Byline: 

Cover for Documentary West of Hester Street 1983) (Photocopy, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, 1908). 

Summary:

The Galveston Movement operated between 1907 and 1914. Its intent was to divert Jews fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe away from crowded East Coast cities to America’s West. Faced with poverty and death, millions of Eastern European Jews poured into America in the early 1900s. They crowded into ghettos along the Eastern seaboard. The leaders of the Jewish Community (almost exclusively German Jews) grew concerned that the U.S. government would soon close its doors to these new immigrants and precipitate immigration restrictions.

In response the Jewish Immigrants' Information Bureau attempted to find suitable alternative destinations for the influx of immigrants. They devised a plan to bring thousands of immigrants through the port of Galveston, Texas to settle them throughout America's heartland. 

Introduction

Although I was well aware of this very unusual historical migration, variously referred to as West of Hester Street or the Galveston Movement, I had not considered it a topic of particular relevance outside of my own family. However, one of my friends and financial advisors, David Hochstadt, felt that I should write a brief description of the immigration of thousands of Jews to Texas from 1907-1914. While the Galveston movement lasted only a handful of years, it certainly helped Jews like my family to assimilate into America.

My grandparents on both sides immigrated to the United States from Poland, Galicia, and Russia in the 1880’s. Both of my parents’ families in turn migrated from the slums of New York City and Philadelphia to Texas before 1910. My grandfather on my mother’s side, Rabbi Henry Horowitz, (name subsequently changed to Harwood) was recruited to help meet the spiritual needs of the expanding Orthodox Jewish community of Galveston. 

My grandfather of my father’s side, Jacob Verlinski, felt strongly that for Jews to be accepted in America they needed to own land—a right denied in most countries of Europe. Grandfather Verlinski (changed his surname to Werlin in 1917 because of strong anti-foreign prejudice) initially opened up a small garment factory with his brother in Houston, Texas. His family lived on a small farm in Pearland, Texas some forty miles outside of the Houston boundaries. Grandfather Verlinski commuted by train to Houston each day.

The decision of both of my grandparents to move to Texas provided a wonderful entrée for their children to obtain the opportunities of America. Their children quickly assimilated into American life and enjoyed professional careers. In an era where few Americans attended college, almost all of my uncles and aunts not only graduated but even earned graduate degrees. We had a whole host of doctors and lawyers, but no “candlestick makers.”

My mother, Rosella Werlin, was a lifelong journalist. She was the first woman to be director of publicity for a major city, Galveston, Texas. My father, Dr. Joseph Werlin, was a founding professor at the University of Houston, Chairman of their Sociology Department, and Founder of one of the first International Study Programs in America.

Until recently, my residence in America directly contradicted the movement of my grandparents. That is, from 1969-2009, my primary residence was in the New York City area where I could focus on investment banking. However, instead of returning to my native Texas, I became a full time resident of Sarasota, Florida. 

Galveston Movement

The Galveston Movement was a program that operated between 1907 and 1914 to divert Jews fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe away from crowded East Coast cities. Faced with poverty and death, millions of Eastern European Jews poured into America in the early 1900s. They crowded into ghettos along the Eastern seaboard. Jewish leaders grew concerned that the    U.S. government would soon close its doors to these new immigrants. They devised a plan to bring thousands of immigrants through the port of Galveston, Texas to settle them throughout America's heartland. 

In the Northeast, Jacob H. Schiff presided over the Galveston Movement, which tried to offset Taft administration efforts to restrict immigration Schiff provided nearly $500,000 personally to fund the Galveston Movement.

Between 1906 and 1914 nearly 50,000 immigrants arrived at Galveston, including Bohemians, Moravians (see CZECHS), Galicians, Austrians, Romanians, Swiss, English, Poles, Italians, Dutch, and some 10,000 Jews. By 1915 Galveston was considered a “second Ellis Island.” Several benevolent groups tried to find a southern port of entry to disperse the burgeoning population of the Northeast.

