3
The New Immigrants
For over thirty years the problems of eastern European immigrants to the
United States eclipsed all other philanthropic concerns of Jewish commu-
nal leaders. The problems themselves were abundantly clear; the solutions
were less apparent. Never before had the established Germans been con-
fronted by a tidal wave of newcomers whose physical and cultural condi-
tions begged for immediate attention. Schiff, for one, undertook the added
responsibilities with least unwillingness. Working on various fronts simul-
taneously, he seized on multiple ideas that harbored any glimmer of suc-
cess. The agencies through which he addressed the immigrants’ needs
were largely untried and experimental.
Certain principles remained unchanged. The banker’s assumption and
exercise of leadership powers, although more pronounced, were not new.
Neither was his sensitivity to government and non-Jewish popular opinion
that always attended his choice of approach. Two new factors, however,
colored his activities. One, the relation of American to European Jews in
directing and supporting the eastern Europeans gave rise to complications
in matters of international policy making even as it hailed the coming of
age of American Jews. A second, the steady maturation of the immigrant
constituency, a Jewry that increasingly resented the established leaders,
added obstacles to the purposes and practices of elitist control. The
breadth of Schiff’s expanded operations enhanced his importance among
American and European Jews. At the same time, situations arose that ulti-
mately threatened his leadership and adumbrated radical changes in com-
munal governance.
Baron de Hirsch Steps InThe mass emigration of eastern European Jews in the wake of pogroms
and czarist economic and cultural restrictions cast 200,000 on American
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