Part 11
=German-American Captains of Industry.=--Kreischer, Balthasar, of Kreischerville, Staten Island, N. Y., born March 13, 1813, at Hornbach, Bavaria. In December, 1835, occurred the great fire which destroyed more than 600 buildings in the business part of New York City. Young Kreischer, who had learned brick manufacture, was struck with the opportunity that the disaster afforded to one of his trade. He arrived in New York June 4, 1836, and helped to rebuild the burned district. Discovered in New Jersey suitable species of clay for the making of fire brick, which, up to this time had been imported from England. Kreischer began to fight against the British monopoly, and after discovering further valuable clay beds in Staten Island, drove the English fire brick from the American market. He soon established large works in New Jersey, Staten Island, Philadelphia and New York, and by a constant study of new improvements built up the industry on a lasting foundation. He was not only the discoverer of the valuable deposits of clay, but became the founder of the fire brick industry in the United States.
Seligman, Joseph, founder and head of the banking house of J. W. Seligman & Co., New York, New Orleans and San Francisco, was born in Bayersdorf, Bavaria, September 22, 1819. At the age of nineteen he came to America. In 1862 he and his brothers founded their banking house, which soon acquired a high reputation. During the darkest hours of the rebellion, Mr. Seligman never swerved in his allegiance to the National Government. In 1863, when the National credit was in its most precarious condition, and when many even of the stoutest hearts, began to fear for the ability of the Federal authorities to successfully maintain the National integrity, Mr. Seligman introduced the United States bonds to the people of Germany. His attempt was crowned with the most gratifying success, and resulted in securing for the Federal cause not merely money, but also foreign sympathy, of which, it will be remembered, the nation had till then received but little. The Government gratefully recognized the Seligmans as government bankers.
Steinway, Henry Engelhard, of New York City, who, with his sons, became founder of America’s greatest piano manufacturing industry and inventor of the “grand piano,” was born February 15, 1797, in Wolfshagen, Duchy of Brunswick, North Germany. The original spelling of the name was Steinweg. He came to this country on June 5, 1850, with his family. “Steinway & Sons” were destined to become the leading piano manufacturers in this country, whose fame became world-wide, whose house was the rendezvous of the leading musicians and whose activities are felt to this day. (Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Biography of New York, Vol. II, 1882.)
Starin, Hon. John Henry, ex-member of Congress, whose name for many decades was so prominently identified with New York’s railroad and steamboat transportation, was born in Sammonsville, N. Y. His paternal ancestor, Nicholas Starin (or Sterne, as the name was then spelled), was a native of Germany, and came to America about the year 1720, and settled in the Mohawk Valley, upon the German Flats. John Starin, his seventh son, fought in the Revolutionary War, being one of ten members of the Starin family who served in the American army under Washington.
William Havemeyer, founder of America’s great sugar refining industry, came here from Germany in 1799, and settled in New York. He brought with him a knowledge of his business from Bückenburg, Germany, and started what was one of the earliest refineries in New York, and has later developed into the Sugar Trust with which his descendants have been identified as leaders. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)
Bergh, Henry, founder of the first society in America for the prevention of cruelty to animals, was born in New York, 1823. He was of German descent, the family having come to America about 1740. Christian Bergh, father of the philanthropist, was a ship builder. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)
Gunther, Charles Godfred, mayor of New York in 1864, was born in that city in 1822. His father, Christian G. Gunther, a German by birth, was for more than half a century the leading fur merchant in the metropolis. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)
Mayer, Charles Frederick, former president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., was a son of Lewis Mayer, one of the first men to develop the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania. The father of Lewis Mayer was Christian Mayer, who emigrated from Germany and settled in Baltimore, where he became one of the leading merchants. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)
Ottendorfer, Oswald, was born at Zwittau and educated at Vienna. He came to New York in 1850, having been involved in the revolutionary outbreak in Vienna. He became eminent as the editor and proprietor of the “New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.” (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)
Ziegler, William, born of German parents, in Beaver County, Pa., in 1843, was the founder of the baking powder industry in this country, in which he accumulated a fortune. (Makers of New York, Hamersly & Co., Philadelphia, 1895.)
