ment for Jews and Gentiles by the government was nonnegotiable. Private
agencies that claimed to represent a public constituency were also bound
by that requirement if they hoped to elicit a generous response. Schiff gave
only a small amount to the New York Juvenile Asylum because it planned
to serve only Protestant children; and when he contributed to the Prison
Association of New York, he stipulated that “prisoners of my faith” receive
the same benefits as others. That condition also obtained during World
War I, when he professed a readiness to support the distribution of Chris-
tian Bibles to servicemen only if the Jewish Bible was issued to Jewish
men.^84
Among his beneficiaries, Schiff counted nonsectarian agencies, notably
the Charity Organization Society, in which he long served as vice presi-
dent; and he publicly urged Jewish aid to such institutions. A means of
gaining Gentile goodwill, such undertakings promised to integrate the
Jews more rapidly into American society by breaking down barriers
between Christian and Jew.^85 At the same time, Schiff believed that the
label “nonsectarian” imposed certain rules of conduct on an institution. An
agency like a settlement house that claimed to be nonsectarian could not
disseminate Christian teachings or exclude “representative” Jews from its
directorate. It even erred when it solicited funds from Jews on grounds that
it served Jews, because those very words betrayed an ongoing distinction
between Christian and non-Christian.^86 Schiff neither hesitated to lecture
errant nonsectarian agencies nor to use his position within charitable cir-
cles to attack rank discrimination. After the panic of 1907, when the num-
ber of Jewish needy escalated and forced the temporary closing of the
United Hebrew Charities, he sparked the establishment of an employment
agency underwitten by private donors. Not only would it put social service
above profit making, but one of its principal objectives was to “ignore and
thereby counteract” discrimination against Jews in employment. Con-
cerned primarily with the Jewish unemployed, he invested heavily in the
resultant National Employment Exchange, which was open to all.^87
A few years later, when the prewar crusade for Americanization hard-
ened prejudice against Jews, Schiff was inundated with complaints from
job-seeking Jews. They brought charges of discrimination on the part of
the exchange just because they were Jews. The banker conducted his own
investigation and was appalled by the findings: “I discovered that the
forms applicants had to fill out contained a space requiring a statement of
the applicant’s religion—this in an American social service society!—and
that applicants who stated their faith as Jewish were treated with scant
courtesy and discouraged from returning for further aid and informa-
tion.” The manager of the agency justified the discrimination on the
grounds that many employers, including Jews, refused to hire Jewish ap-
plicants. Besides, the “better class of Jews” didn’t use the exchange, and
70 Jacob H. Schiff