A 3 - Part Series written for the Scientific Inquirer in 2022 containing excerpts from the forthcoming book.

Jacob Schiffs - Enchanted Mountain Part 1
Jacob Schiffs - Enchanted Mountain Part 2
Jacob Schiffs - Magic Mountain Part 3

Benevolent Warrior

A Critical Study of Jacob Schiff, Robber Baron and Philanthropist by Robert Dannin

Jacob Schiff (1847-1920) was the driving force behind early 20th-century philanthropy. He was a political conservative yet supported and befriended Lillian Wald, the radical freethinker and doyen of public health nursing. He served as a commissioner of New York City’s board of education and backed reform mayoral candidates against Tammany Hall. He was a Robber Baron capitalist who intervened many times on behalf of unionized workers in the garment industry.

As an innovative philanthropist, Schiff's principal concern was the emancipation of five million Jews living under Tsarist repression in Russia. He communicated frequently with every U.S. president from Grover Cleveland to Woodrow Wilson and worked indefatigably to influence Western policy toward Russia. His power in lobbying the White House derived from his role at the helm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., one of Wall Street’s preeminent investment banks. His capital fueled the tremendous expansion of America’s transcontinental railroads. Schiff was a controversial personality and one of the principal targets of the 1912 congressional Money Trust Hearings.

The confluence of Schiff’s personal wealth and humanitarian compassion led to him to arrange $200 million in loan guarantees ($5 billion today) to assist the Japanese Imperial Army in defeating the Russians in a brief, violent war (1904-1905) that historians often refer to as World War Zero. Reacting to this world-historical defeat of a European monarchy, the Russian secret police published a book that remains the most notorious piece of disinformation ever distributed. Schiff was their model of the "international Jew" portrayed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as directing the project for world domination through financial manipulation and even communist subversion.