Windmueller, Louis, a prominent merchant and reformer of New York, was born in Westphalia, emigrating to this country in 1853. He was one of the founders of the Reform Club and of many of the leading banking institutions in the city.
Eberhard Faber, founder of the American lead pencil industry, born near Nuremberg in 1820; Friedrich Meyerhaeuser, the American lumber king, born 1834 in Hessia; Klaus Spreckels, founder of the American beet sugar industry, in Hanover in 1828; G. Martin Brill, largest car manufacturer, born February, in Cassel.
John Valentin Steger, for whom a well-known piano is named, came to the United States from Germany at the age of 17 in the steerage and died in Chicago, June 14, 1916, aged 62, founder of the town of Steger and president of the J. V. Steger & Sons Mfg. Co., and of the Singer Piano Mfg. Co., the Reed & Sons Mfg. Co., the Thompson Piano Mfg. Co., and of the Bank of Steger; also vice-president of the Flanner Land & Lumber Co. In his will he left a large sum for a hospital and library for his employees.
From the earliest period of New York’s financial district, Germans and men of German blood have occupied a predominant part in the financial life of this country, firstly because fundamental banking principles are taught in Germany as nowhere else, and secondly for the reason that subjects, such as foreign exchange, necessitate such deep technical knowledge that it would appear only German minds can thoroughly grasp them. It is an actual fact that even today, the foreign exchange business of Wall Street, even that part of the business handled and controlled by Morgan & Company and the National City Bank, is in the hands of Germans.
Among the greatest of Wall Street operators of the end of the last century, the days of Jay Gould, Russell Sage, Addison Cammack, etc., Germans predominated and were triumphant victors in most of the great Wall Street speculative battles. Henry Villard, who came to this country from Germany, was the chief center of American railroad finance in the historic period from 1879 to 1884. He it was who captured the Northern Pacific Railroad from the Wall Street banking groups.
Another figure of this time was the great bear operator, probably the most powerful and successful bear operator that Wall Street has ever seen, Charles Frederick Woerishoffer, who died in 1886. He was born in Gelnshausen, Germany, and coming to this country, founded the firm of Woerishoffer & Company. He was connected with the famous campaigns in Wall Street conducted by James R. Keene, Jay Gould, Russell Sage, Addison Cammack, etc., for the control of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in 1879. Henry Clews, the English stockbroker, says of him in his reminiscences of Wall Street: “Woerishoffer had the German idea of fighting in the open, as against the secret operations of Commodore Vanderbilt and the others. He lost some battles but won most of those in which he engaged and made millions out of the conflicts.”
Joseph Drexel came to this country from Germany in 1787. He is the real founder of the house of Morgan & Company. Drexel founded the banking house of Drexel and Company in Philadelphia and Drexel, Morgan & Company, New York. He built up a successful banking business, in which his sons became interested, and at his death they inherited his fortune.
August Belmont, the elder, was born in Alzey, Prussia, in 1816, and died in 1890, leaving his son to manage the banking house he founded. He had been a clerk in the Rothschild banking house in Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, and when he came to this country, he was the American representative of that world historic firm, which position his son of the same name occupies today. The elder Belmont was the founder of the Manhattan Club in New York.
Henry Bischoff, founder of the banking house of Bischoff & Company, was born in Baden, Germany. Lazarus Hallgarten, of Mayence, Germany, was the founder of the banking house of Hallgarten & Company. Isaac Ickelheimer, a native of Frankfort, Germany, was the founder of the banking firm of Heidelbach, Ickelheimer & Company. Frederick Kuehne, who was born in Magdeburg, Germany, established the banking house of Knauth, Nachod & Kuehne. Jacob Schiff, one of the foremost bankers of Wall Street at the present time, was also born in Frankfort. He is the head of Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Ernst Thalmann, who died recently, was one of the founders of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company. He was also of German birth. James Speyer, head of Speyer & Company, is a member of the old Frankfort family of that name, and obtained his financial education in Germany. In fact, the majority of banking houses in Wall Street as they exist today were founded by Germans.
