becoming overcrowded, would soon be unable to “digest the foreign ele-
ments.” When Schiff asked him to suggest a solution other than restric-
tion, Sargent, a strong supporter of distribution, advised the diversion of
the immigrant stream to the Gulf ports.^14 Haunted by the prospect of re-
strictive legislation, the banker determined to act on Sargent’s words.
Pressures heavier than before weighed on Schiff in 1906. While he
watched the Jewish situation in Russia steadily deteriorate, he asked him-
self daily in the Psalmist’s words, “Me-ayin yavo ezri?” (whence will my
help come?). The Russian revolution of 1905 had brought no relief. When
mass violence flared into major pogroms during 1905–6, a frustrated and
despairing Schiff looked for new havens of refuge. The settlement of Rus-
sian Jews in Mesopotamia in conjunction with the projected Baghdad rail-
way (1903) was never more than a glimmer of an idea; a return to Zion, dis-
tasteful in principle to Schiff, appeared more unlikely after Theodor
Herzl’s death in 1904 left a weak Zionist movement even weaker.^15 The
United States remained the sole practical haven for large numbers, but
prospects for uninterrupted free immigration were growing slimmer. A re-
pugnance to the new immigrants, compounded by the rising popularity of
racist teachings, was stirring Congress to action. President Theodore
Roosevelt hinted darkly to Schiff that congestion in a few cities might
bring about in years of hard times “worse things than distress.” As the de-
signs of the restrictionists steadily mobilized support, the Galveston plan—
a “safety valve,” Schiff termed it, to deflect immigrants and to disarm re-
strictionists—bought time for the Russian Jews. Since the president liked
the idea and since TR’s new appointee to head the Department of Com-
merce and Labor (under whose jurisdiction immigration then lay) was
Schiff’s close friend Oscar Straus, the opportunity had to be seized. Those
ghettos in existence could not be undone, but to give up on the benefits of
distribution would be tantamount to the abandonment of Russian Jewry.^16
Schiff mulled over the idea, consulted with several friends, and within a
few months put up $500,000 to initiate the distribution of eastern Euro-
peans from the Gulf ports to western sites. He proposed finite but ambi-
tious objectives: the settlement over a ten-year period of roughly twenty
thousand to twenty-five thousand immigrants who landed at Galveston.
(For a variety of reasons New Orleans was rejected early on.) The Galves-
ton project sought neither to preempt Baron de Hirsch’s earlier efforts for
settlement in Argentina nor to halt emigration to any other refuge.^17 Un-
like many previous attempts at distribution, it had no blueprints for agri-
cultural settlements.
Regarding his investment as seed money, Schiff reasoned that the first
settlers would attract a stream of followers. He enthusiastically envisioned
the distribution of Jews in America’s hinterland, from the Mississippi to the
Pacific and from the Gulf to the Canadian frontier. Over time a settlement
160 Jacob H. Schiff