Jacob Henry Schiff, born
Jacob Hirsch Schiff (January 10, 1847 – September 25, 1920) was a German-born New York City
bankerAn investment bank is a financial institution that raises capital, trades in securities and manages corporate mergers and acquisitions. Investment banks profit from companies and governments by raising money through issuing and selling securities in capital markets and insuring bonds An investment...
and philanthropist, who helped finance, among many other things, the Japanese military efforts against Tsarist Russia in the
Russo-Japanese WarThe Russo-Japanese War or the Manchurian Campaign in some English sources, was a conflict that grew out of the rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
.
From his base on
Wall StreetWall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the...
, he was the foremost Jewish leader in what later became known as the "Schiff era," grappling with all major issues and problems of the day, including the plight of Russian Jews under the
tsarNicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, and claimed the title of King of Poland...
, American and international anti-Semitism, care of needy Jewish immigrants, and the rise of
ZionismZionism is the international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The area was the Jewish Biblical homeland, called the Land of Israel...
. He also became the director of many important corporations, including the National City Bank of New York, Equitable Life Assurance Society, Wells Fargo & Company, and the
Union Pacific RailroadThe Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest and oldest operating railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....
. In many of his interests he was associated with E.H. Harriman.
Early life
He was born in 1847 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, to Moses and Clara (Niederhofheim) Schiff, members of a distinguished rabbinical family that traced its lineage in
FrankfurtFrankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2008 population of 670,000. The urban area had an estimated population of 2.26 million in 2001...
back to 1370. Schiff was educated in the schools of Frankfurt and was first employed in the banking and brokerage business as an apprentice in 1861. After the U.S. Civil War had ended in April, 1865, Schiff came to the United States, arriving in New York City on August 6. He was licensed as a broker on November 21, 1866, and joined the firm of Budge, Schiff & Company in 1867. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in September 1870.
Upon the dissolution of Budge, Schiff & Company in 1872, Schiff decided to return to Germany. In 1873 he became manager of the
HamburgHamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the sixth-largest city in the European Union...
branch of the London & Hanseatic Bank. He returned to Frankfurt, however, upon the death of his father later that year. In 1874 Abraham Kuhn of the banking firm of
Kuhn, Loeb & CompanyKuhn, Loeb & Co. was a bulge bracket, investment bank founded in 1867 by Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb. Under the leadership of Jacob H. Schiff, it grew to be one of the most influential investment banks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, financing America's expanding railways and growth...
invited him to return to New York and enter the firm.
Kuhn, Loeb & Company
Schiff accepted Kuhn's invitation in January 1875, bringing to Kuhn, Loeb & Company his connections with Sir
Ernest CasselSir Ernest Joseph Cassel, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, PC was a British merchant banker and capitalist.Born in Cologne, Germany, the son of Jacob Cassel, who owned a small bank, Cassel arrived penniless in Liverpool, England in 1869 and found employment with a firm of grain merchants...
of London,
Robert FlemingRobert Fleming was a Scottish financier, the founder of merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co.Born the son of a shopkeeper in Dundee, he launched the Scottish American Investment Trust in 1873, the first of the Scottish investment trusts...
of Dundee (later of London), and Edouard Noetzlin of the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas. On May 6, 1875, he married Therese Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb. The couple were the parents of a son and a daughter.
In 1885 Schiff became head of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. Besides financing such Eastern railroads as the
PennsylvaniaThe Pennsylvania Railroad was an American railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy", the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
and the Louisville & Nashville, he took part in the reorganization of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1896-99, and at various times aided the American Smelting & Refining Company (
ASARCOASARCO LLC is a mining, smelting, and refining company based in Tucson, Arizona that mines and processes primarily copper. The company, a subsidiary of Grupo México, is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy...
), the
Westinghouse Electric CompanyThe Westinghouse Electric Company is a multi-national nuclear technologies company, a part of the original Westinghouse Electric. The company's operations incorporate various nuclear services, power plants, nuclear fuel, inspection equipment, advanced welding services, and remote handling...
