Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everyone and welcome to the New Yorkers, a podcast by New York City Cop. I'm your host, Kelly Kopp, published photographer, New York City tour business owner, content creator, podcaster, and above all else, a New Yorker.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, the next Brooklyn found trained in Mount Biden. Stand clear of the closing doors please.
This is the Times Square or symptom street.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: With me today, everyone. I have author Andrew Fisher. He is the retired founding executive director of the Lavelle Fund for the blind. He has 35 years of experience in New York City charitable foundations and is a winner of the Helen Keller International's Humanitarian Award. And he has written his first book, Nathan Strauss, from Macy's magnet to international humanitarian. But above all else, he is a New Yorker. Hey Andrew, welcome to the show today. How you doing?
[00:01:25] Speaker C: Oh, I'm, I'm doing just fine, Kelly, and thank you so much for your kind words.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Well, we're very grateful and honored that you took important time out of your day to sit with us and talk.
So Andrew, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from and what you do.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Oh, thank you, Kelly.
Happy to do that. I was born and was brought up in the greater Boston area and I had worked in teaching as a high school and college teacher and done a number of years of graduate work. But I decided that my greatest passion was philanthropy and I thought I would have perhaps more opportunity to affect the world. I may be a little grand if I had some influence over significant resources that were spent in the nonprofit sector. And that's what foundation work gives you.
So I ended up in a 35 year career in New York City charitable grant making foundations.
I worked at the old Chase Manhattan foundation, at the Wallace Foundation, Charles Hayden. And then I was very fortunate to be named the first executive director of the Lavelle Fund for the Blind.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Pretty impressive. The fund is a moderate sized international foundation whose mission is to support the adaptive education, work and independent living of mostly New York area people who are blind.
But also a second mission is to support sight saving surgeries and the prevention of blindness in the developing world.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Wow. And where is this located? In Manhattan or is this located?
[00:03:45] Speaker C: It's located on West 38th Street.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Oh, I know exactly where it is. Yes, yes, yes. I've walked by it many times. Wow. It's very impressive, my friend.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you so much.
So that was my career. I loved it. It was kind of a combination of somewhat wonky paper based analysis and planning together with working with wonderful people who were actually delivering services in the field.
And that was a great privilege. It was inspiring. And of course, I also worked with the board, I worked with the staff. And when I retired now, six years ago, I thought, probably my deepest interest beyond my family is in philanthropy. And probably my greatest skill is in expository writing because I'm a very practiced writer.
I mentioned I have a PhD in English and I taught college English at one point.
So I thought, I wonder if there is a great American philanthropist who's undersung and whose life story would not only be exemplary in a sense of being inspiring, but also sort of educated, that we could learn from this person's life and work.
And I came upon a philanthropy hall of fame list that stated that Nathan Strauss, who lived from 1848 to 1931, had been the single most influential private citizen and persuading municipal and state governments of the North Atlantic world about the importance of milk pasteurization in saving infants lives.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Which is fascinating.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Thank you. And I thought, wow, this is important because milk is just one example of what we call public health.
And public health is about protecting the health of everyone.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Correct.
It's a big part of history of New York City.
Correct?
[00:06:31] Speaker C: Oh, indeed, indeed. I mean, in 19th century New York, you had a situation where what had been a country of scattered villages and small family farms was being transformed, especially in the last decades of the 19th century, into a country of great industrial cities and capitalists, of vast wealth and companies, sometimes of near monopoly power.
And the country wasn't used to, and the Western world wasn't used to how to keep a city of many, many millions crowded together safe, how to keep them healthy in terms of water, in terms of sewer, street sanitation, you name it.
And milk, which is one of nature's most perfect foods, was at that time the choice of about roughly 20% of all families, many of whom had mothers who worked outside the home.
That was another feature, that in a more industrialized country, with more people, both men and women, working in shops and factories outside of the home, breastfeeding wasn't automatically something that was practical.
