New Book Proves Services of Haym Salomon to Revolution; Monument Plans Progressing

Simultaneously with the publication of a new book presenting additional and hitherto unpublished evidence proving the services of Haym Salomon, American-Jewish financier of Polish extraction, to the American Revolution, it is learned that a public drive for $150,000 will shortly be launched to finance the Haym Salomon monument which is to be erected at Lincoln Square in New York. The Municipal Art Commission has approved the design of Anton Schaarf and the chairman of the committee will be announced in a fortnight.

The new book, the work of Charles Edward Russell, and published by the Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, is called “Haym Salomon and the Revolution.” Salomon’s services to the Revolution, Mr. Russell says in the preface of his book, are adequately proven by the diary kept by Robert Morris during the latter’s period of service as Superinaendent of Finance for the young United States.

“References to Salomon at the beginning of the diary are few and formal,” Mr. Russell points out, “but they curiously increase in frequency and the respectful terms in which they are couched until at least Salomon appears daily and has manifestly become the confidant and close advisor of the Superintendent who was in reality the nation’s first secretary of the treasury. When Morris had a confidential message to send to New York it is by Salomon that he sends it; whenever he is in difficulties he turns to Salomon.”

After summarizing the efforts of this Jew, whose services have so long been overlooked, to make the Revolution a success, Mr. Russell says, “if he had done no more than to keep James Madison and James Wilson in public life he would have marked American history indelibly, if unostentatiously, for these men were among its makers and directors. If he had done no more than to keep Robert Morris solvent and the credit of the United States from ruin that would have been enough, for if the Revolution had collapsed when it was most beset in 1781 there would have been no United States. But he did even more. He testified to the world that Americanism is not a matter of so-called race, of birthplace or descent but of faith and of faith alone. Its truest exponents might be borne anywhere and still be its indubitable sons.

“No reward of glory or eminence or praise or position waited upon his part, and, so far as we can discover now, he considered them not at all. He wore no uniform, clanked no sword, bore no title and had no acclaim as he went through the streets. He was never a member of Congress; from the rights and privileges of other citizens he was, even in liberal Pennsylvania, largely debarred. But beyond any doubt, he toiled like a man on a treadmill and gave all his possessions for the thing he believed in.”