The Forgotten Man

On the forty-second page of “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” author Amity Shlaes wrote (emphasis added):

opportunity in the small towns, and gold "in the hearts of your citizens, the gold which, too, makes each of us able to go all over the world with respect and safety as American citizens."

In New York, Italian Americans became symbols of success; one of these, the half-Jewish Fiorello LaGuardia, represented the state as a Republican in Congress. Another proud group were his cousins, the Jews, both the older German Jews and the newer East European Jews. Jews at the time had a general belief in charity and taking care of one another: "All Israel is responsible for one another." In addition, they were aware of a specific history in New York; Peter Stuyvesant had asked the Dutch West India Company to ban Jewish settlement, but the company had allowed Jews to stay as long as the Jewish poor "be supported by their own nation." The colonial Jews had pledged that they would, and the commitment was still alive. As late as the 1910s, philanthropist Jacob Schiff said that "a Jew would rather cut his hand off than apply for relief from non-Jewish sources."

The paramount symbol of such immigrant independence was the Bank of United States, which served immigrants and within a few years was establishing sixty offices spread around New York. The bank's very name—Bank of United States, not Bank of the United States or Bank of America—was awkward. Its position was also awkward—while it was large, because immigrants were arriving fast and saving aggressively, it was not a member of the New York Clearing House, and therefore outside the established network of banks. Indeed, one likely reason for the bank's official-sounding name was to signal that the bank was part of the American dream, and as close as a private bank could come to being as trustworthy as government.

The Bank of United States served the textile and clothing businesses—the rag trade and many others, for depositors would soon number 400,000. From the jewel trade to the wholesale meat business, immigrants were integrating into the New York economy. Among the Jewish families in the city throngs were kosher butchers named Schechter, in Brooklyn. In the late 1920s several banded together to open the Schechter Brothers wholesale poulty slaughterhouse.

More information about “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” (and the book itself) is available from:

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(Harper Perennial, June 2008. Paperback, 468 pages. ISBN: 0060936428; EAN: 9780060936426.)