It turned out that a shocking percentage of infants at that time were dying.
Actually 14% of children under age 5 were dying each year. Each year.
So bringing children into the world was a dangerous business.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: I mean, before modern medicine in itself is a challenge to keep adults and children healthy, but with that on top of it. Correct.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: And also, it's easy to not bear in mind that Louis Pasteur's great discoveries about. In his case, it was not about milk, but two other organic beverages, a beer and wine.
That it was only the 1860s that he did that it was only in the 1880s that the German scientists Koch isolated the tuberculosis of bacteria.
And so the so called bacterial revolution was new in the late 19th century. And historically it's taken a generation or so for the medical profession to you know, to under, to understand, accept and then act on a new paradigm in medicine because it's much, it's, it's, it's hard to change the fundamental way that you practice your profession.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: And you need to have confidence, you need to have like years of evidence and validation and the reassurance of a kind of a critical mass of my fellow professionals are doing this.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Right.
So in addition, Andy too, this is the time that the world is learning about germs. When you mentioned bacteria, you know, in the medical field.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Correct, exactly, exactly that it's really the pastor and Koch and Lister, they all lived and practiced in the 1860s through 1900. Ish.
And those were the discoverers.
Then comes the translation, the translation from laboratory to bench.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: It was just fascinating not to get off subject so to speak to go back further history of you know, mankind didn't know anything about germs just until within the last hundred years. To me that's fascinating.
It's crazy too.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: It's astonishing. It's really astonishing. And we sometimes forget that how incredibly lucky we are to live when we live.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Completely agree. You know I've had these conversations too with friends. You know, I wouldn't have made it this far. I mean I've had things when I was a childhood that would have taken me out. You know, a lot of us would just most, a lot of us because of just penicillin wasn't available or known about and things like that. So it's really crazy to think about like you know, just this last hundred more, you know, a little bit over 100 years that we know about this. Well, you know, I'm excited, you know we have you on the show today, Andrew, or Andy I should say because you've written a new book and what we've just talked about is, is in the book as well and it's about the former owner also of Macy's which we, you know, we all know and love Macy's and. But what inspired you to write a biography about him about Strauss?
[00:12:15] Speaker C: So I thought of the, and I, I read about scores and scores of American philanthropists look, looking for you know, and some of the household name ones, whether it be John D. Rockefeller Sr. Andrew Carnegie, Julius Rosenwald, Jacob Schiff. They've all had books written about them, most of them, many books written about them. And I thought could there be someone who did not have titanic wealth but had substantial wealth and did something that affected all of society, who has not really been recognized fully and to some extent it's been lost to history.
And when I came upon Strauss, I realized was special and different from most wealthy people of his time in that he from middle age he prioritized philanthropy and gave aggressively starting in his 40s and continuing till he died at age 82.
And he Strauss not only funded but designed, oversaw, documented and then publicized his programs. And he picked program. He picked areas that were where something was extremely important of life and death importance on the one hand and that affected everyone or at least a big swath of society.
Problems that were under attended to, that were somewhat neglected and problems that were tractable with a philanthropic intervention. Particularly if the philanthropic intervention had the goal of showing success that would persuade government to act. And that was Strauss's modus operandi. That's what he wanted.
So I thought, yikes, this is the guy that I want to write about.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: How long did the research take on Strauss to write the book?
[00:14:41] Speaker C: So there were a couple of phases.
Kelly the research and writing of a draft that I thought was acceptable to submit to publishers that took just over three years.
And I was fortunate to within a not long time. I was fortunate that Rutgers University Press expressed interest in the manuscript.
And I was then drawn into their to me fascinating and new unfamiliar system which involved in their case. They appointed three experts and feels relevant to my book to review the manuscript.
And they all had some excellent substantive suggestions but they all also recommended the book be published.
And then if I could just.