Adolphus Busch, the great brewer and philanthropist, was born at Mayence-on-the-Rhine, July 10, 1839; education at gymnasium, Mayence, and academy, Darmstadt, and high school, Brussels. Came to United States, 1857. Served in the Union army under Gen. Lyon and became associated with his father-in-law, E. Anheuser, in the Anheuser Brewing Co., and later became president of the famous Anheuser-Busch Brewing Assn. of St. Louis, largest brewing concern in the world. At the time of his death was president of five large concerns, including a local bank and Diesel Engine Co., and director St. Louis Union Trust Co., Third National Bank, Kinloch Telephone Co., Equitable Surety Co., and several other strong organizations. Mr. Busch was a high type of the self-made German-American. He gave a large sum (twice) to the Harvard German Museum, the Germanistic Society of Columbia University, and to other public institutions of science and learning, and his death, Oct. 10, 1913, was universally regretted.
John D. Rockefeller and John Wanamaker are both descendants of German immigrants. The forefather of the Standard Oil King, Johann Peter Roggenfelder, came over in 1735 from Bonnefeld, Rhenish Prussia, and is buried at Larrison Corners, N. J., while Mr. Wannamaker, former Postmaster General and the father of the department store, is descended from a Pennsylvania German family named Wannenmacher.
=The German American Vote.=--The following table shows the vote of the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians (according to the census of 1910) in ten states where their vote is above 40,000, the figures being compounded of those naturalized and those having applied for their first papers:
Germans Austrians Hungarians Total New York 163,881 41,466 16,123 221,470 Illinois 124,430 30,461 5,374 160,265 Wisconsin 92,655 11,385 1,620 105,660 Ohio 68,576 12,342 8,757 89,675 Michigan 52,510 4,113 1,011 57,634 Minnesota 46,281 9,515 1,022 56,718 New Jersey 44,899 7,403 4,448 56,750 Iowa 39,348 4,802 249 44,399 Missouri 35,267 4,115 1,835 41,217 California 34,911 5,135 1,065 41,111
These figures are but remotely representative of what is called “the German vote” or the vote of the Austro-Hungarians, as no account is here taken of the first generation born in the United States, the sons of these naturalized Americans, nor of their grandsons.
With the first generation of German Americans, the total vote in 1916 of this element in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, New Jersey, California, Nebraska, Kansas and the two Dakotas amount to 1,860,500.
New England, which was the center of anti-German sentiment as it is the center of puritanism and Anglo-American hyphenation, contains the smallest number of Germans and the largest number of aliens of any section in the United States; in other words, the lowest percentage of naturalized citizens among the foreign-born white men of the age of 21 and over--40.7 per cent. The highest proportion of naturalized foreign-born above 21 years was in the West North Central division, that is Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, where the Teutonic element is largely settled. Table 25 of the U. S. Census Bulletin on Population (1910) “Voting Age, Military Age, and Naturalization,” shows that the German aliens 21 years and over, all told, number only 127,103, and the Germans stand at the foot of the list of twenty-nine (alien immigrants) or 9.9 per cent., the highest being 83 per cent. The French aliens in the United States numbered 27.8 per cent., the Scotch 21.8, and the English 19.6. In other words, only 9.9 in every hundred of Germans could not be forced to go to war, but nearly 28 out of every hundred Frenchmen, 21.5 out of every hundred Scotchmen, and more than 19 out of every hundred Englishmen were immune from military duty in the United States, also from the payment of taxes.
There are more German-born persons in the United States of the age of 21 and over than there are persons of any other foreign nationality. Of the total number of foreign-born (6,646,817), Germany is represented by 1,278,667, of whom 69.5 per cent. had been naturalized in 1910. Russia comes next, with 737,120, of whom only 26.1 per cent. were naturalized. There were 437,152 Englishmen of voting age, 59.4 of whom were naturalized, while only 49.6 per cent. out of a total of 59,661 Frenchmen of voting age were entitled to vote.