, and the
Western UnionThe Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Greenwood Village, Colorado, and its international marketing and commercial services headquarters are in Montvale, New Jersey...
Telegraph Company. Less fortunate was his share in the reorganization in 1902 of the Metropolitan Street Railway of New York.
He became associated with E.H. Harriman in notable contests with
James J. HillJames Jerome Hill , was a noted Canadian-American railroad executive. He was the chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway, which served a substantial area of the Upper Midwest, the northern Great Plains, and Pacific Northwest...
and J.P. Morgan & Company for control of several Western railroads. Schiff served as a director of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, National City Bank of New York, Central Trust Company, Western Union Telegraph Company,
Union Pacific RailroadThe Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest and oldest operating railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....
, Bond & Mortgage Guarantee Company, and Wells Fargo & Company. He was elected a director of Wells Fargo in September 1914 to succeed his brother-in-law,
Paul WarburgPaul Moritz Warburg was a Jewish-German-American banker and early advocate of the U.S. Federal Reserve system.- Early life :...
, who had resigned to accept appointment to the original Federal Reserve Board.
Schiff always felt strongly about his connection to the Jewish people, and demonstrated this through his philanthropy. He supported relief efforts for the victims of pogroms in Russia, and helped establish and develop
Hebrew Union CollegeThe Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the oldest Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators and communal workers in Reform Judaism.HUC-JIR has campuses in Cincinnati, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem.The Jerusalem campus is...
, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Jewish Division in the
New York Public LibraryThe New York Public Library is one of the leading public libraries of the world and is one of the United States's most significant research libraries. It is composed of a very large circulating public library system combined with a very large non-lending research library system...
, and the
American Jewish CommitteeThe American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
. However, he also financed many major American projects, believing strongly in the need to further develop and bring together the U.S.
Schiff grew to be one of American Jewry's top philanthropists and leaders, donating to nearly every major Jewish cause, as well as many secular American causes such as the
Boy Scouts of AmericaThe Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over four million youth members in its age-related divisions...
, the Semitic Museum at
HarvardHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
, the
American Museum of Natural HistoryThe American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, USA, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
,
Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, known colloquially as The Met, is an art museum located on the eastern edge of Central Park, along what is known as Museum Mile in New York City, USA. It has a permanent collection containing more than two million works of art, divided into nineteen curatorial...
, American Fine Arts Society, and the
American Geographical SocietyThe American Geographical Society is an organization of professional geographers, founded in 1851 in New York City. Most fellows of the society are Americans, but among them have always been a significant number of fellows from around the world...
; and a number of other organizations for civil rights and the disadvantaged, such as the
American Red CrossThe American Red Cross is a humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States, and is the designated U.S...
, Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids, and Tuskegee Institute. He also played a role in the municipal affairs of New York City, and worked to shrink the reliance on machine bureaucracy in this arena.
During the
Russo-Japanese WarThe Russo-Japanese War or the Manchurian Campaign in some English sources, was a conflict that grew out of the rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
, in 1904 and 1905, in perhaps his most famous financial action, Schiff, again through Kuhn, Loeb & Co., extended a critical series of loans to Japan, in the amount of $200 million. He was willing to extend this loan due, in part, to his belief that gold is not as important as national effort and desire, in helping win a war, and due to the apparent underdog status of Japan at the time; no European nation had yet been defeated by a non-European nation in a modern, full-scale war. It is quite likely Schiff also saw this loan as a means of avenging, on behalf of the Jewish people, the anti-Semitic actions of the Tsarist regime, specifically the then-recent
pogromA pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers...
s in Kishinev.
This loan attracted worldwide attention, and had major consequences. Japan won the war, thanks in large part to the purchase of munitions made possible by Schiff's loan, and elements of its government took this as evidence of the power of Jews all around the world, of their loyalty to one another, and as proof of the truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This thinking later led to the failed
Fugu PlanDespite there being little evidence to suggest that the Japanese had ever contemplated a Jewish state or a Jewish autonomous region, Rabbi Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz published a book called 'The Fugu Plan' in 1979...
