Straus
Straus names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Straus NATHAN, an American merchant and philanthropist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
NATHAN, an American merchant and philanthropist, born in Rhenish Bavaria in 1848. At the age of six he came to the United States with his family. He was educated in the public schools of Talbotton, Ga., and at Packard's Business College. In 1866 he became a member of his father's firm, NATHAN STRAUS engaged in the import of pottery and glassware. From 1888 to 1914 he was a partner in R. H. Macy & Co. and from 1892 to 1914 a partner in Abraham & Straus, two of the largest New York City department stores. From 1889 to 1893 he was park commissioner of New York City; in 1898 president of the Board of Health, New York City; in 1911 United States delegate to the International Congress for the Protection of Infants at Berlin, and in 1912 to the Tuberculosis Congress at Rome. After his retirement from active business in 1914, he devoted his time exclusively to the many charitable enterprises in which he had been interested for many years. The charity with which his name is especially associated, was the laboratory and distribution system for pasteurized milk to the poor of New York City, resulting in the saving of many thousands of infants annually. After carrying on this work for many years at his own expense he turned the entire plant over to the City of New York as a gift. He also installed similar systems in many other cities of the United States and abroad. His gifts for other charitable purposes were large. Amongst them should be mentioned the installation and maintenance of depots for the distribution of coal to the poor in New York City, the establishment in 1912 of soup kitchens in Jerusalem, the establishment of a health bureau in Palestine, etc. Besides making many addresses on the pasteurization of milk and on other public topics, he wrote "Disease in Milk-the Remedy, Pasteurization" (1917).
Straus OSCAR SOLOMON, an American diplomatist
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
OSCAR SOLOMON, an American diplomatist; born in Ottenberg, Rhenish Bavaria, Dec. 23, 1850; came to the United States in 1854 and was graduated at Columbia University in 1871. Subsequently he entered mercantile life. In 1887 he was appointed United States minister to Turkey. He was president of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation; a member of several historical and sociological societies, and the author of a number of books dealing with religion and history. In 1898 he was again appointed ministe1 to Turkey, which office he held till 1900; and on Jan. 14, 1902, President Roosevelt appointed him a permanent member of the Committee of Arbitration at The Hague, to succeed the late ex-president Benjamin Harrison. In 1906 he was appointed Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the Roosevelt cabinet; ambassador to Turkey 1909-1910 and Progressive candidate for governor of New York; arbitrator in the dispute between engineers and managers of Eastern railroads in 1914; chairman of the New York Public Service Commission in 1915; president of the American Jewish Historical Society. Publication: "The United States Doctrine of Citizenship."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both brothers were still living when Collier's wrote in 1921: Oscar Straus died in 1926, Nathan in 1931. Nathan's cause has been wholly won — the pasteurization he campaigned for and wrote about in "Disease in Milk—the Remedy, Pasteurization" (1917) went from a philanthropist's free milk depot to law, and the sale of raw milk is now restricted or banned across most of the United States, with infant mortality a small fraction of its 1900 level. His later devotion to Palestine, mentioned here only as soup kitchens and a health bureau, is commemorated in the Israeli city of Netanya, named for him in 1929. Oscar's 1906 appointment as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, which Collier's records flatly, is now routinely noted as the first cabinet post held by a Jewish American; the third brother Isidor, who died on the Titanic in 1912, is today the best remembered of the family.
Written for this edition, 2026.