I always had the highest admiration for the late Nathan Straus and when plans for a suitable memorial to his memory reach the stage where all are agreed as to what it shall be, I shall be glad to help further that project, President Hoover says in a message he has sent to the Nathan Straus Memorial Committee here, which is confident that the President will agree to accept the honorary chairmanship of the Memorial Committee.
Dr. John A. Harriss is chairman of the Memorial Committee, and the members include Mr. Lee J. Eastman, President of the Packard Motor Car Company; Mr. Frederick T. Wood, President of the Fifth Avenue Coach Company; Mr. S. E. Lester, of the New York Telephone Company; Mr. Clarence L. Law, of the New York Edison Company; Mr. James F. Nathan, of the Western Union, and Mr. August Janssen, to whom President Hoover addressed his letter.
The Committee will decided what form the memorial should take and whether it should be erected in New York or in Washington. It will also decide the manner of raising the necessary funds and whether the campaign should be confined to the United States or should include other countries to which Mr. Straus extended his benefactions.
Nathan Straus’s brother Oscar Straus, the only Jew who has held Cabinet rank in the United States, is also to have a monument erected to him in Washington. The Oscar Straus Memorial Association which was incorporated in 1929 includes among its members Mr. Archibald B. Roosevelt, son of Theodore Roosevelt, the President under whom Oscar Straus held office as Minister of Commerce and Labour; Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University and of the Carnegie Endowment; Dr. Cyrus Adler, President of the American Jewish Committee, and Mr. Adolph Ochs, owner of the “New York Times”. A resolution was adopted by the United States Congress, both House of Representatives and Senate, authorising the erection of a monument in Washington to the late Oscar S. Straus, three times United States Ambassador to Turkey and the only Jew who has been a member of a United States Cabinet. It is stated that this is the first time a monument to a Jew has been authorised to be erected in the capital of the United States.
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