And then from there it was about another two years of backing and forthing. And at one point I thought I've gone as far as I can with the manuscript. And I recruited a scholar named Professor Abigail Green of Oxford University.
She is a specialist in European history, but she has a subspecialty in Jewish history and Jewish philanthropy.
And so she and also another British scholar, Jacqueline Groenick, they both gave me some superb pointers that I. Then it became a whole nother.
So it was finally about five years. It was about five years in total.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fascinating. Just writing a book in general of how do you know what to leave out? You know, what what is, you know, how do you know at what point oh, this is perfect, it's finished, you know, do You. It's just. Just to write a book, I think. You know, spending five years and all this amazing information you have, how do you know what. What to leave out, you know?
[00:17:10] Speaker C: You know, David McCullough had a saying that be kind to the reader.
And that sort of rhymes with a saying that Alfred Hitchcock had about movies, which was, what will the audience think?
And so I tried.
I hope this doesn't sound immodest, but I tried really hard to think what would be important, be of importance and interest to my audience.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: And what would be relatively compelling and not sort of like the kind of secondary detail that. That really doesn't advance the narrative.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Right.
When you were researching Strauss, did you expect to admire him as much as you did? As much as you do?
[00:18:08] Speaker C: I expected to admire him for sure.
But there was a special feature that grew in my feeling about him over time, and that was that here was someone who was not necessarily destined to live the kind of life he did. He was born with a volatile, passionate temperament.
He migrated with his family at age 6 from Bavaria to first to rural Georgia and then after the Civil War, to New York.
But he had no more than a high school education.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
And when he undertook his philanthropic work, he sometimes met some pretty formidable opposition. For example, the dairy industry had been used to selling milk in large quantities as a commodity.
And the dairy industry didn't think that people would pay for pasteurization.
That was not the mindset of the consumer. They didn't know. They didn't even know what pasteurization was.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: And so they didn't want an extra cost built into a commodity. And so they. They push back a lot. And some medical associations and medical professors who hadn't embraced the bacteriological revolution and the full implications in terms of things like pasteurization, they also push back.
And so he had, at different times, to deal with public criticism. This person who was emotional and sensitive and who especially didn't like public criticism, but that someone with that wiring had the courage and tenacity to.
Even though he actually.
I mean, he had. In late middle age, for reasons we can talk about, he had three different nervous breakdowns.
But he got up. When he was knocked down, he got up. And I found that.
I find it remarkable and in some ways heroic.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: I do, too. You know, he's what, in my opinion, from your amazing biography of Strauss is he was basically. His mission was for the betterment of humanity.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: Yeah, he thought. He thought that from. From childhood, actually.
And I know that one should be A little skeptical about how much weight to put on this or that anecdote from childhood, but he was entranced by his father's saying, taken from the Hebrew Bible, that actually from the Talmud, to save one human life is to save, to save the world.
And he, as an adult, he became convinced that it was his duty as, as a believing Jew and as, as a member of society, to lessen human suffering, particularly of those who are not in a position to protect themselves.
That, that, that, that was, and he, he was, he was always certain that prevention was far better than relief.
What people want is work. They don't want to be rescued once they're homeless. They want work or they want health so that they're not sidelined from gainful activity.
And so that's why one of the reasons you focus so strongly for decades on, especially on public health.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: Interesting. Historian Jonathan D. Sarno once wrote something interesting about your biography, which I absolutely loved. He said, at last, a full length biography of one of the greatest Jewish philanthropists that history forgot. Nathan Strauss's contribution to public health, especially by championing pasteurized milk for children, saved countless lives in the United States and Palestine and demonstrated how strategic philanthropy can improve the world. I thought that was just an incredible review of your book and I nailed it. It was so powerful.
[00:23:18] Speaker C: I feel I was so grateful for Professor Sarna's generous words.
I do, in fact think that there are lessons for our time, especially now when we see, in federal government policy making, we see the intrusion of politics and personal opinion.
