same complaints against elitist control that accompanied the meeting with
Witte, the NCRSRM, and the organization of the AJC and the kehillah
were not heard. Not only did the masses share the desire to defeat Russia,
but even if they understood the blueprints of the campaign, they could not
help being overwhelmed by the AJC’s skillful, steamrolling tactics.
Technically, the AJC ran the campaign, widely publicizing the issue and
mobilizing congressmen, opinion molders, religious leaders, and the pub-
lic at large to their side. Behind the scenes, however, Schiff as always took
center stage. To be sure, the daily moves were executed by Marshall, Adler,
and a few others, but no step was taken or decision made without the
banker’s clearance and consent. Nor did committee action constrain him, a
leader rather than a team player, from striking out on his own. When he
saw fit, he used his own contacts and issued his own statements. Angry, de-
fiant, and obsessed with the Russian issue, he turned the campaign for ab-
rogation into a personal contest with President William Howard Taft. Pri-
vately, the latter too felt personally challenged, and he blamed the matter
on “Jake Schiff” and his vanity. At times the banker’s associates feared his
quick tongue and hasty actions, but Mayer Sulzberger, the respected elder
statesman of the AJC, was more tolerant: “On the general principle that
every successful business needs and has a wicked partner, there is no occa-
sion for tears or regrets. Nagging and dunning are sometimes more effec-
tive than genteeler methods.”^55
By the terms of a commercial treaty of 1832 reciprocal rights of sojourn
and trade were granted Russians and Americans. In the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, however, Russia began to restrict American Jews seek-
ing to enter the country, refusing even to visa passports. Sporadic protests
by the United States moved Russia only to make some exceptions but not
to retreat in principle. As Jewish leaders bitterly noted, as long as America
accepted such practices, it was in effect participating in discrimination
against its own citizens. Seeking help from both the Republican and Dem-
ocratic parties, the banker also reminded TR of the importance of the issue
to Jewish voters. Defining the matter as an American issue, the stewards
rightly charged that Jewish equality was being compromised.
Although the sanctity of the American passport and the stigma of
second-class citizenship constituted the core of the public brief for abroga-
tion, the Jewish stewards were at least equally committed to the idea that
abrogation would effect the liberation of Russian Jewry. Given the Russian
premise that foreign Jews could not be treated differently from native Jews,
it followed that if Russia granted full rights to foreign Jews, it would have
to accord the same privileges—tantamount to civic equality—to its own
subjects. Schiff had explained even before the establishment of the AJC
Captivity and Redemption 145