of 1912, congressional adoption of a literacy test was only a matter of time.
The outbreak of World War I reinforced the restrictionists. Nationalism
and xenophobia were on the rise, and restrictionist legislation, embodying
the literacy test, easily passed over Wilson’s veto. Schiff, usually the opti-
mist, gloomily but correctly predicted the passage of even harsher meas-
ures after the war. His long-held belief that America was the fail-safe haven
for all immigrants was fast eroding.^12
The American Solution: The Galveston PlanAn innovative plan of directing the immigrant flow away from the eastern
cities, the Galveston movement was the last serious effort before World
War I to achieve a widespread distribution of eastern European Jews. On
the premise that the best refuge was America, it sought to demonstrate the
ongoing viability of free immigration. By planting the newcomers in places
other than the congested ghettos, it promised to allay American fears of the
immigrants and thus stave off restrictionist legislation.
Most immigrants had effectively resisted the earlier plans of the estab-
lished Jews on the issue of settlement, and the latter were forced to retreat
step by step. When agricultural colonization failed, the stewards encour-
aged independent farmers. Since agriculture in any form proved unattrac-
tive, they established the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) and concen-
trated on removing immigrants to smaller urban areas. The IRO’s meager
results pointed up a major stumbling block to all attempts at removal: once
they landed in New York, immigrants were loath to undertake a second
voyage to unheard of destinations. To circumvent that obstacle the Galves-
ton movement proposed to send the immigrants directly on an uninter-
rupted voyage from Europe to the Texas port for distribution in trans-
Mississippi locations.
Schiff put forth the Galveston idea at the end of 1906, and like the
Montefiore Home and the Harvard Semitics museum, it became his per-
sonal project. Although the AJC existed by then, it had no hand in the
plan’s management. At the banker’s death, Israel Zangwill rather unchari-
tably called it “the only constructive idea my dear friend Schiff ever had.”^13
In point of fact, as Schiff himself was quick to admit, the idea was not his.
To be sure, he had thought of ports of entry besides New York as early as
1892, when he suggested that the Alliance Israélite Universelle send emi-
grants directly to San Francisco. In 1904 he briefly considered Baltimore,
Boston, Charleston, and New Orleans as well as Galveston. But nothing
came of those thoughts. A little over a year later, Schiff met the
commissioner-general of immigration, Franklin P. Sargent, and the latter
warned that New York and the other Atlantic ports, which were rapidly
In Search of a Refuge 159