Whereas Strauss always sought out. He may have only had a high school education, but he was brilliant and he always sought out the very best scientific expertise and applied it.
And so that, that's inspiring. And it's. It.
We've done it before and we can certainly do it again.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: Well, I just love the review. I think, I think it's wonderful. I think it just nailed it.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Nailed your autobiography. I'm sorry. Nailed your biography.
We know what's interesting to. You know, I was reading as well about Strauss and he, he, he traveled here from Europe, the United States, via a ship, a steamship. Correct. Which to me is to think in the mid-1800s. And here he is on crossing the Atlantic Ocean. That's just what a trek that must have been in itself. And so then he moves here to the United States and in Georgia, then up to New York. And then how did Macy's come into play?
[00:24:57] Speaker C: Well, so when the bulk of the family's small fortune from running two stores in Georgia was wiped out with the Union army's occupation of their town, Columbus, Georgia. So that they lost a lot of their wealth was in cotton stores. And much of them were either burned or looted.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And it was he and his brother. Am I mistaken or that was later?
[00:25:29] Speaker C: No, well, that's right. See, at this point in. In 1865, Strauss was 17 and it was. It was his dad who had come over first.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:25:41] Speaker C: And who had first done door to door pedaling. And then he had set up in a small village called Talbotin and run a store there. And after an anti Semitic incident, had moved out of Talbotin to Columbus, which for one thing, it had an established Jewish community. Whereas in Talbotin, the Strasses were the only Jewish family.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Interesting,
[00:26:17] Speaker C: but to your question.
So when the Strausses moved to New York City, Lazarus bought a crockery business at a good price, and he set up as a crockery wholesaler.
And that business prospered to the point where, if you fast forward to this would now be 25 years to the early 1890s, they were selling. The Strausses were at that point selling through this L. Strauss and Sons family business, the international wholesaling firm.
They were selling cut glass and fine china to the likes of the Waldorf Astoria and the Russian royal family.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: Wow, that's incredible.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And they were the largest crockery and fine china wholesaler in the United States at that point. But it was that business that gave them the entree with Macy's.
On St. Patrick's Day in 1874, Nathan made a pitch to R.H. macy, the founder of Macy's.
He said, please lease to us a floor of your store and we will place there this inventory, the crockery and cut glass in China. We'll place the inventory, we'll do it on a consignment basis, we'll continue to own it, and you'll handle the selling tasks.
And Macy's accepted the deal. And it turned out to be very profitable to him and to the Strausses. And it was with.
And then over the next 15 years or so, the Strausses won. Macy died in the late 1870s, and his heirs, who are all Yankee Protestants, they came to like and trust this German Jewish immigrant family.
And they, in the 1880s, one of those descendants offered the Strausses of minority ownership position in Macy's. And then when he retired in 1896, he sold the entire store to Nathan and Isidore.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Wow, what a life he's had, you know, up to this point already.
You know, I mean, he's traveled From Europe. He lived in Georgia and he was, you know, alive during the Civil War. And what's interesting too, I mean, I was just thinking when you said 1865 is when you made it. You noted 1865. Yes, a minute ago. And that, that reminds me, that's when it makes me think about New York City history as well. About the St. Patrick, about St. Patrick's Cathedral, because that's when it was built, right around 1865. Yeah. So my mind, I'm picturing New York and all these things. And that's what I love about your biography and your story you're telling too. Because in my mind I can picture, I can picture these areas of New York as you're speaking. So.
[00:29:53] Speaker C: Yeah. And of course, that, that was just the very beginning of what would emerge as the Gilded Age and the right absolute explosion of industry, commerce, trade, and with New York City as the capital, the business capital of the country. So that for any wholesaler or retailer, that constituted a marvelous tailwind.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: True. And capital of the world, maybe at that point, too, we become that around the world, around that same time. Would you?
