SOCIAL SERVICE
During all these years of which I have been writing my spirit was in a
never-ceasing conflict with itself, a conflict between idealism and
materialism. My boyish imagination had been fired with a vision of a
life of unselfish devotion to the welfare of others, and in an earlier
chapter I have described the influence of religious and ethical
teachings upon my character and activities. But the necessity of earning
a livelihood had early thrust me into the arena of business. Once there,
I became absorbed in money-making. It was a fascinating game. It
challenged all my powers of brain and will to hold my own and forge
ahead in the fierce competition of my fellows. I lived business, ate
business, dreamed business. There came a time when the most interesting
lectures, the finest theatrical performances, or even the best staged
operas could not hold my entire attention. My schemes constantly
intruded themselves upon my consciousness and would absorb the mentality
that was required for me to understand and rejoice with what was going
on. As usual, as with all other business men, the day’s work had
practically absorbed my day’s supply of vitality. I had not the power to
shake off this exacting task-master.
But, though business could conquer pleasure, it could not conquer
idealism; and idealism resorted to similar tactics as business. It
asserted itself during business hours, and again and again demanded
opportunities to exercise itself. I shall now try to tell how it
successfully resisted complete annihilation.
When, in 1876, Felix Adler returned from his studies as a rabbi in
Europe, and Temple Emanu-El--the most important Jewish congregation in
the United States--was ready to welcome him to its pulpit, he found that
it would not coincide with his views to follow in the footsteps of his
father, who had been connected with that synagogue for forty years. The
son’s researches had led him to the conclusion that forms, ceremonies,
and customs did not make a religion when pursued in new and entirely
different surroundings. Dr. Adler hoped that the time had come when the
real spiritual essentials of the Jewish religion--its system of
ethics--could be developed, appreciated, and enforced, and that the
American Jews could adjust themselves to the land in which they were
living and drop all that they had had to adhere to in Ghettoized Europe.
He came back filled with an enthusiastic desire to remedy the glaring
evils, not only of the Jews, but of the entire community: he could
diagnose our ills and prescribe a remedy.
This appeal found a wonderful response amongst the flower of the
reformed Jews and some Christians of New York, who formed the Society
for Ethical Culture, of which the then leading Jew of America, Joseph
Seligman, was elected president. All these felt the need of readjustment
to fit their new surroundings. Some of those religious habits were
imposed upon them while their ancestors were suppressed people. Few, if
any, would adopt Christianity, but all were ready to subscribe to the
aims of a society which are most clearly stated in their present
invitation to members:
Our Society is distinctly a religious body, interpreting the word
“religion” to mean fervent devotion to the highest moral ends. But
toward religion as a confession of faith in things superhuman, the
attitude of our Society is neutral. Neither acceptance nor denial
of any theological doctrine disqualifies for membership.
In short, the Jews in America very seriously wanted to complete their
Americanization. They were honestly striving for education, for
refinement, for community and public service, for devotion to art,
music, and culture. Welcome, then, this prophet Adler--this great
reformer! His sterling qualities as a thinker; his wonderful
resourcefulness; his pure and lofty private life, and his totally
uncompromising attitude toward evil, secured him the admiration of all
those who had in their own modest way been hopelessly striving to reach
this plane. Adler by inheritance and by studying the older prophets had
mingled that knowledge with the wisdom of the present day. Here was pure
ethics unencumbered by religious form, the way Emerson taught it, the
way Garrison and Lincoln practised it--and this man was trying to direct
this current, which led away from the old-fashioned religion into a new
field tending toward agnosticism and atheism, and bring it, instead,
into this new field of ethics. His sincerity could not be doubted. He
had voluntarily abandoned an honourable and care-free career that had
been offered him by Temple Emanu-El, and like a modern Moses had
undertaken the harassing and difficult task of satisfying the
unexpressed yearnings of these people, who were discontented with the
existing requirements of their religion and had hopelessly sought for
moral guidance.
I was among Adler’s earliest adherents. When he organized his United
Relief Work, I was one of its directors; I participated in his Cherry
Street experiment in model tenements--the first in America, which
eventually brought about legislation to do away with the dark rooms of
which there were over fifty thousand in New York City alone, and I
assisted in the establishment of the first Ethical Culture School, which
was started in Fifty-fourth Street, near Sixth Avenue, and was chairman
of the Site Committee that secured the present location on Central Park
West from Sixty-third to Sixty-fourth streets.
