several thou-
sand outside the larger eastern cities. Such efforts, they happily concluded,
relieved the ghettos while creating “productive Americans.”^23
Image building, albeit on a much smaller scale, also involved Schiff in
encouraging young immigrants whose dreams of a higher education had
gone unfulfilled in Europe. Learning of such cases, he and a few others—
Michael Heilprin, Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, and Professor E. R. A. Selig-
man—privately assisted individuals who were likely candidates for profes-
sional or intellectual careers. Here the purpose was to counteract the
stereotype of the Jew who lacked cultural and aesthetic tastes.^24
Of all his charities on behalf of the Lower East Side, Schiff’s favorite was
the Henry Street Settlement and Visiting Nurses’ Service. The agency, so
different in concept from customary relief giving, was the brainchild of
Lillian Wald. A third-generation American from an affluent Jewish home,
who had trained as a nurse, Wald dedicated herself to a singular mission—
The New Immigrants 91