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Meyer Jacobstein | |
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| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's38th district | |
| In office March 4, 1923 – March 3, 1929 | |
| Preceded by | Thomas B. Dunn |
| Succeeded by | James L. Whitley |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1880-01-25)January 25, 1880 Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Died | April 18, 1963(1963-04-18) (aged 83) Rochester, New York, U.S. |
| Resting place | Mount Hope Cemetery |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Alma mater | University of Rochester Columbia University |
Meyer Jacobstein (January 25, 1880 – April 18, 1963) was an American educator and politician who served three terms as a member of theUnited States House of Representatives fromNew York from 1923 to 1929.
According to family archives, Meyer was born on Henry Street on theLower East Side of Manhattan to Polish Jews who had only weeks earlier immigrated to New York viaStockholm, Sweden. In 1881, the family moved toSyracuse, New York, and then relocated toRochester, New York, one year later. Coming from a family of tailors, he worked for less than a week in a Rochester tailor shop before deciding to attend high school instead.[1]
After attending public schools in Rochester, New York, he attended theUniversity of Rochester and graduated fromColumbia University in 1904. Jacobstein pursuedpostgraduate courses at the same university ineconomics andpolitical science and became a special agent in the Bureau of Corporations andDepartment of Commerce inWashington, D.C., in 1907. Between 1909 and 1913, he worked as an assistantprofessor of economics at theUniversity of North Dakota atGrand Forks and, one year later, became professor of economics in the University of Rochester. Jacobstein was a director in emergency employment management at the University of Rochester under the auspices of the War Industry Board from 1916 to 1918.
Writing in 1912 about the Aldrich plan for a National Reserve Association, Meyer Jacobstein, assistant professor of economics at the University of North Dakota, encouraged North Dakota's bankers, however unsuccessfully, to leave their rural prejudices behind and consider the greater good of the entire banking industry:[2]
The average country banker is always more or less suspicious of the city banker. As the Aldrich bill bears the name of an unpopular easterner, who is generally believed to be working in the interest of a group of eastern capitalists, it is not unnatural that North Dakota bankers should approach this proposed legislation with considerable timidity and suspicion. It will be well for the rural banker, however, to dispossess himself of this native prejudice and withhold judgment until he has made a careful and conscientious examination of the bill.[2][3]
He was elected as aDemocrat to the Sixty-eighth, Sixty-ninth, and Seventieth Congresses (March 4, 1923 – March 3, 1929) yet was not a candidate for renomination in 1928. He served as a delegate to theDemocratic National Conventions in 1924 and 1932 but declined the nomination ofmayor of Rochester, N.Y., in 1925. His political career is notable for his staunch opposition to theImmigration Act of 1924.[4][5]
Nothing is more un-American. Nothing could be more dangerous, in a land the Constitution of which says that all men are created equal, than to write into our law a theory which puts one race above another, which stamps one group of people as superior and another as inferior. The fact that it is camouflaged in a maze of statistics will not protect this Nation from the evil consequences of such an unscientific, un-American, wicked philosophy.[6]
Jacobstein engaged in banking in Rochester, N.Y., from 1929 to 1936 and in 1936 became chairman of the board of the Rochester Business Institute. He was a member of the Brookings Institution staff from 1939 to 1946 and economic counsel in the legislative reference service of theLibrary of Congress from 1947 until his retirement May 31, 1952.
Jacobstein resided in Rochester, N.Y., until his death there on April 18, 1963, and was laid to rest at Mount Hope Cemetery.[7]
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of the U.S. House of Representatives fromNew York's 38th congressional district 1923–1929 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
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| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
