Welcome to politics and prose. Im brad graham, the coowner of, the bookstore along with my wife alice in and were very pleased to be hosting a journalist Daniel Schulman whos to talk about his new book, the money kings the epic story of the jewish who transformed wall street and shaped modern. Adam daniels. The Deputy Washington Bureau chief mother jones, and also has had success as an author. His previous book, nearly ten years ago, sons of wichita, a biography of the cook family, was a bestseller and received critical acclaim. His new books is an expansive history of the german who came to the united in the 19th century and helped create the the modern Financial System while managing their own identities as , bankers and americans. Some of the names highlight it by daniel. Names like Goldman Sachs and lehman will be familiar to. Too many others like schiff and seligman, not so much, but all had very significant roles in transform the United States into a financial and underwriting of the 20th centurys major companies. These powerful jewish families of new york were. Profiled 57 years ago and steven birminghams bestselling book, our crowd. But that as daniel notes in his introduction was this basically a work of social history . While his is intended as of a financial political and philanthropic one, daniel confesses at the outset that he was somewhat reluctant to write this with its portrait of these germanjewish dynasties. Xers sizing their wealth and their power as someone who is himself. Daniel worried such a history coming at a time. Surging antisemitism could reinforce conspiracy theories about jewish influence having undue impact. But he went ahead with the book, as he puts it, that there is no better way to counter lies than to tell stories in full. The result is a book reviewers have praised as illuminate, spirited and richly detailed with characters rendered in all their complexities. The Financial Times commended the book as, quote, a timely corrective to historical distortions that have helped feed antisemitic deism. In conversation with daniel this evening. Be emily tamkin a journalist whos reported for foreign Buzzfeed News and Washington Post. And and shes edited for the new statesman. Shes also written two books that echo some the themes in the money kings, one about the influence george soros, the other history of the past 100 years of American Jewish politics and identities. So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Daniel Schulman and emily tamkin. Okay . Okay. Good evening and thank you all so much for coming out this evening to discuss this wonderful, wonderful new book, the money kings. So i have to confess i first read the book cause i was one of the reviewers who who lauded it for the Washington Post and and i was you know, i, i started it thinking that it was going to sort of a portrait of these individuals who created these Financial Institutions and shaped American Economy as we know it and so on and so forth. And as the author of a book on American Jewish identity and politics, you can imagine how i was at finding. It was also a superb portrait of American Jewish politics and identities. Its its so my first question for you is, how dare you know. My first question is, you know, these are two very rich themes, right . The of the the construction of these Financial Institutions and American Jewish life and what it means and how these jewish individuals figured out what it meant to be jewish individuals in this country. How did you balance these these themes in your head and in the or did you think of them as two different themes at all . It took me eight years to write this, so i had plenty of time to figure out how to balance all these things. But what was very interesting about. These this topic is in many ways, these two things were intertwined. You know, if im writing about jacob schiff, whos one of the main characters in my book and his funding, the japanese in the russojapanese war. This wasnt just a finance he was doing because he wanted to put pressure on the russians are who was oppressing the people. So all came back to a jewish. So in many ways, i found it easy to weave this narrative through the book. Okay. So with that as our sort of appetizer, you know, we heard a bit about your your first book, how i guess. Do you see the second book as flowing from the first one . And if how and how did you decide to write it . I think it did flow from the first one in that the the my my first book was about the coke family and that a story about dynasty and about legacy and about power and about influence and about wealth all of these same themes flow through the money kings as well. I sort of fell into this book in ways. I mean i was looking for a new subject and my way of doing is just to start reading a lot and start ordering extremely obscure books. Amazon and or from politics for politics, right . More politics and prose and. And i just topics that interest me and i started researching on this wave of anarchist violence that occurred in this country in the early 20th century that culminated with the of wall street in 1920. And as i was researching, i came across the name jacob schiff because he had been one of the recipients of one of these anarchists letter bombs and. I just my my eyes just widened. I started started to read about him and his life. And i just wondered why there had never been a major biography of schiff. And thats sort of led me to this topic. And you know, theres also personal connection to the material in that my paternal grandparent s are were immigrants from, the area known as the pale settlement that that piece of territory, the fringe of the of the russian where the largest Jewish Population lived the turn of the century. And my paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States in