Julius Kahn, Author of Draft Bill, Brilliant Figure in American Jewry, Dead

Julius Kahn, for twenty-four years representative to Congress for the Fourth California District, one of the leading figures of American Jewry, Chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee and author of the Draft Bill during the war, died yesterday at the age of sixty-three.

Julius Kahn was born in Kuppenheim, Granduchy of Baden, Germany, February 28, 1861. He was brought to America in 1866, when his parents settled in San Francisco. After leaving school he went on the stage and acted with Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson and Clara Morris. In 1890 he returned to California where he studied law and in 1892 was elected to the California legislature. He was elected to the Fifty-sixth Congress on the Republican ticket in 1899, when his national activities began.

During the war he went to Europe as representative of Congress and made a tour of the American Front.

Although devoted mainly to national politics, Julius Kahn took an active part in Jewish affairs. Twenty-five years ago he was one of the charter member who, with Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger of Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco, established the Jewish Educational Society of San Francisco, the first of its kind on the Pacific Coast. In 1919 he was a member, together with Henry Morgenthau, of the commission of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which attempted to have a universal religious liberty clause introduced into the Covenant of the League of Nations.

During his long residence in Washington he was ever ready to serve any Jewish cause and occupied a position similar to that of the late Simon Wolf.