[00:30:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I think supposedly sometime in the late 19th century, might have been the 1880s, 1890s, the United States became the wealthiest country in the world in terms of gdp.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Wow.
Fascinating.
Andy Strauss once said he hoped to give away nearly his entire fortune. Do you think that was just rhetoric or did he come close to doing that?
[00:30:52] Speaker C: He came close to.
And the reason we know that is that Strauss probably because he began aggressive giving in his mid-40s and continued for 40 years.
He probably never had by my calculation, at any one time more than $10 million in liquid capital. And at the time of his death in 1931, he had spent that down to such that his investments were.
And his net worth was about a million dollars.
And he didn't, I mean, he, he lived, he and his life wife Lena lived comfortably, but they didn't live with any great extravagance. They didn't, they didn't. They never lived on Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue and which is such a
[00:31:48] Speaker A: rarity because a lot of these, because a lot of these millionaires back then, that was a status, you know, you know, to show that, hey, I'm on Fifth Avenue, I have this money, why wouldn't I live on Fifth Avenue? You know. But he didn't.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: No. And then when he sometimes did have luxuries, at one point he had an 80 foot steam yacht in the Great War, what we now call World War I, he sold that to raise Money for the relief of Jewish refugees.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: And his wife, similarly, slightly different context, but she gave her jewelry collection, worth, in Today's dollars, about $300,000, to Hadassah, the women's Zionist organization, for their health and social welfare work in Palestine.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Yes. I was going to ask you what he did overseas again, too, back home in Europe.
Well, that's the Middle east actually, too.
[00:32:55] Speaker C: So the Palestine story begins with the fact that Strauss and his wife, Lena Strauss, traveled to Palestine in 1904 and 1912.
And they were very struck not only by the holy sites that reminded them of great tales of their childhood from the Hebrew Bible, but also of the entrepreneurial spirit and in many cases, the idealism of the Jewish settlers there, who, after all, at that time, Palestine was a sort of neglected outpost of the Ottoman Empire, was undeveloped and did not have good sanitation, and it was burdened, had heavy malaria burden, trachoma burden.
And so it was not an easy place to live.
But some from the Jewish Diaspora had decided to move there, partly because they wanted to be in their ancestral homeland.
So that inspired Strauss, and he thought, what can I do? He said, this project of creating a secure Jewish homeland where he said the Jewish life could be lived naturally and normally and safely.
He said that that project is only going to succeed if there's a critical mass of well educated, skilled Jewish settlers who choose to live there, to settle there, instead of going to, say, Western Europe from Russia or Eastern Europe, they had choices. They could go to Western Europe, they could go to the United States.
It wasn't until the middle 1920s that the U.S. for example, started clamping down a lot on immigration during the Republican 1920s.
And so he thought, well, the foundation of life, the foundation of a good economy, the foundation of standard of living is health.
So that got him started with not just political Zionism, where he played several leadership roles, but with, let's tackle the softer side of development.
Some other people, like Brandeis and Felix Warburg and.
Others, were raising money for the.
The physical infrastructure of the country or the economic development of the country.
And Strauss wanted to build the health of the country to make it to reduce the burden of infectious disease, to increase longevity and to increase quality of life, to make it a compelling, attractive place for the Jewish Diaspora to move.
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Mm.
Wow. I was reading about that, and it was just.
Just so interesting to learn that I didn't know that part of history, you know, and that you just discussed again with us. And I think. I just think it's fascinating and makes me you know, the parallels to history that goes up from, you know, back then to today and everything, it just really makes you think about how the world is and everything.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: Strauss was different from most millionaires of the most Jewish millionaires of the 1910s vis a vis Zionism.
For example, the American Jewish Committee, which had some of the biggest names in Jewish leadership, Jacob Schiff, Lewis Marshall or Felix Warburg were among them.
They tended to be somewhat skeptical about the Jewish homeland and Palestine idea because they thought, well, Arab Palestinians outnumber Jewish Palestinians by 10 to 1 or more.
