patients, and finally Mr. Schiff opened the door of a small room the only
occupant of which was a young boy lying upon a bed from which he had
not the strength to rise. When the door was opened and the boy saw who
was the visitor, a smile came over his face, and when [Schiff] moved up to
the bedside and took him by the hand, and said a kindly word, his eyes
gleamed, and all sense of pain, of stress, and of anguish gave way to an an-
gelic sweetness.”
Working tirelessly to build up the financial resources of the home,
Schiff tried various methods of fund-raising. Montefiore was the chief in-
stitution for which he personally solicited funds, and every donation was
personally acknowledged. Because Schiff wasthe home, it attracted contri-
butions from non-Jews as well as Jews. Doubtless some donations came in
as a result of Schiff’s gifts to the pet charities of others, and in that way
Schiff dollars funded Montefiore indirectly as well as directly. The only
donation the banker refused was a $10,000 check from August Corbin,
president of the Manhattan Beach Company, who in 1879 had announced
the restriction of Jews from his resort development on Coney Island. Schiff
told Corbin that Jews didn’t want his gifts; but in order not to deprive
Montefiore, Schiff made up the $10,000 out of his own pocket.^74
While Schiff kept a tight rein on salaries—don’t spoil a man by making
too much of him, he advised—and other expenditures, he was alert to all
sources of money that the home could tap. Montefiore charged small fees
of those patients in a position to pay, and it received an allotment from the
Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association, a nonsectarian agency that al-
located money to private hospitals in accordance with the number of non-
paying patients they treated. Schiff, a director of that association, was in a
position to insist that the home get its fair share. Similarly, he worried
about Montefiore’s share when federations and united fund-raising took
over.^75 Beyond the private sector, the home received token amounts from
the city that were measured in pennies for each patient by the day. Solicit-
ing higher municipal subsidies, Schiff looked as well to the state and fed-
eral governments for minimal assistance. He maintained that the use of
public funds for sectarian institutions like Montefiore should not be pro-
hibited, and he called for state help to advanced tubercular patients. The
needs of the home were also paramount in his pressure for tax exemptions
for charitable gifts. He believed that without such an exemption the home
would have died or at best vegetated.^76
Schiff drove himself, and he expected similar dedication from the staff
and directors. Happiest when captain of the team rather than a mere
player, he had free rein at Montefiore. No detail, not even the size of post-
cards to be mailed, escaped scrutiny, and errors by staff members incurred
impatience if not anger. Nor did he, a man who held onto many traditional
religious observances, permit employees to miss work on the second day of
Leadership and Philanthropy 67