Werner Sombart - "Americanism is the Jewish Spirit Distilled"
(henrymakow.com)
August 14, 2024

from The Jews & Modern Capitalism, 1911, pp.35-39
By Werner Sombart

[snip]

For what we call Americanism is nothing else, if we may say so than the Jewish spirit distilled. But how comes it that American culture is so steeped in Jewishness?

The answer is simple -- through the early and universal admixture of Jewish elements among the first settlers.

We may picture the process of colonizing somewhat after this fashion. A band of determined men and women -- let us say twenty families -- went forth into the wilds to begin their life anew. Nineteen were equipped with ploughs and scythes, ready to clear the forests and till the soil in order to earn their livelihood as husbandmen.

The twentieth family opened a store to provide their companions with such necessaries of life as could not be obtained from the soil, often no doubt hawking them at the very doors.

Soon this twentieth family made it its business to arrange for the distribution of the products which the other nineteen won from the soil. It was they, too, who were most likely in possession of ready cash, and in case of need could therefore be useful to the others by lending them money.

Very often the store had a kind of agricultural loan bank as its adjunct, perhaps also an office for the buying and selling of land. So through the activity of the twentieth family, the farmer in North America was from the first kept in touch with the money and credit system of the Old World.

Hence the whole process of production and exchange was from its inception along modern lines. Town methods made their way at once into even the most distant villages.

Accordingly, it may be said that American economic life was from its very start impregnated with capitalism. And who was responsible for this? The twentieth family in each village. Need we add that this twentieth family was always a Jewish one, which joined a party of settlers or soon sought them out in their homesteads?

EXAMPLES

...Let me quote some of the illustrations I have met with. In 1785 Abraham Mordecai settled in Alabama. "He established a trading post two miles west of Line Creek, carrying on an extensive trade with the Indians, and exchanging his goods for pink-root, hickory, nut oil, and peltries of all kinds."

Similarly in Albany: "As early as 1661, when Albany was but a small trading post, a Jewish trader named Asser Levi (or Leevi) became the owner of real estate there."

Chicago has the same story. The first brick house was built by a Jew, Benedict Schubert, who became the first merchant tailor in Chicago, while another Jew, Philip Newburg, was the first to introduce the tobacco business.

In Kentucky, we hear of a Jewish settler as early as 1816. When in that year the Bank of the United States opened a branch in Lexington, Mr. Solomon, who had arrived in 1808, was made cashier. In Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania it is on record that Jewish traders were among the earliest settlers, though nothing is known of their activity.