Ten thousand Jewish immigrants passed through Galveston, Texas during this era, approximately one-third the number who migrated to Palestine during the same period. Galveston became an alternative to Ellis Island (the immigration center in New York City), and it took in many immigrants from about 1900 until the start of World War I.
 

Rabbi Henry Cohen was the humanitarian face of the movement, meeting ships at the Galveston docks and helping guide the immigrants through the cumbersome arrival and distribution process. The objective of the program was to shift Jews fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe away from crowded East Coast cities to the Gulf Coast. (Rabbi Cohen married my parents in 1928. He was a lifelong friend of my Grandfather, Rabbi Horowitz and my mother.)

Eleanor Roosevelt (Traitor to Her Class)

Eleanor Roosevelt was born into one of the most patrician families of America. Her uncle was Theodore Roosevelt. Her personal upbringing was totally alien to the abhorrent living conditions of the lower East side of New York City. Working in the lower east side as a social worker completely changed Eleanor Roosevelt’s ideas. She was so distraught over the dire poverty of her clients that she ultimately became a lifelong reformer and Liberal.

Mrs. Roosevelt witnessed firsthand the dichotomy among Jews. She observed at evening parties German Jews who conspicuously displayed their wealth and jewelry. On the other hand, she worked in the daytime to help the poverty stricken Jews of the Lower East side. Many of Franklin’s opponents charged that he was a “traitor to his class.” Eleanor not necessarily Franklin earned that label.

German Jewish Prejudice against Slavic Jews:

For many years, Jacob Schiff was the preeminent leader of the Jewish community of America. He served as Managing Partner of Kuhn, Loeb, a leading investment bank that competed heavily against J.P. Morgan. His son-in-law Felix Warburg provided much of the intellectual underpinnings for the founding of the Federal Reserve. The Schiff mansion ultimately became the Jewish Museum of New York.

Groundwork for the Galveston Movement was shared by several Jewish organizations in America and Europe. Jacob Schiff presided over the "Galveston Committee" in New York City, which coordinated the recruiting efforts of the London-based Jewish Territorial Organization and the Jewish Emigration Society of Kiev. These groups worked with the reception and relocation activities of the Jewish Immigrants' Information Bureau, based in Galveston. 

Schiff was a member of an elite group of German-Jewish Americans, sometimes referred to as ‘Our Crowd’. This tightly-woven German-Jewish community produced leading figures in commerce and investment banking. Being thoroughly assimilated into American life, they held contemptuous views of latter day Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. By the time that I came to New York City in 1969, many of the descendants of the great German-Jewish families such as the Lehman, Strauss, and Schiff had become gentiles.

Prominent Jews of German descent founded or effectively ran

1. Macy’s and Gimbel Department store chain.

2. Loeb Rhodes

3. Lehman Brothers

4. Goldman Sachs

5. Kuhn Loeb

6. Anaconda Copper

7. Sears Roebuck

8. New York Times

The author, Stephen Birmingham, argued in his book, Our Crowd, that they the derogatory term—kike—was first used by German Jews to refer to the Russian-Polish newcomers whose names frequently ended in ‘sky.’ 

As late as 1969 when I moved to New York City, Eastern European Jews were barred from the upscale German Jewish clubs, such as the Harmony Club of New York City. Ironically, I was barred from the Harmony Club and instead joined the anti-Semitic New York Athletic Club.

I personally found that the “so-called” Jewish investment banks tolerated more blatant anti-Semitism than even WASP firms such as Morgan Stanley and First Boston (I was the second Jewish employee of First Boston). For example, at Lehman Brothers there were de facto two investment banks. The Jewish one represented certain industries such as retail and media. The Gentile one housed bankers who represented the oil companies. The partners from these various factions held deeply hostile views of each other. Also, at Lehman for many years the head of the municipal and corporate bond departments never hired any Jewish employees. At Lazard, the managing partner David Weill tolerated a very openly anti-Semitic partner, James Glanville and even supported an Arab boycott in the 1970’s against “Jewish” firms participating in bond syndicates. The boycott was broken by firms such as Merrill Lynch who refused to go along with the Arab boycott.