Above all, however, I treasure the fond remembrance of having been a
member of the “Union for Higher Life”--an organization of a few of
Adler’s devotees. He always maintained that, as every man expected
purity from his wife, it was his duty to enter the marriage state in the
same condition, and the members of this “Union” pledged themselves to
celibacy during bachelorhood. We met every week at the Sherwood Studio,
where he then lived. We read Lange’s “Arbeiter-Frage,” and studied the
Labour question. We discussed the problems of business and professional
men. I notice in my diary of April 24, ’82, that we debated the
simplicity of dress and the follies of extravagance. Then, as Dr. Adler
wanted us to feel that we were doing something definitely altruistic,
the members of the Union jointly adopted eight children; some of them
were half-orphans, and some had parents who could not support them
properly; we employed a matron and hired a flat for her on the corner of
Forty-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue.
We had considered starting a coöperative community for ourselves, and
Adler and I devoted some time looking at various properties. Our
intention was to have separate living quarters with a joint kindergarten
and a joint kitchen, thereby avoiding duplication of menial labour. This
would have enabled our wives to devote more of their time to community
work. It was to be an urban Brook Farm. Already having big ideas about
real estate, I suggested and investigated the Leake and Watts Orphan
Asylum property, now occupied by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine!
It could then have been bought for about $3,000 a lot. Adler, however,
considered it too inaccessible, as it could only be reached by the
Eighth Avenue street car, and so the idea was abandoned.
As many of my close friends were not adherents of Professor Adler, and
we wanted to share our intellectual developments and efforts, we
organized the Emerson Society; and under the guidance of my brother
Julius who had just received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy at
Leipzig, we not only read, but thoroughly studied, a number of Emerson’s
essays. I was chagrined to find that not only the college-bred men of
our group, but also many of the girls were much better English scholars
than I, so I determined to secure lessons from the best authority on
English at that time. Richard Grant White, the annotator of Shakespeare
and the author of “Words and their Uses,” was universally recognized as
such, but I was told by people whom I consulted that it was useless to
communicate with him as he undoubtedly would feel himself above giving
private lessons. Nevertheless I wrote him for an interview, stating my
age, vocation, and desire, and he answered:
“It is possible that I may be able to give you the assistance you seek
in your praiseworthy plan. I will see you with pleasure.”
The interview was successful. Mr. White undertook to give us lessons in
the origin and growth of language, nor shall I ever forget the delight
of that instruction. We used to meet in his apartment on Stuyvesant
Square, the home of an artist and scholar, and his talks on the
development of tongues from the Aryan to our modern English--his
readings from the classics in that beautiful, cultivated voice of his
with its perfect enunciation--are still fresh in my memory.
Two of my friends had joined me and when I was no longer contented to
meet Josephine Sykes merely as a member of the Emerson Club, and
therefore persuaded her to start a little club of our own, she joined
the class.
Shortly after the death of Maurice Grau in 1902, my wife and I, calling
on Mrs. Josephine Bonné, found the Conrieds there, and Conried told us
that he was looking for fourteen men whom he could get to join him in
subscribing the $150,000 required to secure the lease and management of
the Metropolitan Opera House, and as I was one that Mrs. Bonné had
suggested, he, with great earnestness, backed up by his fine dramatic
talent, pleaded his cause. He told us of his histrionic training in the
Burg Theatre at Vienna, and how his youthful ardour for the stage was
permanently influenced by the high artistic ideals prevailing there.
“When I came to America,” he said, “I hoped the prosperous Germans and
Jews would endow a similar institution here, and so I started the Irving
Place Theatre. What has happened? Instead of receiving the support I
expected, I have had to resort to all kinds of devices. I have become a
play broker, secured the American rights to current European
productions, demonstrating their possibilities to the American managers,
and selling them when I could, so that the Irving Place Theatre has
really become only a laboratory or testing room. It has never paid for
itself, and I have had to supplement my brokerage profits by securing
Herr Ballin’s help in founding the Ocean Comfort Company which rents
steamer chairs to transatlantic travellers! Have I put my small profits
in my own pocket? No, I have poured them back into the Irving Place
Theatre, still hoping to attract the support which would give me a
chance to demonstrate my ideals. Here is a short-cut, here is a chance
for me to realize all these ideals without having to risk my own or my
friends’ money. At last my opportunity has come, and I ask you to help
me secure this lease.”
I doubt if he ever played any rôle more earnestly or with greater
sincerity. Nobody could have resisted him, and I gracefully surrendered
and asked him:
“What progress have you made? What men have you secured?”
