However ready he was with concrete advice, Schiff adamantly turned
down Zangwill’s proposition that he, Schiff, head the project. In a rare
comment on the subject of leadership, he bemoaned the fact that while
problems in America were ever increasing, “the number of real leaders
does hardly appear to grow.” Those like him were “over-burdened to the
breaking-point.” At the age of sixty-three and more concerned with the
success of Galveston, it would be “sheer folly” for him to head the project.
Ideally, he looked for “a younger man of great force, executive ability and
personal magnetism... willing to devote himself entirely to this and give
up everything else.” His choice was Oscar Straus, only four years his junior,
but the latter declined.^50
Schiff’s optimism slowly evaporated. In 1912 he opposed participation
by the AJC in an investigation of Turkish lands for Jewish settlement, say-
ing that it would lead the committee into Zionist and other “propaganda.”
The Mesopotamian project itself dragged on until dropped by ITO in
- A year later, Schiff concluded that “no attempt at mass settlement or
colonization by Jews has ever been successful where it has been tried and,
in my opinion, no such attempt ever will be successful.” The failure of the
Mesopotamian plan and the poor results of Galveston reinforced his con-
viction that more than five million Jews would always remain in Russia and
that it was there that the Jewish question had to be solved.^51
The Zionist SolutionThe search for havens before World War I never drew Schiff to the sup-
port of mass Jewish settlement in Palestine. Whereas other possible solu-
tions to the immigrant problem were judged mainly for their practicability,
Palestine automatically raised the matter of Zionism. The subject had gen-
erated heated and ongoing debates ever since Theodor Herzl founded the
Zionist movement (1897) that called for a Jewish “home” in Palestine “se-
cured by public law.” The lines were drawn between Herzl’s Zionist fol-
lowers and their opponents; and in the numerous clashes that ensued, a
Jewish leader of Schiff’s importance could not escape taking sides.
Appearing as a strong anti-Zionist during the first decade of the nation-
alist movement, Schiff was unafraid of feeding the public controversy.
While he attacked political Zionism on ideological and pragmatic
grounds, he purposely stayed away from a Palestinian solution for belea-
guered Russian Jews. As an immediate refuge, Palestine was impractical; as
a permanent solution to the problem of persecution, it was downright
harmful. Furthermore, a focus on Palestine might erroneously link him
with political Zionism. Worse, it was likely to step on sensitive toes, Chris-
tian as well as Jewish, and thereby overshadow the very objective of an
174 Jacob H. Schiff