, which would have saved many thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, bringing them to Japan-controlled China to work for the benefit of Japan's economy. In 1905, Schiff was awarded the Japanese
Order of the Sacred TreasureThe is a Japanese Order, established on January 4, 1888 by Emperor Meiji of Japan as the Order of Meiji. It is awarded in eight classes...
; in 1907 he was honored with the Japanese
Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver StarThe Order of the Rising Sun is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji of Japan...
, which represents the second highest of eight classes associated with the award. Schiff was the first foreigner to have been personally awarded the Order by
Emperor MeijiThe or Meiji the Great was the 122
nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from 3 February 1867 until his death....
in the Imperial Palace.
Schiff was also invited to a private audience in 1904 with
King Edward VII of EnglandEdward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death on 6 May 1910...
.
In addition to his famous loan to Japan, Schiff financed loans to many other nations, including those that would come to comprise the
Central PowersThe Central Powers was one of the two sides that participated in World War I, the other being the Entente Powers.-Member states:...
. When
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
finally did break out, he used his reputation and influence to urge President
Woodrow WilsonThomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, and others, to put an end to the war as quickly as possible, even without an Allied victory. He feared for the lives of his family, back in Germany, but also for the future of his adopted land. He engineered loans to France, and other nations for humanitarian purposes, and spoke out against submarine warfare.
Last years
Over the years, before, during, and after World War I, his firm extended loans to many nations all around the world, but Schiff made sure none of the funds ever went to Russia, which continued to severely oppress the Jewish people. When the
Tsar'sNicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, and claimed the title of King of Poland...
government fell in 1917, Schiff believed that the oppression of Jews would end. He formally repealed the impediments within his firm against lending to Russia.
As an observant Jew, Schiff stood opposed to political, secular
ZionismZionism is the international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The area was the Jewish Biblical homeland, called the Land of Israel...
. He claimed to identify with Jews by faith, not by race. However, despite not agreeing fully with the ideas of Theodore Herzl, and in fact believing that Zionism was not compatible with American citizenship, he donated to many Jewish projects in Palestine, including the Technical Institute of Haifa. As the situation for Eastern European Jews grew more dire, with the
Russian RevolutionThe Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
, and pogroms in
UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south. The city of Kiev is both the capital and the largest city of...
, Schiff made more considerable contributions to the Zionist effort; he even offered to join the Zionist organization, provided he could publish a statement he'd prepared. This offer was denied, and so he never formally joined the Zionist camp.
Schiff died in New York City on September 25, 1920. He was succeeded as head of Kuhn, Loeb & Company by his son, Mortimer Leo Schiff (1877-1931).
Mr. Schiff was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1982.
Schiff in conspiracy theory
As a prominent businessman of Jewish origin, Schiff often appeared in various antisemitic
conspiracy theoriesConspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any conspiracy claim. However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful Machiavellian conspirators.Conspiracy...
. He was accused, along with other famous Jews of the time, of being one of the key players in a powerful Jewish cabal conspiring to dominate the world. The international loans he brokered, the news reports that he provided large sums to finance the Bolsheviks in their takeover of Russia, along with his involvement with several companies and organizations around the world made him a person of interest for conspiracy theorists.
Family
- Wife: Therese (née Loeb)
- Children: Mortimer Schiff; Frieda Warburg (Mrs. Felix), née Schiff
- Father: Moses Schiff
- Mother: Clara Schiff, née Niederhofheim
- Granddaughter: Dorothy Schiff
Dorothy Schiff was an owner and then publisher of the New York Post for nearly 40 years. She was a granddaughter of financier Jacob H. Schiff...
- Grandson: John M. Schiff
John Mortimer Schiff was an American banker and national president of the Boy Scouts of America from 1951 to 1956....
Schiff's descendant Andrew Newman Schiff is married to former
Vice PresidentThe Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people through the Electoral College to a four-year term...
Al GoreAlbert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. is an American environmental activist and former politician who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He is an author, businessperson, former U.S. Senator and former journalist...
′s daughter, Karenna.
John Denham Schiff is another descendant.
External links