Hasia R. Diner - Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World

JULIUS ROSENWALD

Repairing the World

HASIA R. DINER

Frontispiece: Julius Rosenwald, 1917. Harris & Ewing Collection (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Copyright 2017 by Hasia R. Diner.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail (U.K. office).

Set in Janson Oldstyle type by Integrated Publishing Solutions.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017934017

ISBN 978-0-300-20321-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the
New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way

We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews
and the Myth of Silence After the Holocaust, 19451962

The Jews of the United States, 1654 to 2000

Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and
Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration

Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America

In the Almost Promised Land:
American Jews and Blacks, 19151935

A Time for Gathering: The Second Migration, 18201880,
vol. 2 of The Jewish People in America, ed. Henry L. Feingold

Erins Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women
in the Nineteenth Century

This book on the life of Julius Rosenwald,
an individual who cherished American democracy,
is dedicated to all of those who today are engaged in
resisting the forces bent on weakening it.

A MONG THE many pleasant aspects of writing a book, the conceptualization, the research, and the writing, the one I most look forward to is thanking the people who have helped me in my project. This brief section gives me a chance to express my gratitude.

First and basically foremost I want to say how grateful I am to Steven Zipperstein, the editor of the Jewish Lives series, for asking me to write this biography of Julius Rosenwald. JR showed up in several of my previous projects, including my first book, In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 19151935, based on my dissertation written nearly a lifetime ago. In that book Rosenwald took center stage. He also had a cameo appearance in my most recent book, Roads Taken, a history of Jewish peddlers. So when Steve asked me to write this volume for the Jewish Lives series I wondered if I had anything new to say about Rosenwald, and I think I did. I appreciate profoundly his faith and support in me and I also am gratified that he considered Rosenwald a worthy inclusion in this library of notable Jewish women and men.

Secondly I want to thank Peter Ascoli, the author of the large, authoritative biography of his grandfather, which I cite often in this book. Peters book differs from mine and we focus on different aspects of Rosenwalds life, but he always gave generously of his time, offering me pieces of advice and sharing sources with me. Aviva Kempner made her film about Rosenwald independent of my doing this book, but as the film and the book converged in time, she has been helpful to me, and I am pleased with how much she is doing to make sure that the name of Julius Rosenwald comes out of its obscurity.

I asked four special friends to read this book, and each one did so with her own individual and sharply trained critical eye. Marion Kaplan, Nell Irvin Painter, Shuly Rubin Schwartz, and Kathryn Kish Sklar came to this project with their vast expertise in German-Jewish history, African American history, the history of American Jewry, and the history of Progressivism, respectively. Each of these factors laid the contours of Rosenwalds life and I thank you all for your willingness to read. I so value your contributions and friendships.

Over the years I worked on this book I also had valuable conversations with Gennady Estraikh, David Sorkin, David Levering Lewis, Zohar Segev, Linda Borish, and Steven Diner. Steve was busy writing his own book, so for the first time in my career I did not bother him to read and edit my manuscript, but he gave me plenty of time to talk about JR and to share with me his own deep knowledge of Chicago in the age of Rosenwald.

Two of my doctoral students fed me a steady stream of citations involving Rosenwald that benefited me greatly. Judah Bernstein, now completing his dissertation, and David Weinfeld, already launched in his career, knew I was working on this, and they kept their eyes open for Rosenwald references in places where I would never have thought to look.

I want to give particular thanks to the staffs of the University of Chicago Special Collections and the Fisk University Library, which hold the Rosenwald papers and also the papers of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Two goldmines of material, these libraries and their excellent librarians provided helpful advice and comfortable environments in which to work. Similarly, Erica Hanson of Yale University Press helped shepherd this project through.

I am completing this book at a trying moment in the history of the United States, a moment which gives me pause and allows me to rethink the meaning of Julius Rosenwald. He made many millions through business but never saw money as an end in itself, as a way to augment his own political power or that of his class of the wealthy and well-connected. Money, he believed, brought responsibility to those who had it, and that responsibility meant seriously thinking about how to make the world a better place. He had no interest in slapping his name on buildings, no desire to see it boldly projected on public spaces. His money let him expand opportunities for others, to foster the welfare of those whom prejudice had ground down. Not a meaningless antidote to the present moment.

January 20, 2017

JULIUS ROSENWALD

INTRODUCTION

I N 1929, the children of Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago prince of retail and among the citys preeminent philanthropists, contemplated commissioning a biography of their father, a man known worldwide, whose business and civic activism had improved the lives of millions. The book never came into being. The Rosenwald children should have realized that their father would never agree to the biography. He had for decades refused to allow his name to be affixed to the buildings, institutions, and projects he sponsored. He never even added his name to the immense company he took over, Sears, Roebuck. He gave lavishly and generously to a number of philanthropies but always insisted that his contributions be matched by others, never wanting to be the sole donor. Hardly surprising, then, that the biography project died. Yet his many achievements and the issues that engaged him, as laid out in the correspondence between the Rosenwald children and potential biographers, justify