B’nai B’rith, and the National Conference of Jewish Charities and of non-
Jewish observers. Nevertheless, the agency was hardly cost-efficient. The
considerable sums of money and effort that it required succeeded with
fewer than 6 percent of the immigrants (some 79,000) during the twenty-
year lifetime of the agency. Many of the eastern Europeans had relatives or
friends in New York; others refused to face the hardships of a second voy-
age.^101 In 1903 a spirited debate on the merits of removal and distribution
appeared in the pages of the American Hebrew. Dr. Isaac Rubinow, the fore-
most critic, dismissed distribution as the “new patent medecine.” In a
strong defense of the economic and cultural advantages of the urban
ghetto, he argued that “a well-meaning member of the Jewish ‘better
classes,’ a generous contributor to every cause, a man beyond any suspicion
as to his motives” (Rubinow probably had Schiff in mind) lost sight of
those assets when confronted by the congestion and filth. For different rea-
sons non-Jewish Americans also criticized the idea of distribution. Some
said it was a device to send pauper Jews to the United States; labor leader
Samuel Gompers and economist John Commons called it a subterfuge for
evading outright restriction. In the words of Prescott Hall, spokesman for
the influential Immigration Restriction League, distribution was “a bluff of
the Jews and steamship companies to throw dust in the eyes of the ignorant
and prevent proper legislation.”^102
In 1909, while the restrictionist tide continued to swell, Schiff endorsed
distribution in a speech to the Jewish Chautauqua. He repeated his stock
ideas: the United States could and should absorb more immigrants, but the
problems of immigrant congestion in the eastern cities menaced both the
cause of free immigration and the status of the American Jew generally.
Those were the issues, he confessed, that gnawed at him “in the small
hours of the morning when responsibilities weigh particularly heavy, when
burdens often appear almost unbearable.” He added privately that “be-
cause I feel that this country for long years to come must continue to form
the great outlet for Russian emigration, I am the more anxious to place my-
self and my means into accomplishing all that can be done to open the wide
territory beyond the Mississippi to a large Jewish immigration.”^103
The American press commented on the Chautauqua address, and this
time the Hearst papers joined the critics. “Well Meant, But Not Entirely
Sound” read the headline in the Boston American. Density of population
gave Jews a political voice, the paper said, and hence the wherewithal to
counter prejudice. As for those who feared that Jews might become too
powerful, well, that could happen only if Jews proved abler than other
Americans, and in that case they deserved the power. While Hearst nur-
tured his political ambitions by pandering to the immigrant masses, criti-
cism failed to shake Schiff’s convictions. He repeatedly explained to down-
town audiences how free immigration depended on proper distribution.
122 Jacob H. Schiff