government answers that he found inadequate. Never did he accept any
limits on the number of times he could approach the administration.
Pogroms had become almost an annual rite of the Easter season since the
1880s, but the one in Kishinev in 1903 shocked the Western world. The
American Jewish leaders responded immediately. Following the receipt of
a cable from the Alliance Israélite Universelle on the government-
instigated riots, a meeting was hastily called in Schiff’s office, a relief com-
mittee was formed, and urgent appeals went out to Roosevelt and Hay for
American action. Schiff wrote candidly to Hay that he understood the
latter’s annoyance with many letters on Kishinev, but he asked that the sec-
retary try to understand the feelings of Schiff’s fellow Jews. Again the
American representative to St. Petersburg, Ambassador Robert McCor-
mick, denied the atrocities in Kishinev, and again Schiff, but in words less
polite than those used against Smith in 1890, expressed his “disgust” with
the way in which the ambassador served as the “messenger” and “white-
washer” of Russia. Claiming that the czarist ministers could not have im-
proved on McCormick’s reports, Schiff told the president that “what we
particularly need, are Ambassadors... who shall not sacrifice, to their so-
cial comfort, the representation of the true [American] spirit.”^19 Privately,
the banker admitted that an American protest would have little effect. The
Russian government could easily deny responsibility while it made reassur-
ing but worthless promises for the future. But Jewish outrage demanded a
response. He himself helped inflame Jewish opinion by publicly denounc-
ing Russia’s use of a Jewish scapegoat.^20
Hay opposed official action—wasn’t it merely an internal Russian affair,
and couldn’t Russia point accusingly at mob violence in the United States?
But in the end a more sympathetic Roosevelt agreed to forward a petition,
circulated publicly and condemning Russian conduct, to the American em-
bassy in St. Petersburg. Even if Russia refused to receive the petition,
which in fact it did, the substance would be made known and thereby indi-
rectly convey America’s sentiments. Schiff doubted the petition’s positive
value. He preferred Christian protests, and he dreamed, albeit in vain, that
TR might suspend relations with Russia in order to command a hearing.
To be sure, the Russian Jewish problem soured relations between the two
countries, but neither Schiff nor the fear of Jewish votes could move the
administration further.
Americans responded generously to the Kishinev relief fund, outstrip-
ping the Germans and French combined almost tenfold. The public also
expressed its horror over Kishinev at mass protest meetings, and this time
the Jewish stewards made no attempt to restrain the Jewish community.
Schiff helped to plan one such meeting, and he arranged that it be called by
132 Jacob H. Schiff