With $2,071,000 needed before January 1 to complete a budget of $3,655,000 for ninety-one affiliated charitable agencies, 500 leaders and volunteer workers for the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies gathered last night at the Hotel Biltmore to complete final plans for an appeal to the community, which is to be inaugurated on November 11. Felix M. Warburg, chairman of the board of trustees, presented the chairmen of the forthcoming campaign. The general and executive chairmen who will direct the appeal are Arthur Lehman, Lawrence Marx, Paul M. Rosenthal and Percy S. Straus.
The ninety-one agencies affiliated with Federation include seven hospitals, among them Montefiore Hospital for Chronic Diseases, Mount Sinai and Beth Israel; seventeen child-care institutions, such as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Home for Hebrew Infants; and correctional institutions; a home for the aged, a family care agency and schools for the handicapped. These institutions serve more than a quarter of a million men, women and children annually.
FINANCIAL CRISIS
Disclosing the existence of a financial crisis in the Federation so serious as to menace the future of the entire structure of Jewish philanthropy in this city, former Justice Joseph M. Proskauer, president of the Federation, hailed acceptance of the chairmanship of the campaign as tremendously heartening, since it brings to the helm of Federation at this grave juncture “leaders representing the community’s finest traditions of public responsibility and humanitarian endeavor.”
“It is impossible to exaggerate the emergency,” Judge Proskauer declared. “It is actually a question of raising sufficient funds to keep the doors of our institutions open.”
The meeting was presided over by Samuel D. Leidesdorf, chairman of the business men’s council, the fund-raising group in the Federation. Other speakers included Waldemar Kops. chairman of its executive committee; and Mrs. Joseph Brettauer and Mrs. Julius Ochs Adler, who will serve as chairman and associate chairman, respectively, of the campaign organization of the Federation women’s division, which is headed by Mrs. Sidney C. Borg.
The more than four years of economic depression have really been a war of attrition for the Federation and its affiliated institutions as it has for virtually all private philanthropies, Judge Proskauer pointed out, and had resulted in bringing them to the brink of exhaustion. The Federation’s income has shrunk steadily while demands upon the institutions for their humanitarian services have mounted year by year and continue to mount.
“Despite the most rigorous economy and curtailment of every non-vital service,” the speaker said, “we have been forced to use every penny of our available reserve funds until today the Federation has not a single cent of reserves left upon which to draw.
NEED STILL GREAT
“The year 1934 has seen no diminution of the demands made upon private charity,” declared Judge Proskauer. “On the contrary, the seven hospitals affiliated with Federation are flooded with increasing applications for free medical care, both in the wards and in the clinics. The increase in hospital cases is eighteen per cent. over 1929 and in the clinics the number of visits has increased twenty per cent. Our child care institutions are crowded as never before with the innocent victims of broken homes. Here the increase is twenty-seven per cent. over 1929. And so I might go through the entire list of institutions,—those caring for the handicapped, the family service agency which seeks to rehabilitate the victims of the depression,—in each category the increasing need is appalling.
“It is particularly fortunate, therefore, that we shall have at the head of our campaign this year Mr. Straus and Mr. Lehman, who are incomparably fitted by experience and long records of service in both public and private fields of social welfare, and two younger men,—Mr. Marx and Mr. Rosenthal, who already have taken a leading part in this work. They will seek to clarify, in the public mind, the mutually supplementary roles of public relief and private philanthropy and bring home to the hearts and consciences of our men and women the inescapable duty that they owe to the Federation and its affiliated agencies. Despite the hugeness of the sums needed, I am confident that under leadership such as theirs, every effort will be made to save the tradition which has been for years the proudest boast of New York Jewry.”
Mr. Lehman is president of the Lehman Corporation and is a brother of Governor Herbert H. Lehman, who has also been active in the Federation since its inception eighteen years ago. He served on the committee which drafted the Federation’s by-laws when it was organized in 1917, became president of the Federation in 1921, and held that office for three years. Since that time he has been associate chairman of the Federation board of trustees. He has been active likewise in many other social welfare and civic organizations, public and private, including membership on the boards of the Museum of the City of New York and the Merchants Association; and has served as a commissioner of social welfare under appointment from Governor Roosevelt.
STRAUS HELPED FORM BODY
Mr. Straus, who is president of R. H. Macy & Co., was also one of those active in the formation of the Federation and the first chairman of its business men’s council. He is a member of the council of New York University, a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Institute for Advanced Study.
Mr. Marx is a member of the Federation board of trustees and has been prominent among the younger leaders of Federation for some time past. Mr. Rosenthal is a trustee of Mount Sinai Hospital and assistant treasurer of Corner House, another of the agencies affiliated with the Federation.
“I cannot conceive,” said Mr. Marx last night, “that, once the perilous situation in our Jewish philanthropies is widely known, there will not be an immediate response on the part of our public-spirited Jewish community, exceeding anything New York has ever known. One would not dare to assume such a huge responsibility as a chairmanship of the Federation campaign entails without this faith. Surely, no mere four depression years, however severe, will destroy in our people a century’s old tradition that has survived far darker times, and has built and maintained through a whole succession of crises and depressions an edifice of charity and service in New York City, unsurpassed for progressive pioneering, and including some of the most famous social agencies in the United States. It is unbelieveable that our effort this Fall should fail—such a blot on the pride and prestige of the New York Jewry is literally unthinkable.”
STRESSES RESPONSIBILITY
Mr. Rosenthal stressed the responsibility falling upon the leadership of New York business and industry to maintain private social agencies. “We will go into the Fall campaign determined to make good the assertion that business leadership is far-sighted and public-spirited enough to meet social responsibility voluntarily, and without undue dependence on the arm of government. The fact that many of the outstanding leaders of the business life of our community have already accepted chairmanship for their particular trades and industries for the impending campaign and have pledged us their fullest cooperation and support, has been most reassuring to my associates and myself. We look forward with confidence to the organizing of a campaign which will enlist every possible element in every phase of activity in New York to meet this grave emergency which lies like a black shadow over our community.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
