access to funds from abroad. At a private conference of leading New York
bankers he dramatically announced that he had instructed Kuhn, Loeb to
adhere to the policy of no loans to an anti-Semitic Russia even after his
death. But his strategy could succeed only if other banking houses followed
suit and remained impervious to Russian offers of three or four times the
normal profit. He threatened to resign from the board of the National City
Bank if it floated a Russian loan, and he argued with the Morgans, albeit in
vain, that doing business with Russia was financially as well as morally un-
sound. Jewish houses fell into line more readily. Isaac Seligman of the Se-
ligman firm reported in 1905 that as a unit they refused to handle Russian
bonds as long as the country’s Jewish policy remained unchanged.^27
European Jewish bankers posed more of a problem, for some houses did
aid Russia. In Schiff’s words, “Jewish high finance” had the wherewithal to
pressure Russia in the 1890s “but instead closed its eye to make a despi-
cable profit, and rendered service to the Russian Government selling her
Jewish subjects for a few pieces of silver.” Lord Rothschild assured Schiff in
1904 that his London firm had not handled a Russian loan since 1875 and
that Russia had no chance in England with either Jewish or, for that matter,
non-Jewish houses. He was less sanguine about the firms on the Continent.
Although the Paris Rothschilds were anti-Russia, former Jewish firms in
Berlin were now either Christian or religionless. Besides, he reminded
Schiff, the Continental bankers were under greater pressure from the shift-
ing diplomatic maneuvers of their governments.^28
Neither Rothschild nor Schiff was deterred by the possibility that their
loan policies might provoke Russia still further against its Jews. Nor were
they constrained by considerations of Jewish image. When the stakes were
so high, it mattered less what non-Jews might say about international Jew-
ish money power. Besides, two of Schiff’s Christian friends, Andrew D.
White and Charles Eliot, wondered why Jewish bankers did not exert uni-
fied pressure on Russia. Assuming the existence of an international banking
combine, they turned the old stereotype around and used it to criticize
Jewish inaction. The behavior of the Jewish bankers as a group, they
charged, sabotaged the cause of Russian Jewish liberation. Ironically, Schiff
and his associates were now called upon to explain why the nonexistent
international combine of Jewish bankers had not mobilized its resources!
Schiff’s hope for a united boycott of Russian loans never materialized.
The condition of Russian Jews was not improved, and the efforts of Schiff
and Rothschild only fed the myth of Jewish political machinations. Never-
theless, Schiff’s intransigence on the matter of loans was significant enough
to elicit special attention from the czarist regime.^29
Wartime needs impelled Russia to try again to win over Schiff or at least
to neutralize him. In 1904, von Plehve let it be known that he desired to
confer with Schiff. The banker was amenable but only on two conditions:
Captivity and Redemption 135