expertise and practical assistance. Only after his death was a personal con-
cern of Schiff’s added to the experimental agenda. Since the banker had
suffered many years from impaired hearing, he left Montefiore $300,000
for research that included “the constant study of and searching for ways
and means by which it may become possible to permanently alleviate or
cure deafness.”^71
Montefiore also related to Schiff’s broader vision on how to ameliorate
the living conditions of the new immigrants. Appalled by the squalor of the
Jewish tenements, he valued the home for reducing the number of chronic
invalids and thereby the prevalence of disease in the overcrowded quarters.
Since he often preached the salutary effects of moving immigrants from
the factories and shops to the land, he warmly supported the home’s sani-
tarium in Westchester, where farming and fresh air were integral compo-
nents of therapy for mild tuberculosis cases. As a way of improving ghetto
life or of showing the benefits of agricultural labor even to a few, the home
served as a social as well as medical laboratory.
Control of the home rested in the hands of an executive committee of
the board, which was charged with the review of applications, purchase of
supplies, and weekly inspections of routine operations. Schiff’s devotion
exceeded that broad mandate. Associates knew that he was never available
on Sunday mornings, which were reserved exclusively for meetings of the
Montefiore board. At 52 William Street matters of the home frequently
took precedence over business affairs. On May 9, 1901, the day that the
war over the Northern Pacific Railroad sent the stock market reeling,
Schiff was anxiously sought on Wall Street. When he was finally located at
Montefiore, he explained: “I thought that the poor people up there needed
me more than you people down here.” According to a friend, Rabbi Sam-
uel Schulman of Temple Beth-El, the banker’s greatest joy was in leading
Sabbath services in the home’s Orthodox synagogue.^72
A hands-on administrator in philanthropy as in business, Schiff read and
reacted in writing to countless applications, financial statements, medical
and staff reports, and complaints from donors. He made frequent rounds
of inspection, consistently refusing to be accompanied by staff. Injecting
himself personally into the lives of the patients, he learned their names and
medical progress. He chatted with them on his weekly visits to the wards,
he donated Yiddish books and newspapers for their use, and he and his wife
took them out on annual excursions. Patients well enough to be discharged
were helped to make fresh starts, and if a patient died at the home, he was
assured a decent burial. Perhaps most important to the hospitalized, Schiff
made provision for families impoverished by a breadwinner’s illness.^73
The patients responded to his warmth and compassion. The president
of a non-Jewish hospital told a moving story to the American Hebrewof a
visit to Montefiore’s wards in Schiff’s company: “We... saw many of [the]
66 Jacob H. Schiff