had come to America in 1839 and, like many other German Jews, had
started out as a peddler. Ten years later, when he was the senior partner in
the wholesale clothing store of Kuhn and Netter in Lafayette, Indiana, he
invited Solomon Loeb, a distant cousin and poor new immigrant, to join
him. Loeb’s position in the business was strengthened by his marriage to
Kuhn’s sister, and he soon became a partner. The business moved to Cin-
cinnati, where it turned to general merchandising. The partners pros-
pered; during the Civil War a boom in the clothing trade and the Union’s
demand for army blankets caused profits to soar. While the firm gained a
name for soundness, the partners grew more knowledgeable about busi-
ness credits. They returned to New York and in 1867 established Kuhn,
Loeb & Company, a banking firm that dealt primarily and successfully in
government bonds and later in railroad securities. Kuhn’s early retirement
and the refusal of Loeb’s sons to make the business their career (James
Loeb worked in the firm but only for a few years) would be more than off-
set by the arrival of Jacob Schiff in 1875.
Marriage to his employer’s daughter and a partnership in Kuhn, Loeb
assured Schiff of high social status. Banking then was considered by many
to be the top rung of the American Jewish socioeconomic ladder, and
Schiff adapted his lifestyle to that of his established peers. Like them but
soon outstripping most in wealth, he lived at the correct address (in 1887
the Schiffs had a new house built for them at 932 Fifth Avenue), affiliated
with prestigious Reform temples (Beth-El and Emanu-El), and sent his
children to appropriate schools (Frieda to Brearley and Mortimer to Dr.
Sachs’s School). For recreation and for business he and his circle frequently
traveled to Europe and renewed their ties to Germany.^16
Jewish investment bankers in Schiff’s day formed a cohesive group
whose members worked together, socialized together, and worshiped to-
gether. Bound by blood or marriage, they created a kinship network whose
importance in the business history of American Jews has been an accepted
fact ever since Barry Supple published his seminal essay on German Jewish
financiers. Supple demonstrated how the individual firms were built on
family ties and how family ties united the separate banking houses in an
“interlocking structure.” Identification of family with the firm intensified
“regard for the business and a continuity of entrepreneurial skill,” and it
strengthened the firm’s unity in building a reputation for confidence and
trust. Creating opportunities for Jews who, because of their Jewishness,
were barred from Gentile firms, the closely tied group of banking houses
collectively provided a base for cooperation in new investments. For exam-
ple, Schiff’s friendship with the Guggenheims, with whom he shared relig-
ious and communal interests, eased Kuhn, Loeb’s investment in Guggen-
heim mining interests. In sum, Supple concluded, the German Jewish
bankers owed much of their success to the bonds of kinship.^17
6 Jacob H. Schiff