And then there's also a non trivial Christian minority there as well.
So and, and how are we going to. And moreover, countries like the United States have fairly liberal immigration policies so that if Jews want to move to a promised land, they have America, right? They don't necessarily need their own sovereign state.
And Nathan Strauss intuited that, he didn't necessarily say this in as many words, but he somehow intuited that it would be possible at some point to see a world where Jews couldn't be safe almost anywhere and where immigration was tight and where there were, there was kind of murderous persecution hounding Jews.
And so he thought, well, it may be hard and it may be counterintuitive, but over time we can make it an acceptable land and we can build a critical mass of people. And of course the Jewish population of Palestine increased by 10 times between 1918 and the declaring of the state of Israel in 1948.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Right.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: And we know what happened in 1930s and 1940s, Germany and in German occupied Europe.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Correct.
Well, also didn't Strauss, he was also, if I'm not mistaken, helping the Palestinians and he came up with programs for them as well, or am I mistaken?
[00:39:41] Speaker C: No, no, you're absolutely right. So the health programs. And Hadassah was Hadassah, the American Jewish women's Zionist organization which had by the way, more members in the 1920s. It had something like 36,000 members. And that was the biggest single Zionist organization in the United States.
That Hadassah is this great partner in health. And whether it be the so called infant welfare stations, of which there were more than eventually by 1930 across Palestine, or his two major health centers in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, all of those services were open to people of all backgrounds.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Right?
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Now it is true that they were Jewish in their funding and most of their staff, physical sighting decisions and so on, so the majority of people served were Jews. But for example, with the infant welfare, infant health centers, these small primary care centers that were set up to train mothers in caring for their. Their babies.
They opened one in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem and the Jewish physicians and nurses were working alongside Arab physicians and nurses in that facility.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: For example, very interesting
[00:41:33] Speaker C: in April 1912, when Strauss was returning from a visit to Palestine, that he got word, I guess by telegraph that his brother Isadore and Isidore's wife Ida had been lost on the Titanic.
And that precipitated the first of his three nervous break, what his family called nervous breakdowns in late middle age.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: I don't know if I read that he was supposed to be on the Titanic and something caused him from not going.
I could be mistaken.
[00:42:15] Speaker C: Well, he had been vacationing in the period pretty shortly before the April sailing of the Titanic.
Nathan and Lena Strauss had been vacationing on the Riviera with Isidore Oneida Strauss.
And remember that Isadore had been his business partner and co owner at Macy's as well as wasn't just a dear friend.
He was the responsible, sober, very judicious person, like had great, great judgment that both, both Nathan and Nathan's younger brother Oscar looked up to.
So, you know, there was both a professional and a deep personal aspect to that relationship.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: You know, just terrible that that was such a tragedy. And to have, you know, your family members on the Titanic as well.
I read that his wife, is it, or his wife, correct?
[00:43:28] Speaker C: Ida.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Ida. That she actually gave up her seat on a rowboat to stay back on the Titanic with her husband.
[00:43:36] Speaker C: That's exactly right.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:43:38] Speaker C: What happened was that the captain of the Titanic had given what might have been a somewhat ambiguous order, that women and children were to be given priority lifeboats. And there weren't enough lifeboats, as you know, famously, tragically, there weren't enough to accommodate all the people on the boat.
So Ida began to get on the boat.
She had been asked to come on by the seamen.
And then Isadore said, God bless you, that's the right thing to do, Ida, but I can't join you.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:44:20] Speaker C: Because he interpreted, see, the captain's order was to give priority.
He didn't say that every single woman and child should be accommodated before any man ever got on the lifeboat. But that's the way Isadore interpreted it. He said, I'm, you know. And then once she heard that, she said, I've lived with you as my partner and I'll die with you as my partner.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: Which they did.
[00:44:48] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: It's a tragic but, you know, beautiful love story.
