biography
| name: |
Schiff, Jacob (Henry)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1847–1920)
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| biography:
| Financier and philanthropist, born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. He went to New York City at age 18 and was licensed as a stockbroker in 1866. After working in a succession of brokerage houses, he joined the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co (1874), becoming its president (1885). He amassed a great fortune, primarily in railroads and insurance companies, and participated in the struggle for control of the Northern Pacific Railroad that precipitated the stock-market panic of 1901. He secured a $200 million loan for Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904), and then, as a founder of the American Jewish Committee (1906), he worked to abrogate the US–Russian commercial treaty because of Russian treatment of Jews. He also promoted a loan for the Manchurian Railway in China (1911). One of the foremost figures in American Jewry of his day, he supported a wide range of philanthropies, both religious and secular. Although not a Zionist, he supported educational institutions in Palestine, and his many philanthropies included the Tuskegee Institute, the Henry Street Settlement House, the Red Cross, and Harvard and Cornell universities. |
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