United States and perhaps Canada ran into the millions.^6 Two reasons best
explain the contradictions: first, they were often immediate reactions to
developments in the Russian situation and in the struggle against the re-
strictionists, and second, they paralleled Schiff’s unending search for weap-
ons in his war against the czarist government.
For public consumption, Schiff and his associates endowed the Russian
immigrants with the middle-class virtues so attractive to Americans—they
were hardworking, sober, law-abiding, and family oriented. Schiff lauded
in particular the “idealistic” Russians who tempered America’s materialism.
A rosy picture of immigrant life provided the stewards with ammunition
for contesting restrictionist proposals—the literacy test, the requirement
that the immigrant produce a certificate of good character from his native
government, and deportation for any immigrant who conspired to over-
throw a foreign government (a blow to Irish nationalists and to all Marx-
ists). The seamy side of ghetto life—disease, crime, prostitution—was ig-
nored as the stewards argued the immigrant contributions to the nation.
Indeed, even before those specific issues caught the public’s attention, the
communal leaders were quietly combating health problems and delin-
quency in the ghetto. As previously discussed, Schiff supported Lillian
Wald’s nursing service and settlement house, the need for housing reform,
and the political crusade of 1900 –1901 against prostitution. He also de-
fended the immigrants when Police Commissioner Bingham charged that
Jews accounted for a disproportionate number of New York City’s law-
breakers and when published reports revealed a high incidence of tubercu-
losis among the newcomers.
To men like Schiff, amelioration of ghetto conditions and even the goal
of rapid Americanization were not only ends in themselves but also means
to build up the image of the desirable Jewish immigrant. Every significant
facet of immigrant behavior, from self-help (good) to Zionist affiliation (de-
cidedly bad, since it smacked of questionable loyalty to the United States)
was weighed for its possible impact on the cause of free immigration.^7
From 1904 on, Schiff warned American Jews to guard against restric-
tionist legislation. Alternately optimistic and pessimistic about the chances
of free immigration, “which should be as unlimited as the world is wide,”
he witnessed the growing strength of anti-immigration sentiment in Con-
gress and the rising popularity of the literacy test. Aware of the high rate of
illiteracy among Jews (roughly 25 percent of men and women over four-
teen years of age), he denounced the test and even argued that in some
ways the illiterates were preferable: “The immigrant who comes here to
find actual work, by which to support himself and his family, and who pos-
sesses good health and physical strength, is likely, even if he cannot read or
write, to become a better citizen and greater asset to this country than he
who is highly trained and educated and who, because of this, assumes that
156 Jacob H. Schiff