He answered: “Jacob H. Schiff, Ernest Thalman, Daniel Guggenheim,
Randolph Guggenheimer, and Henry R. Ickelheimer.” All of these men were
of the highest class, thoroughly cultured, and lovers of music, but
knowing as I did the management of the Metropolitan Opera House, I
jokingly said to Conried:
“If you could only secure a Mr. Hochheimer and a Mr. Niersteiner you
would have a complete wine list, but you could never secure the opera
house through it.”
He saw the point at once, and asked what I would suggest. I answered
him:
“I have conceived a plan while sitting here, but to carry it out I must
have an absolutely free hand as to who are to be your associates. I
shall see Messrs. A. D. Juilliard and George G. Haven, who have the
final say in the matter, on Tuesday, and can tell you that evening
whether I can accomplish anything or not.”
Conried assented. I at once proceeded to carry out my plan to interest
the younger social leaders and communicated with Mr. James Hazen Hyde.
He was most favourably impressed, and suggested that he and I obligate
ourselves for $75,000 each, secure the lease, and then select our
associates. We did so, obtained the lease, and then invited the
following to make up the Board of Directors of the Conried Metropolitan
Opera Company: Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Henry Rogers Winthrop, H. P.
Whitney, Robert Goelet, R. H. McCurdy, Jacob H. Schiff, Clarence H.
Mackay, George J. Gould, Otto H. Kahn, J. Henry Smith, Eliot Gregory,
Bainbridge Colby, and William H. McIntyre. Heinrich Conried was elected
president and Hyde and myself vice-presidents. Success was assured from
the first. Conried took hold of the management with energy and wonderful
resourcefulness that promptly won him the admiration of the directors of
both companies.
He completely changed the interior of the Opera House, put in a new
ceiling, new chandelier, arranged the proper illumination of the boxes,
and the most important improvement of all being the discarding of the
old-fashioned drop curtain and replacing it with one divided in the
centre, making it unnecessary for the popular stars, when answering
repeated curtain-calls, to walk all the way across the stage from one
side to the other of the proscenium arch. He unsuccessfully fought the
demand of the boxholders for the famous horseshoe to be kept illuminated
all through the performance, and finally compromised by putting red
shades over the lights.
One week-end Mr. and Mrs. Conried spent with us at Elberon. They came
heavily laden. Mrs. Conried cautiously carried a circular bundle of
discs, and her husband bore what looked like a monster cornucopia, while
their son was bending under the weight of a big box. A very few minutes
after they had entered the house we were spellbound by “Elisir d’Amore,”
sung by the finest tenor voice. We and our children all rushed out to
the room from whence the singing came. We waited until it was finished
and rivalled each other with our applause. Conried, the impresario,
foreseeing in our unlimited applause the success of his future tenor,
benignly smiled and explained to us:
“This is the great Caruso--a man that is in Buenos Aires just now. Grau
engaged him, and it was these records that induced me to assume the
contract.”
Conried startled us once more during that same week-end by confiding to
us that he possessed the complete score of “Parsifal.” He said:
“I shall produce it this winter.”
We were amazed at this proposition, particularly my wife, who reminded
Conried that when she was at Bayreuth she was informed that both Richard
Wagner and his widow had steadfastly withstood all propositions to
produce “Parsifal”--the chief attraction of its musical festivals--on
any other stage. I feared that many Wagnerians would condemn the
production as a sacrilege.
Conried waived aside the objections and said:
“Years ago I told Frau Casimir Wagner that some day I would produce
‘Parsifal’ in America. She ridiculed me. Here’s my chance. I will win
the approbation of thousands who have been yearning to hear this opera
and who will never get to Bayreuth.”
From that day on, he kept me informed of his progress. We were together
in Vienna when he chose the costumes for the “flower-maidens”; I visited
with him the studio where the revolving curtain was being painted; in
America, my wife and I attended many of the rehearsals.
His real troubles began as he approached the day of production. The
composer’s widow tried to enjoin him from making the production; for
fear of offending her, Mottl refused to conduct the orchestra; unlimited
abuse was showered on the producer through the press; certain clergymen
denounced the opera as blasphemous; some singers revolted; and, to cap
the climax, there came a warning that the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children would stop the appearance of the boys who were to
sing in the choruses.
