Credit to the Nation: Jewish Immigrant Bankers in American Finance 1873-1930 with Rebecca Kobrin

In this episode of the Hagley History Hangout, Roger Horowitz interviews Rebecca Kobrin about her new book, Credit to the Nation: Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Bankers and American Finance 1873-1930. From the publisher: "What are immigrants to do when business opportunities abound in their new home, but banks refuse essential financial support? How could they make the journey in the first place without helping hands? In this lively history, Rebecca Kobrin chronicles the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants who stepped up by doing the lending themselves. Arriving from the Russian Empire and settling primarily in New York, they made livelihoods by assisting fellow Jews so they could purchase passage to the United States and, after arriving, obtain credit that other lenders would not dare provide. "Credit to the Nation traces the novel practices of bankers who not only enabled the flourishing of American Jewry but also revolutionized the US financial industry. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, Kobrin tells a story that is also crucial to the history of New York, as immigrant bankers’ financing of real estate transformed wide swathes of the city. Lenders drove a boom in the prices of tenement buildings, but heavy speculation eventually precipitated the downfall of immigrant banking. Kobrin notes in particular the case of the Bank of United States—a private lender catering primarily to Jewish businessmen—which the Federal Reserve refused to bail out from bankruptcy in 1930. "Immigrants’ grasping for credit, and the rise and fall of immigrant banks, gave way to a contemporary banking industry that, ironically, refuses credit to today’s immigrants. Kobrin reminds us that now, as before, the denial of credit pushes entrepreneurial Americans into unregulated money-lending and the trap of endless debt." For more Hagley History Hangouts, and information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org. To make a donation underwriting this program and others like it please visit our donations page: https://host.nxt.blackbaud.com/donor-...