The following table shows the States containing the largest number of Germans of voting age of all foreign-born citizens:
By Sections:-- Germans Austrians Hungarians East North Central 461,038 166,037 90,577 West ” ” 228,262 63,686 ---- South Atlantic 32,143 10,961 6,007 East South Central 15,154 1,719 ---- Pacific 73,302 23,500 ----
By States:-- Germans Austrians Hungarians New Jersey 60,380 26,082 22,773 Ohio 87,013 38,400 47,852 Indiana 32,123 7,356 9,383 Illinois 159,112 81,883 20,391 Wisconsin 117,661 20,700 6,014 Iowa 52,393 8,580 ---- Missouri 47,038 8,819 5,834 South Dakota 11,964 3,099 ---- Nebraska 31,008 12,184 ---- Kansas 18,910 6,178 ---- Maryland 17,370 3,397 967 Colorado 9,558 8,221 ---- Oregon 10,786 3,622 ---- California 44,712 11,125 ----
In the following States the German-born citizens of voting age constitute the second largest number of foreign-born citizens:
Germans Austrians Hungarians Michigan 65,129 17,698 6,937 Minnesota 57,789 22,261 ---- Texas 24,039 9,767 ----
In Michigan the Germans and Austrians together outnumbered the Canadians 3,588. In Minnesota the Swedes came first, with a total of 67,003, and in Texas the Germans were outnumbered only by Mexicans.
The German-born of voting age in New York State are outnumbered by Russians and Italians, but as 68.2 per cent. of the 215,310 are citizens, only 17.5 per cent. of the Italians and only 24.4 of the Russians had acquired the franchise in 1910, the Germans outclass them numerically as voters. They are third also in Washington with a total of 17,804, next after the Canadians with 20,395 and the Swedes with 19,727. Of the Germans, however, 66.9 per cent. were naturalized while only 55.1 per cent. of the Canadians had their franchise, giving the Germans the advantage when the votes are counted.
Germans Austrians Hungarians New York 215,310 105,889 39,577 Washington 19,727 9,675 ----
In Pennsylvania Germans of voting age are outnumbered by Austrians, Russians and Italians in the order named; but only 12.4 per cent. of the Austrians, 21.9 per cent. of the Russians and 13.7 per cent. of the Italians had the franchise, whereas 66.5 of the Germans were citizens.
In North Dakota the Norwegians, Russians and Canadians outnumbered the Germans in the order named, and here all had become citizens in fairly relative proportion, as also in Montana, where the Germans of voting age were outnumbered by the Canadians, Irish and Austrians.
Germans Austrians Hungarians Pennsylvania 95,539 145,528 68,522 North Dakota 9,160 2,565 1,096 Montana 5,419 6,067 ----
In New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut the total number of German-born voters was only 33,011, Austrians 29,686 and Hungarians 6,377, and these were principally in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Maine had none.
The following table shows the number of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians who were citizens in 1910, including those who had taken out their first papers:
Germans 1,017,037 Austrians 208,550 Hungarians 62,366 --------- Total 1,287,953
In addition, the citizenship of a total of 240,953 Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had not been reported. The following shows the number of Irish, Swedes, Swiss and Hollanders of voting age in 1910, including those who had applied for their first citizenship papers:
Irish 439,973 Swedes 259,305 Hollanders 40,332 Swiss 49,364 -------- Total 788,974
Other States in which German-born naturalized males of 21 or over lead all other foreign-born are:
Kentucky 7,380 Tennessee 1,509 Alabama 1,255 Mississippi 647 Arkansas 2,203 Louisiana 2,739 Oklahoma 4,071 Idaho 2,133 Wyoming 1,091 New Mexico 804 Arizona 852 Nevada 922 Delaware 903 District of Columbia 1,952 Virginia 1,547 North Carolina 365 South Carolina 570 Georgia 1,174 West Virginia 2,137 Florida 925
In West Virginia the total number of Italians was 11,561 against only 3,392 Germans, but only 748 Italians had become citizens against 2,137 Germans; and in Arizona there were 2,196 English as compared with 1,324 Germans, but 825 Germans had become citizens as compared with 832 English-born.
