each person a certificate indicating his destination. If he were directed to
the interior but refused to leave New York, he would forfeit his claim to
any aid intended for immigrants. The idea went no further, but at a confer-
ence that year of leading French, English, and German Jews, convened at
Schiff’s request, the participants agreed to take on supervisory roles in the
emigration process. Addressing both the issues of distribution and of stag-
gering the number of arrivals, they promised that those Russian Jews not
severely oppressed would be induced to stay put. The others, whose desti-
nations would be fixed, would be persuaded to postpone their departure as
long as possible.^97 From the point of view of Schiff and his associates
progress had been made, but vague promises quickly evaporated as the
plight of Russian Jewry worsened.
A new wrinkle in the settlement of Jewish immigrants surfaced the next
year, this time involving the American government. Restrictionist senti-
ment was on the rise, and in 1891, Congress passed a new immigration law
that barred entry to those “likely to become a public charge” (LPC). As-
sisted immigrants (or those whose passage had been paid for by foreign in-
dividuals or organizations) could be detained by local immigration author-
ities until they proved that they didn’t fall into the LPC category. Strictly
speaking, Russian Jews whose passage was funded by others or who had
money but no guarantee of employment in the United States were liable
for detention or deportation. Again distribution offered a way out. When
Simon Wolf of the UAHC’s Board of Delegates pleaded with Secretary of
the Treasury Charles Foster for a lenient interpretation of the law, Foster
consented, albeit grudgingly, on condition that American Jews successfully
disperse the immigrants to places outside the congested industrial centers.
To be sure, the law placed new responsibilities on both the European and
American Jewish leaders. As Schiff reminded Hirsch, the Europeans had to
remember to exclude prospective emigrants who would become public
charges. On the American side the situation was far stickier, since the ac-
tual disposition of cases depended on local officials, and each adverse deci-
sion necessitated a separate appeal. (On that score, Schiff confided to Cas-
sel that banker Jesse Seligman, whose firm served as fiscal agent of the
Navy Department, successfully influenced the government to ignore cer-
tain open violations of the law.) But Foster’s interpretation of the LPC law
added strength to the case for distribution.^98
More than any idea of immigrant relief, distribution by whatever device
bespoke the assumed superiority of the stewards toward their eastern Eu-
ropean wards. A carryover of Old World patterns of prejudice, the German
Jew, who chose to forget that he had been the victim of Sephardic discrim-
ination, generally looked down on his “unenlightened” eastern brethren
120 Jacob H. Schiff