Conried’s patience and optimism were inexhaustible. He met every rebuff
squarely and surmounted every barrier. He won in the courts. The press
attacks and the pulpit onslaughts only furnished publicity; he found
other singers to take the place of the rebels, and so, as the event
proved, in conferring the leadership of the orchestra on Hertz, he
opened a brilliant career for an excellent conductor until then little
known in America. As for the public response, the demand for seats was
unparalleled, even in Metropolitan history: the directors were all
besieged by applications, and I alone made over a hundred people happy
by securing seats for them.
Nevertheless, on the eve of the first production everything within the
Opera House seemed in utter chaos. We were there until two o’clock in
the morning and beheld a never-to-be-forgotten sight. The famous Munich
stage manager Lautenschlager, imported for this special performance, was
then still rehearsing raising and lowering the drops for Kundry’s big
scene, and supernumeraries were scurrying about answering the
conflicting demands of their directors; weary stage carpenters and
“hands” were lying in the wings snatching such minutes of sleep as were
possible, while high up in the stage lofts were stowed away the chorus
boys to keep them out of the clutches of the S.P.C.C. To the onlooker,
professional or amateur--to everybody except the confident
Conried--there seemed nothing but disaster ahead. The brilliant success
that evolved is too much a matter of operatic history to require
recounting here.
Conried had always drawn unsparingly on his reserves of energy and
resistance, and there came at last a moment when those reserves were
exhausted. An unpleasant episode, involving not himself, but one of his
company, enlisted all his efforts. At its conclusion, he was met with a
piece of bad news: Dr. Holbrook Curtis told him that he feared that a
growth which had just appeared in the throat of Caruso would prevent
this, now his particular star, from singing during the coming season and
might end his career altogether. Conried went from the doctor’s office
to the Opera House to watch an important, long-drawn-out rehearsal.
Shortly thereafter he had a breakdown from which he never recovered.
When he died, his widow and son requested me to arrange the funeral, and
readily adopted my suggestion that as Heinrich Conried’s greatest
success had been won in the Metropolitan Opera House, so his obsequies
should be held there as Anton Seidl’s had been ten years before. I knew
that Conried had not been connected with any synagogue, but I asked
whether he had mentioned a preference.
“None,” said his son.
Being president of the Free Synagogue, I requested Rabbi Wise to
officiate. I communicated with the directors of the Conried Opera
Company, who consented to the plan, and every branch of the organization
from the orchestra to the scene-shifters volunteered to help.
It was an event which none who witnessed it will ever forget. The
proscenium arch was hung with black, and the “set” was the mediæval
interior used in the third act of “Lucia.” In the centre was the great
catafalque, its outlines almost obscured by masses of flowers--lilies,
roses, orchids, literally by tens of thousands--flanked by two Hebrew
candelabra, surmounted by the bust of the impresario that had been
presented to him, during his illness, by the members of the company.
Promptly at eleven the Metropolitan Orchestra began the funeral march
from Beethoven’s “Eroica,” and, carried by six skull-capped bearers, the
coffin, entirely covered by a pall of violets, was placed upon the
stage. Mme. Homer and Riccardo Martin and Robert Blass sang Handel’s
“Largo”; the choir-boys from Calvary Church who had appeared in the
first American production of “Parsifal” intoned a setting of Tennyson’s
“Crossing the Bar”; Dr. Wise and Professor William H. Carpenter, of
Columbia, spoke of the dead man’s work, and then, with the notes of the
Chopin funeral-march sobbing through the Opera House--attended by
music-lovers, judges, artists, financiers, leaders in almost every walk
of life, there was taken from the scene of his greatest work the body of
the weaver-boy of Bielitz.
These memories have taken me somewhat far afield and consumed much of
the space that I had intended to devote, in this chapter, to my own
activities. I should like to tell of my service as director of the
Educational Alliance, the consolidation of a dozen activities for the
benefit of children--and particularly the Jewish children--of that Lower
East Side neighbourhood; and, too, of my work on the Board of Directors
of the Mt. Sinai Hospital, the institution which my father helped so
many years before; and of my interest in the Henry Street Settlement so
ably developed by my friend Lillian Wald, my connection with which
eventually led Mrs. Morgenthau and me to establish the Bronx House. Mrs.