[00:44:53] Speaker C: Yeah. And when they following and you know, that There is. Even. Even though the. The history of antisemitism in the United States is fortunately it. It is real and extended, but it's much milder than the history of antisemitism and antisemitic violence in Europe is. But still the example of people who were so heroic and so self denying.
It was an important validation of the Jewish community.
And that people just, they poured out literally in the thousands. At the settlement house called the Educational alliance that Isadore had helped to found, thousands of people came out to mourn and celebrate them. And then the Strauss park in the Bloomingdale section of Manhattan was created to honor them.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: Well, you know, I've been to Strauss park many times up there on Broadway, I think 106, you know, so that's. You know, I love seeing that, reading that. I thought that. Yeah.
[00:46:13] Speaker C: And that location was very close to where Isidore and Ida had lived for decades.
[00:46:18] Speaker A: Wow. Right there on the Upper west side. Up there. Wow. Yeah, that's right on Broadway right there, that Strauss Park. That's very interesting.
[00:46:26] Speaker C: And I'm glad, you know, we talked about his two most important philanthropic initiatives and. That's exactly right. Those are the ones we should talk about because the other ones take time. You know, he provided relief to tens of thousands of New Yorkers in the depression of the 1890s. And he also founded the first preventorium, the tuberculosis prevention for children, which became a model for 45 more, even though he personally wasn't involved with it. The model influenced the creation of those others. But these two were the most important. The work in Palestine and the milk program.
And we've talked about them.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Well, but one thing I also saw in addition that Strauss did was didn't he create or help the homeless in the city as well? I read that he helped the homeless as well.
[00:47:28] Speaker C: Yeah. So there were three.
There were.
New York suddenly had in the.
After the panic of 1893, which was set off by some bank crises in Europe, Barings Bank. And then it spread and there were like 16,000 bankruptcies in the United States. And wow. Credit froze up and people were thrown out of jobs. So there were literally tens of thousands of additional jobless families in New York. And these were the people that Strauss served. And he did it through. He got some support for JP Morgan for the food part of it, but Strauss himself supported coal, which people use for home heating.
And also he set up four apartment house residences for homeless people.
And he charged a nominal amount. And if you couldn't pay anything, you were asked to sweep up.
And similarly in the food and fuel programs, he wanted to affirm the dignity of the beneficiaries. He wanted them to think of themselves as customers rather than as people on the dole.
So he set up these enterprises where he would charge wholesale prices to those who could afford them. And if a family were truly indigent, he would donate the food or fuel.
So, and he did get support. This is the one time when one of the Strauss philanthropies got significant backing. In this case, it was JP Morgan who underwrote the food part of it and Strauss handled the fuel and housing part of it.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: Wow, what an amazing humanitarian philanthropist. Humanitarian.
I think I want to be one of those people like that.
That's my goal too.
Well, Andy, this is amazing. I love chatting with you.
Your biography on Strauss is incredible. Nathan Strauss. So everybody must read it.
[00:49:53] Speaker C: Well, Kelly, you're very kind. Your questions have been wonderful.
I'm just delighted that you've read so carefully and that you're so interested.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: Andy, after researching Strauss for so long, what moment in his life stayed with you the most?
[00:50:15] Speaker C: I think that if you look at the 189394 period, you see in microcosm Strauss life writ large.
Because what was he doing in that period?
Eighteen ninety three, as I mentioned, was the year of the Great Panic and the beginning of what turned out to be the deepest and longest depression in American history. To that point, it probably went for about five years starting in 1893.
So 1893, early 93, he launches the food, fuel and relief program that served tens of thousands of New Yorkers.
And again, some credit to JP Morgan.
He also launches the milk program where he's going to build 17 milk depots and the largest milk pasteurization plant in in the world at that time.
He's also functioning as a park commissioner for New York and as a park commissioner for New York City and as a parks Commissioner for the state of New York.
