The Myth that Jewish Bankers Secretly Run the World

What antisemitism is — and what it isn’t — with Daniel Schulman

To contextualize conversations about antisemitism today, I spoke with Daniel Schulman, a bestselling author and Mother Jones' deputy editor for news and politics. 

In The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America, and in conversation, Dan explores various figures who unleashed antisemitism in the U.S., from a little-known hotelier to a Russian ultranationalist to Henry freaking Ford. Dan traces the origins of the idea that a cabal of Jewish bankers controls the world while musing on what antisemitism actually is, what it isn’t, and how charges of antisemitism squelch protests today.

A condensed transcript of our conversation edited for clarity is below. You can also listen to the audio, which includes discussion of Ulysses S. Grant barring Jews from a wide jurisdiction during the Civil War, how Jewish bankers were blamed for German reparations after World War I, Hitler and Henry Ford’s love fest, me extolling the benefits of reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s work beyond Eat, Pray, Love, and more:

Henry Ford’s newspaper published some questionable headlines

Ben: To begin, why did some of the families you cover start off in the American South?

DS: It's fascinating that a lot of these families would end up being written into conspiracy theories, given their origin stories. 

Many, such as the Lehmans and the Seligmans, started out as itinerant peddlers. They came over from Germany in the mid-1800s with few resources and gravitated towards the more sparsely settled parts of the country where they could sell goods at a premium. 

The first Lehman to arrive was Henry Lehman, who came in 1844. He ended up settling in Montgomery, Alabama, and unlike the Seligmans, who returned north before the Civil War, the Lehmans became identified with the South. Their business hinged on the slaveholding culture. They owned slaves and during the Civil War had a number of contracts with the Confederacy.

Ben: You write, “Many southern Jews came to accept, if not embrace, slavery — though the spiritual dissonance of this position, even at that time, was not lost on everyone.”

DS: I mention an abolitionist senator who referred to “Israelites with Egyptian principles.” He was talking about Judah Benjamin, a Jewish senator from Louisiana who’d go on to become a member of the Confederate cabinet.

Obviously, the Lehmans were not alone. There were many Jews who gravitated to the South and acclimated to that culture. I think it made them feel whiter, frankly. Montgomery County ledgers referred to the Lehmans as “almost as good as ‘white men.’”

Unbelievably, this was a step up from what was going on in their native Germany at that time. The United States, by contrast, was a utopia, though antisemitism would become more pronounced as more and more Jewish people arrived.

Ben: Getting into that, can you talk about the Seligman Hilton controversy? How did it release a few more antisemitic floodgates?

DS: Joseph Seligman, the eldest of eight Seligman brothers, had gone from peddler to shop owner and merchant to banker in the space of a couple of decades. By the 1870s, he was one of the most famous financiers in the United States. 

Every summer, the Seligmans would travel to Saratoga and stay at a massive resort hotel, called the Grand Union Hotel. On this occasion, in 1877, the Seligmans turned up at the Grand Union Hotel and Joseph was told by one of the clerks, I’m sorry, Mr. Seligman. We don't have a room for you. Jews are barred from this hotel. Seligman was indignant. 

He and the person running the hotel, Judge Henry Hilton [no relation to Hilton Hotels], traded barbs in the press for weeks. Papers like The New York Times went out and talked to other hoteliers in New York and elsewhere asking, do you bar Jews from your hotels? And the hoteliers said, well, no, but we do charge them double. Or yes, but they're taking over and it's terrible. 

The controversy unleashed a lot of antisemitism that had been bubbling beneath the surface. Afterward, other venues started to bar Jews like social clubs, country clubs, schools, and fraternities. 

Ben: As the saying goes, we’re not free everyone until everyone is free... to join Sigma Chi Delta. 

Rising antisemitism gets us to Jacob Schiff. Can you talk about his relationship with Russia and how he got some payback?

DS: Jacob Schiff, like Joseph Seligman before him, was one of the most famous international bankers. J. P. Morgan is often seen as the most important financier in American history, but I think Jacob Schiff clearly can lay claim on that title. It amazes me how little-known he is.