membered his school fondly and contributed to its upkeep over many
years. Recalling the religious factionalism that had rocked the Jewish com-
munity when he was a boy, he advised school officials to strive consciously
for Jewish unity. In words often repeated to American Jews, he said: “Only
if we are united among ourselves can we claim the respect of our fellow-
citizens and successfully ward off the attacks which are made upon our race
from so many quarters.”^6
Thrust immediately into the business world, Jacob was first apprenticed
to a large mercantile house. He then entered his brother-in-law’s banking
firm where he worked until 1865. Meantime, his desire to go to America in-
tensified. His father confessed to a distant cousin in St. Louis that, unlike
his older siblings, Jacob at age seventeen was “quite a problem because he
already feels that Frankfurt is too small for his ambition.” Worried about
whether his son would be able to live an Orthodox Jewish life in the New
World, Moses put that question to the cousin. The latter either failed to re-
spond or answered in the negative, because the father withheld his consent
to the idea of emigration. Instead he advised that Jacob himself write the
cousin and ask his help in securing a position that did not require work on
the Sabbath. Nothing came of that, but the son proceeded with his plans.
Unwilling to risk a serious family rift, he refused to leave without his father’s
blessing. The rest of the family supported him. They worked on the father,
and his older brother gave Jacob the money for his trip. At the last moment,
when the carriage was at the door, father and son were reconciled. Armed
with $500, letters of recommendation, and a package of kosher meat for the
journey, Jacob left Frankfurt and reached New York in August 1865.^7
Sources for the story of Jacob’s emigration are admittedly scanty. No
single push or combination of pushes, except a desire to escape his father’s
rigidity, explained the young man’s motivation. Recent scholarship puts
him in the second wave of German Jewish immigrants to the United States
(1865–1914); unlike the first wave (1830–1865), the later arrivals as a
group were not prompted to emigrate by either economic needs or dreams
of political emancipation. Rather, many were pushed by a desire to escape
military conscription or pulled to join relatives or close friends already es-
tablished in America.^8 None of these reasons is hinted at in the data on
Schiff. The picture emerges of a highly ambitious, obstinate, hardworking,
and self-confident young man from a comfortable, if not well-to-do,
home—he never was the poor immigrant boy who rose from rags to
riches—who, for reasons of his own, fixed on America. An independent
eighteen-year-old, Jacob was younger than most of those German immi-
grants who would shortly constitute a Jewish banking elite in America.^9
Jacob’s ship was met by a William Bonn, who had been told of Schiff’s
arrival. Formerly of the Jewish high society in Frankfurt but unknown to
Schiff, Bonn, a few years his senior, took the lonely newcomer to a small
The Making of a Leader 3