And in the following year, when Tammany hall had been stained by still another scandal and was looking for a white knight to save them at the polls, they offer Strauss the nomination for mayor.
So you've got him as.
The co CEO of Macy's.
And oh, he also purchases a major, he and his brother by a major interest in Abraham Strauss department store. Not quite 50% interest in that period.
So he's co leading Macy's.
He's a major stockholder of Abraham and Strauss.
He is a partner in L. Strauss and Sons, a wholesaler, and he's serving as a city and state commission commissioner and being offered the nomination for New York City mayor, which he sensibly refused because he was not wired to do that job. But to me, that's both the greatness of the man and willing to take on so much and being a sort of hyperactive wall to wall dynamo.
And at the same time, it is the, you might say the fragility of the man because he sometimes didn't know when to stop and he sometimes got overextended. And then that blew his circus when that happened.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: Wow, wonderful answer.
Real quick. I think of the milk stations, I think about the dairy. I think in Central park was a milk station.
[00:53:39] Speaker C: Yes, yes. So he liked to co locate the milk stations and milk depots when he could, either in major New York City parks or in cooperation with the dock commission of the city on docks where he could put up awnings where mothers who were, you know, kind of having to deal with the hot, dusty streets of places like the Lower east side, they could come to the dock and feed their baby warm Strauss milk that was in a bottle, in a sterilized bottle under the shade of a veranda on a dock.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: That amazing.
[00:54:27] Speaker C: Yeah. So.
So this is where Strauss's intuitions as a retailer, you know, what, what would you know, the question, what would my customers want?
You know, not, not, not.
Not thinking of them as just recipients of benefactions, but as customers.
And what would, you know, what would give them agency and make them feel affirmed and treated with respect?
[00:55:02] Speaker A: Wow.
Thank you, Andy. I could talk to you all day.
[00:55:07] Speaker C: This has been a great pleasure.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. This is, this is amazing.
So, Andy, before we let you go, we here at the New Yorkers Podcast want to know what it means to you, Andrew Fisher, to be a New Yorker.
[00:55:20] Speaker C: Well, it's to. To me, New York City is.
Even though it's different from most of America, its soul is so much America because it is an electric place where people can remake themselves and find opportunity.
And.
In my career in grant making and in serving on boards that have helped people transform their lives, I've seen New York do that magic over and over again, and it lifts you up to feel that, that you're in a place so dynamic.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Nicely said, my friend. Andy, thank you for joining us today for this week's episode of the New Yorkers podcast. Why don't you let everyone know where they can find you on social media?
[00:56:24] Speaker C: Thank you so much, Kelly. The best place is andrew fisher.com, which is my.
Sorry, I beg your pardon, Andrew FisherWriter.com Andrew FisherWriter.com that has information about the book and about some accolades it's been fortunate to receive and also places where you can by the book and Rutgers University Press is my wonderful publisher and they I want to give a shout out to them for the amazing editorial work and support that they've provided.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: Once again everyone, I'm your host Kelly Kopp, also known as New York City Copallacross my social media and please like
[00:57:11] Speaker C: and subscribe to the New Yorkers Podcast and you can follow the New Yorkers on social media at the New Yorkers
[00:57:20] Speaker A: Podcast you can leave a rating or a comment my friends to let us know how you are enjoying the show. We read through all your comments and DMs so please we would love to hear from you. Thank you so much. Jennifer Southwood, Gavin Young and Lee. Cheers for your kind words on the last episode.
If you want to be featured at the end of an episode, leave a rating on Apple podcast or a comment on Spotify.
[00:57:44] Speaker C: And thank you Tina Collins, Eric Fernando and Helen Bradford for your comments on Facebook.
[00:57:52] Speaker A: Have a lovely day everyone and we will see you next time.
[00:57:54] Speaker C: Goodbye.
[00:57:59] Speaker B: This is the last stop on this train everyone. Please leave the train. Thank you for riding with MTA New York City Transit.