Morgenthau once taught in the Louis’ Downtown Sabbath School at 267
Henry Street, and right next door to it Miss Lillian D. Wald and Miss
MacDowell, the daughter of General MacDowell of Civil War fame, had
started an experiment that was to grow into a vast benefit for the
entire community. Up to that time the people of the Lower East Side who
were unable to afford regular medical treatment for themselves or their
babies went without it until the last minute and then sought the rare
dispensaries; for any other sort of help, they turned to the district
political bosses, who never failed to require a substantial return for
favours and who had few favours to dispense to those who neither voted
themselves nor controlled the votes of others. Miss Wald practically
originated the idea of the house-to-house, or the tenement-to-tenement,
visiting trained nurse, who made friends with the sick and needy in
their own homes, cared for the ill, showed their relatives how to care
for them, gave practical lessons on the bringing up of children, and
demonstrated that household hygiene is the ounce of prevention that is
worth a pound of cure. Out of this evolved the now famous Henry Street
Settlement.
This work deeply interested me, and I have been a constant and frequent
visitor at the house, and have supported a visiting nurse on Miss Wald’s
staff for the past twenty-two years.
Some years ago Miss Wald unfolded to me the needs of a sister settlement
house in the Bronx, and urged me to assist in organizing an
establishment similar to hers. At a meeting at my house, which was
attended by Angelo Patri and his wife, Simon Hirsdansky, and Jacob
Shufro--all three of the men being now principals of schools in the
Bronx--and Bernard Deutsch, and a few others, my wife and I were
persuaded by their statements of the great good that a settlement house
could do in the Bronx, and we agreed to finance it for a few years. We
combined with it a music school under the supervision of David Mannes
and Harriet Seymour who had been active in the Third Street Music School
Settlement.
We established it at once at 1,637 Washington Avenue, and, as the people
said, “with a golden spoon in its mouth.” The children in the
neighbourhood--and there were thousands of them--flocked to it from the
very day it was started. There seemed to be an insatiable demand for
instruction in music, and it has been a never-ending delight to see the
steady strides made by the little orchestra started in the beginning by
Mr. Edgar Stowell, up to 1922, when I saw them carry the entire musical
programme of the pageant of the joint settlement houses at Hunter
College. Several times we have been surprised by having this little
orchestra give us a performance at our house, and at other times we have
been regaled with the performance of “Alice in Wonderland” by one of the
clubs of the Bronx House. When I survey the progress made and the
happiness given the scholars of the music schools, and the members of
the thirty-odd clubs, I feel that the funds that I have invested in the
Bronx House have produced far greater dividends than any of my other
investments.
Another of my social activities was my work as a member of the Committee
on Congestion of Population in New York City, which really did excellent
service in calling attention to the housing conditions of the
metropolis. This committee owed a great deal to the inspiration of that
beautiful soul, Carola Woerishoefer, granddaughter of Oswald
Ottendorfer; Benjamin C. Marsh was its secretary, and it was active for
several years. Our social survey discovered that over fifty blocks in
New York had each a population of between 3,000 and 4,000 souls, and
that the city’s tenements contained some 346,000 dark rooms. We had
diagrams and models made, illustrating these conditions, listing the
plague-spots where tuberculosis thrived, calling attention to the
overcrowding in schools and the shortage of public playgrounds; in 1908
we held an exhibition in the Twenty-second Regiment Armoury and, by this
and other means, succeeded in securing considerable remedial
legislation. Then in 1911 there was the terrible fire in the Triangle
Shirt Factory--an “upstairs” factory--where, owing to the bad
conditions, 160 girl employees were killed. That resulted in a public
protest against inadequate factory inspection and the creation of a
“Committee of Safety” in which I served in company, among others, with
Miss Anne Morgan, Miss Mary Dreier, Miss Frances Perkins, George W.
Perkins, John A. Kingsbury, Peter Brady, and Amos Pinchot. When Henry
L. Stimson relinquished his duties as chairman to become Secretary of
War, I succeeded him. We were instrumental in having the legislature
appoint a factory investigating committee of which Alfred E. Smith was
chairman and Robert Wagner vice-chairman.
These men came to see me, soon after their appointments, in some
embarrassment. They seemed sincerely desirous of performing their
duties, but said they were badly handicapped.
“Are you folks going to finance this investigation?” they asked.
“Because, if you aren’t, we don’t see how it is to be carried on. The
legislature appropriated only $10,000, and it will take all that to pay
a good attorney to do the necessary legal work.”
“I can get you a first-class lawyer who will not demand any fee,” I
said, “and he will be satisfactory to everybody concerned, including
Tammany Hall.”
The man I had in mind was Abram I. Elkus. He agreed with me as to the
good he could do in this capacity, and the public honour to be won if he
would volunteer his services. Within two hours after my interview with
Smith & Wagner, Mr. Elkus had assumed the post. The result was
thirty-one successful bills constituting what is to my mind the best
labour legislation ever passed by a State Legislature.