the early hundreds of a very common story settled in brooklyn. But i came to realize that their story in the United States and mine would not have been possible without schiff and the other and his allies who i write in this book. I just want to just not press, but just go a little a little further into that, because there are people in this book there are figures in this book with whom everyone in this room will have been familiar and you could have sort of centered your book on any one of them. So if you could speak a bit about why jacob schiff and i should say every book in every individual you come across in this book is really richly drawn. Like, its not that theres its not that any figure you come across seems a bit character or or that theyre not fully fleshed out. They are, but in as much as it has a protagonist, its schiff. So could you speak a bit more about about why schiff you know, schiff is not very well remembered today. And in part, thats because he didnt necessarily care to be who he was during his era. He was the most prolific Jewish Philanthropy of his time, but he was also one of the Top Investment bankers, his era. He was hes often, as you know, second only to j. P. Morgan, but he wasnt second only to j. P. Morgan. He was at least as consequential as j. P. Morgan. If not more. So when you look at the breadth of his legacy, which is not just finance, but really the fact that theres a thriving america and Jewish Community today that wouldnt have been without him. He was the dominant figure in American Jewish life. There was no no philanthropic undertaking, no political advocacy, nothing that would have occurred without it going across his desk. So so thats why even though names such as goldman and sachs lehman are much more wellknown today, thats why is the main character of this story. Hmm. Now, before we get too much farther, too much further along, i want to i want to ask you the title as the author of a book called bad. Im not sure how you got away with calling something as controversial as the money kings now. My question is my question. I mean, you know it is not a provocative title but it does carry within it. You know a certain is this is a book about money and power. And this came up in the introduction and like i guess i was hoping to hear a bit more you on the and how on how you handled the responsibility of being a jewish journalist and author is aware both of the history and also of all of these stereotypes. Right. And how do you delve into subjects like finance and and philanthropy, and power and without without sort of feeding the stereotypes or giving in to the fear of feeding the stereotypes. Thats a really excellent question. So the money kings was one that was applied to the top moguls of the gilded age, not just jewish ones. It was jacob schiff was often called money king, but so was j. P. Morgan. Rockefeller. So, you know, as was researching this book, as i was researching the life of jacob schiff and his what i discovered that was that the only people that currently seemed to care about who he was and what he had was neonazis and white nationalists who cherry picked from life story, lied about certain of it, but in service of creating and bolstering antisemitic conspiracy theories. So i it was really more important than ever to write about where some of this stuff came, write about the origins, tell the stories of schiff and Marcus Goldman and sachs in full and not to do a hedgehog fee, not to steer away from controversial subjects or or, you know, complexities, not to bury. Story of jacob schiff funding japanese in the russojapanese war, which the bedrock of many antisemitic conspiracy theories. So what i did was i just felt like it was important to confront of this head on and the reason the book is called money kings is because, you know, at the end of the day, it upset me to think that jp morgan could be a money king and thats not a problem. Jacob schiff cant be a money king. Jacob schiff has to live in the gilded ghetto and so thats why the book is called the money kings. I think its i we cant i personally dont want to live within the frame of antisemitism that was created to other jewish people. I mean, theres no that should be ashamed of what schiff or Marcus Goldman or the lehmans did. Its incredible. But because of all of these anti semitic stereotypes and i get into where and how they originated and, its very much modern antisemitism stems back to period and it was a in some cases to what men like schiff had. So so thats thats the story. Yeah. I wonder if you also have the sense that that if you dont about something because, oh, that could feed into an antisemitic stereotype. Youre actually in a way, what youre doing is saying, i can control in how i act and what i write. I can control antisemitism. Which is to say that like actually antisemites are are coming up with their conspiracies based on jewish behavior, when, in fact, the whole point is that these are conspiracies divorced from reality. Absolutely. And just dont, you know, i think that these are going to exist regardless of of of what i write. But i just hope that, you know, people read the book come to understand and where some of these ideas about and money and power and influence actually come from. And once you start to understand that. You start to understand how outlandish. All of this really is. Hmm. So every in this book has money. Right. And a big dynamic of the book is this tension between and im sure many of you are familiar with this this dynamic between the german who are a bit more established and come over first and their poorer European Jewish brethren who come over later. Could you a bit about the relationship between these two, two groups . Because on the one hand, it was quite its not it neither all resentment nor all. One of