peasantry.” A small number of idealists found the idea of colonization ap-
pealing, but the overwhelming majority, inexperienced and unaccustomed
to the rigors of agrarian life, stayed aloof. The new economic frontier that
lured American farmers as well as the foreigners was the rapidly industrial-
izing city. There, despite the hardships of the ghetto, the immigrants
found a way of cushioning the trauma of uprooting in a place where they
could comfortably speak their language, practice their religious customs,
and find familiar companionship. In 1905, looking back at twenty years of
experimentation, Schiff finally admitted that the meager results of coloni-
zation did not warrant the expense. He never repudiated the agrarian ideal,
but he shifted his support to independent farmers and particularly to Jew-
ish agricultural schools. Only those “fit” to be farmers would be so trained.
Over time, Schiff grew dissatisfied with the agricultural school at Wood-
bine, the first such attempt by the Hirsch fund (1894), and thirty years later
he looked for a fresh start. In 1916 he and Chicago millionaire Julius Ro-
senwald each offered $150,000 for relocating the school to Peekskill, New
York, but both the plan and the fund’s commitment to a separate agricultu-
ral school were abandoned after America entered the war.^95
Schiff seized on other ideas for relieving congestion in the eastern ghettos.
A consistent champion of immigrant distribution, he held fast to a state-
ment he had made in 1890: “The city of New York... can scarcely digest
large additional numbers of Jewish emigrants, and if serious results in
many respects are to be obviated, more efficient means must be found to
distribute the new arrivals over the less densely populated parts of the
country.” He and like-minded champions of unrestricted immigration
argued that the country could well absorb an ongoing flow of new arrivals
as long as the immigrants were more evenly directed. The banker assured
Baron de Hirsch that “if we had the ways and means to distribute the arri-
vals over the country, I think it fair to say that the United States are in a po-
sition to absorb successfully and cheerfully between 1.5 and 2 million more
Russian emigrants within the next ten or fifteen years.”^96
“Ways and means” meant primarily financial aid from Europe for help-
ing immigrants settle in the interior of the country, but European cooper-
ation in the form of advice to prospective immigrants and supervision of
the emigrant flow also was required. To be effective, distribution had to be
designed before the eastern Europeans arrived. Above all, emigrants had to
learn that America was not synonymous with New York. “I wish to God it
were different,” Schiff wrote, but since over 70 percent of the immigrants
disembarked regularly in New York, that impression was well nigh ineradi-
cable. When he traveled to Europe in 1890, he suggested a corrective: offi-
cers of an international organization in charge of emigration would give
The New Immigrants 119