Of the 234,285 Russians in New York only 92,269 had become naturalized and taken out their first papers. In Minnesota were 52,133 Swedish voters, in Illinois 43,618, in Iowa 10,636, in Wisconsin 11,532, in Nebraska 10,000, in Washington 13,393, and in California 11,076.
=The German Element in American Life.=--The following commentary of Carl Schurz on the influence of the Germans in America is worthy of note:
“Friedrich Kapp, in his ‘History of the Germans in the State of New York,’ says: ‘In the battle waged to subdue the new world, the Latins supplied officers without an army, the English an army with officers, and the Germans an army without officers.’ This is signally true as regards the Germans. They emigrated to America and settled here as squatters without eminent official leadership. They became parts of already existing communities, in which a majority population of other nationality played a dominant role. Unlike ‘the army with officers,’ they possessed no official writers of history to record their deeds and sayings in regular reports. They had lost their political connection with their native land, and whatever interest they inspired at home was of a personal or family nature. Besides this, they were strongly isolated from communion with the predominating nationality by the difference in language and frequently were forced into the unfavorable position of an alien element. These various circumstances combined to accord them a rather superficial, stepmotherly treatment in the history of the American people, as written by the dominant nationality.”--From the introduction to Kapp’s “Die Deutschen im Staate New York.”
While Prof. Nearing, Douglas Campbell, Dr. Griffis and others have shown that the Americans are not an English people, the latter--including Scotch and Welsh--constituting only 30 per cent. of the American people, the advantage as historians, which the English-speaking element enjoyed from the beginning of our life as a nation, prompted them to assume the name of “Americans” and to regard the people of all other races and their descendants as usurping an unwarranted right in calling themselves Americans, so that today an American with a German name, as the war has shown, is somehow in a tolerated class distinct from his Anglo-American neighbors.
“Yet the first distinctive American frontier was not created alone by the movement of population westward from the older settlements; like every successive frontier in our history it became the Mecca of emigrants from British and Continental lands. Before 1700 exiled Huguenots and refugees from the (German) Palatinate began to seek the new world, and during the eighteenth century men of non-English stock poured by thousands into the up-country of Pennsylvania and of the South. In 1700 the foreign population of the colonies was slight; in 1775 it is estimated that 225,000 Germans and 385,000 Scotch-Irish, together nearly one-fifth of the entire population, lived within the provinces that won independence.”--“The Beginning of the American People,” by Prof. Carl L. Becker, University of Kansas; Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1915; p. 177.
Elson, in his “History of the United States,” p. 198, says that in New England and the South the people were almost wholly of English stock, though New England was of more purely English stock than was the South, with a sprinkling of Scotch-Irish and other nationalities, and especially in the South, of French Huguenots and Germans. “In the middle colonies less than half the population was English; the Dutch of New York, the Germans of Pennsylvania, the Swedes of Delaware and the Irish of all these colonies, together with small numbers of other nationalities, made up more than half the population.” He gives the total population of the colonies in 1760 at approximately 1,600,000.
Pennsylvania is sometimes called “The American German’s Holy Land.” Let us see why. Today, as the tourist visits Heidelberg on the Neckar, sails down the Rhine from Spires or Mannheim to Cologne, he sees many ivy-mantled ruins, which show how terribly Louis XIV of France desolated this region during his ferocious wars. Angry at the Germans and Dutch for sheltering his hunted Huguenots, he invaded the Rhine Palatinate, which became for a whole generation the scene of French fire, pillage, rapine and slaughter. Added to these troubles of war and politics, were those of religious persecutions; for, according as the prince electors were Protestants or Catholics, so the people were expected to change as suited their rulers, who compelled their subjects to be of the same faith. Tired of their long-endured miseries, the Palatine Germans, early in the eighteenth century, fled to England. Under the protection and kindly care of the British government, they were aided to come to America. About 5,000 settled in the Hudson, Mohawk and Schoharie valleys in New York, and over 25,000 in Pennsylvania, chiefly in the Schuylkill and Swatara region between Bethlehem and Harrisburg. Later came Germans from other parts of the Fatherland, making Colonists rich in the sturdy virtues of the Teutonic race.