out or “to make capital against him with the working people.” To the
contrary, “we should show him that we at least are unprejudiced and want
unity among our people.” Neither side in the dispute, however, pushed for
Brandeis, and he was not approached.^87
Less than a year later trouble arose again in the same industry when the
owners threatened to impose a lockout on thirty thousand workers. The
mayor’s efforts to avert drastic action were disregarded, and Schiff called
the manufacturers to a last-minute meeting. This time he failed. The own-
ers put the lockout into effect and criticized Schiff for meddling into affairs
about which he lacked sufficient knowledge. The banker resented the
snub, and although he resolved to interfere no longer, he came out publicly
on the side of the “masses” against the “classes”: “I say to the workers, fight
the good fight, for you are fighting the fight of good citizenship.” Para-
phrasing a verse from the prophet Zechariah, he added, “Your fight must
win, not by might, not by power, but by the spirit of God and of social jus-
tice.” Schiff cheered on the workers throughout the fourteen-week strike,
and so did the public. An agreement between the employers and the union
was finally reached. The Protocol was not resurrected, but since the strike
had been presented as the workers’ struggle for peace through collective
bargaining, the vindication of the union’s action was labor’s victory.^88
The kehillah drew criticism from some Jews, particularly the extreme
Americanizers, who looked upon it as a state within a state. Some years
later that charge was embellished in a scurrilous attack by the Dearborn In-
dependent, the mouthpiece of the rabid anti-Semite, Henry Ford. Calling
the kehillah the center of Jewish world power, the paper charged that it had
forged a Jewish union based on hatred of non-Jews and that it had captured
control of New York. Nevertheless, the leaders of the AJC believed that
the early years of the kehillah’s existence had justified their cooperation.
Louis Marshall publicly defended the experiment, praising the accom-
plishments of the bureaus of education, religion, and philanthropy. Above
all, the kehillah deserved commendation for its labors to bring order into
the fragmented ghetto. Schiff agreed; he called the kehillahthe “most im-
portant undertaking that has ever been launched by the Jews of the City of
New York.” Nevertheless, downtown’s stab at independence, attesting to
the rapid acculturation of the newcomers and their readiness to American-
ize the Jewish legacy of community, was only short-lived. The kehillah
quickly declined with the outbreak of war, when hyper-Americanism ques-
tioned forms of ethnic expression and when concern for the war-ravaged
Jewish communities in Europe eclipsed internal issues. Hastening the
kehillah’s demise was downtown’s support of an American Jewish Congress.
Although uptown had willingly pacified the masses with partial autonomy,
116 Jacob H. Schiff