Rabbi Henry Cohen

Rabbi Henry Cohen is credited with helping to found the Galveston Movement, which operated between 1907 and 1914. This movement redirected Jewish settlement to the middle of the United States and away from the Northeast. Cohen and members of the congregation met all of the ships that docked carrying Jewish immigrants at the Port of Galveston, and helped to direct many of the passengers to new homes in Texas and beyond. 

Cohen was born in England in 1863 and educated in its schools. He was ordained a rabbi in 1884 and accepted his first assignment in Jamaica. In 1885 he moved to Woodville, Mississippi, to serve the Jewish community. He then moved on to Galveston in 1888 to become rabbi of Temple B’nai Israel.

Cohen became a prominent citizen of Galveston and was instrumental in helping the community responded to the destruction of the hurricane which destroyed a great deal of the island’s buildings and took the lives of more than 6,000 of its citizens in 1900.

In Galveston, Cohen founded the Jewish Immigrant Information Bureau to help relieve the pressure of anti-Semitism on Hester Street. As the flow of Jewish immigrants began to flow through Galveston, Cohen recruited sponsors, usually other Jews, not just in Texas but also throughout the Great Plains of the United States. Many a community enjoyed significant economic development due to the industry and hard work of these new citizens.

As a result, through the combined efforts of Rabbi Cohen and others, it is estimated that over ten thousand Jewish immigrants passed through Galveston. To put this in perspective, approximately thirty thousand Jews immigrated to Palestine during this same time period.

Experience of Early Jewish Participants in Galveston Movement

The first refugees-fifty-four men and two women-arrived on the steamship Cassel in early July 1907. Two days before the ship docked, a warehouse remodeled as a reception center burned down, raising questions about the welcome likely to be afforded the newcomers. Mayor Henry Landes, however, spoke to the immigrants; a schoolteacher from southern Russia answered with a grateful speech on behalf of the group. 

The members of the first group were distributed among cities and communities throughout the western states and as far north as Fargo, North Dakota. The main territory to which the bureau directed immigrants was between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Four of them settled in Fort Worth; none remained in Galveston, in keeping with the movement's policy. Despite the economic depression 900 immigrants passed through Galveston before the end of 1907. The following year only 106 came, and Jewish organizations worked hard to stimulate interest in absorbing the immigrants among the smaller communities across the United States. Within Texas the focus was on Tyler, Texarkana, Marshall, and Palestine, since the railroad fare from Galveston to these towns, at the half-priced charity rate, was only four or five dollars.

Recruiters stipulated that immigrants should be able-bodied laborers and skilled workers under the age of forty. The number of Hebrew teachers and kosher butchers was restricted in the belief that strict religious adherence would limit the immigrants' ability to work and be assimilated. Teachers were deemed unskilled, though some entered, as did others, on the pretense that their skills or training met job needs.

End of Galveston Street Movement.

By 1913 the situation had worsened; merchants became concerned about competition from immigrants, and an increasing number of immigrating Polish Jews who would not work on Saturday reduced the waning enthusiasm of American Jewish communities further. Three communities declined to take more; the representative from Cleburne, Texas, complained about the immigrants' "exactions, fault-finding, and refusal to abide by the labor conditions upon which they come.”

The Ku Klux Klan resented large scale immigration to Texas. Their standards for entry into America were much more restrictive than Ellis Island. The fear of being repatriated back to Europe significantly reduced the attraction of the West. After World War I, American lawmakers fearful of an erosion of Western European values imposed a very restrictive quota system against immigrants from Eastern Europe and Italy. Thus, the anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic attitudes of the Ku Klux Klan became imbedded in national policy.

Throughout the period of the Galveston Movement, its chances of success were handicapped by continual infighting among the cooperating organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, by the unfavorable condition of the American economy, and by the restrictive attitudes and behavior of Galveston immigration authorities. Further, European Jews did not recognize Texas and the Southwest as the America of their dreams; the area satisfied no religious or nationalistic expectations

The flow of immigration ceased in World War I, and the immigration center was demolished in 1972.

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