for their own benefit, which is the benefit of the State, ought to be encour-
aged in every way.” The “benefit,” he explained, meant the “moral and ec-
onomic betterment” of labor. The banker preferred independent union
policies that were separate from citizens’ organizations or the government,
and only in 1919, a high point in labor unrest, did he advise legal regula-
tion of unions.
The clash between Schiff the businessman and Schiff the humanitarian
was also reflected in the matter of strikes. Although he opposed strikes on
principle, he contributed on occasion to the relief of strikers’ families while
the job action lasted. For the settlement of industrial disputes the banker
counseled mediation and arbitration instead of strikes and blacklists, and in
some cases he acted as an arbitrator. Schiff opposed the Adamson Act of
1916, not for its imposition of an eight-hour day for railway workers but
for the pressure tactics of organized labor.^87
The prospect of organized labor’s advances seemed not to have worried
Schiff. “We are all of us something of Socialists nowadays,” he said about
his pro-labor stand in an early meat-packing dispute. He also thought that
increased taxes on capitalists were perhaps justified. In 1910 the banker
predicted quite calmly that the coming decades would “belong” to labor;
the wealthy would take a back seat, and labor’s representatives would sit on
boards of corporations.^88 Since Kuhn, Loeb was affected by industrial labor
disputes only insofar as they influenced the stock market or the companies
financed by the firm, Schiff could be more detached than corporate execu-
tives from the demands of workers.
More troublesome was the issue of government regulation of business dur-
ing the Roosevelt and Taft administrations. In accord with mounting pub-
lic condemnation of trusts, government suits against large industrial com-
binations multiplied. Although Kuhn, Loeb was compelled to take note of
public opinion, Schiff found little merit in the antibusiness mood. Politi-
cians played on the trust theme in order to build up a following. “Unfortu-
nately it is human nature to... get something for nothing, or for little,
than to pay its proper value, and any demagogue can easily make a success
on that line.” He complained that businessmen were caught between ha-
rassment by the government on the one hand and pressure by labor on the
other. Unsure of the legality of their practices, they needed guidelines
from the Supreme Court or preferably a more explicit Sherman Antitrust
Act in order to conduct their affairs. The major decisions by the Supreme
Court in 1911 on Standard Oil and the tobacco trusts were therefore bene-
ficial insofar as they eliminated uncertainty and instructed the combina-
tions on how to reorganize.^89
The panic of 1907 brought charges from big business that Roosevelt’s
30 Jacob H. Schiff