charity, lets say. Absolutely. You know, when the waves of Eastern European and russian immigration occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the german were pretty well established in the United States at this point. Theyd come over in the 1840s and 1850s. Theyd started build big and they, you know, established themselves in the American Social hierarchy. They had nothing in common with the eastern and russian who were immigrating, other than the fact that they were jewish. But as , they understood well, at that time that it didnt matter whether you came from russia, whether you came from frankfurt, germany, as , you might still be painted by the same brush. So schiff and his allies, you know, pulled out the stops to ensure that these waves of russian impoverished russian immigrants did not become a drag on American Resources and did not bring down the image of german. So while, you know, gave millions upon millions of dollars to build this Enormous Network that enabled these immigrants to rapidly assimilate and english lessons homes, you know. Kohl for their furnaces, you know, there was a self there was a selfinterested aspect to all of this as well. Mm hmm. Well, so one of the questions that i sort of had really get reading about these figures is that they were very clear that they felt like an important thing to do as prominent americans was to prominent positions on different philanthropic boards. So they wanted to be on the boards of universities and art museums and be in high society and felt like that was really important. And they sort of frame it in your telling as as though this is really important for. And i kind of had the thought it was like, okay, is this important for like the people on the Lower East Side, right . Or is this important for you, a person who wants to go to a dinner party and say, like, oh, im on the board, whatever, art museum . I think was probably an aspect of both the column from column being both i think both things are true but you know i know jacob philosophy on this i mean he to get trustees on the board of columbia. He tried to get jewish on the board of columbia and on at the Natural History museum. And the reason why he this was important was because believed antisemitism flowed from didnt come up from below. So if you you know, signaled that it was okay to have a in this position, i think he thought that would over help to you know, eradicate bigotry. But also, you know, i think it was these were extremely elite, wealthy people who didnt like being excluded from cultural academic institutions institutions. Theres another episode in the book that i dont want to like. I want you all to read it. So i dont want to sort of go episode by episode. But there is an episode that i thought had a lot of resonances with the modern day which is the seligman hotel affair. Would you like to speak a bit about that and about the distinction hebrews and. Oh boy. So one of the most notable antisemitic episodes in u. S. History, and this was sort of historians are sort of pointing to this as a singular episode of antisemitism. And i think its a little more complicated than that. But josef seligman was was a very prominent investment banker. And in fact, schiff sort of models himself off of Seligman Seligman died in 1880. In 1877, josef seligman, his family, go to take their customary vacation at the grand union in saratoga, new york. Theyve been going there for years. He goes to check in and is told by the hotel clerk, sorry, its actually no allowed this year. So you cant stay here and Joseph Seligman does not, you know, take kindly to that. And what ensues is headline after headline in the New York Times as seligman and judge who was basically the manager of this hotel was the manager of the estate of a of a tycoon who had own this hotel traded bar barb. And hilton made a distinction between hebrews who who he saw as the upstanding sephardic who had come to the United States earlier and and the seligman called them the seligman , which were new money, new money. And ostentatious, he said. And it just this episode ended up just whipping up a huge amount of antisemitic feeling that had been clearly boiling under the surface. And the New York Times goes out and starts Hotel Keepers in new york and elsewhere who say who now say, we actually dont want you staying here either. And you know what . When do stay here, we charge them extra. And it was a bit of a turning point in. American jewish life. And it was it was it was a psychological turning point for many whod come to the United States and thought that they were safe and thought that they had sort of gotten beyond the the prejudices that they had experienced in germany and elsewhere. And now they found they really hadnt. And what this led to was the rise of, you know, a number of jewish organizations, social clubs, golf that were, you know this a very firm division between jewish and gentile life. I mean, as i said, i think this is one episode where i read this and thought like, oh, you know, there are many instances today where somebody sort of makes headlines. And then its when when called out for dabbling in antisemitism, lets say they say, well, i have no problem with just like this group of people with jewish last names or like just the people who like this or just the just this kind of and its like it sounds like youve got a problem with. But, you know, so there theres so much in this book reminded me of the modern day. But is there anything in the process of writing it that you changed your mind about or that you think differently or made you go about antisemitism and American Jewish identity . What what surprised and i knew some of this history. But what shocked me was extent to which henry ford unleashed antisemitism. Not just this country, but throughout the world. And