Near the end of the same year (1906) President Roosevelt appointed Oscar S. Straus, the author and diplomatist, Secretary of Commerce and Labor. The first Jew to be thus honored with a seat in the Cabinet has served twice as minister plenipotentiary (and since he left the Cabinet, again as Ambassador) to Turkey, and also succeeded the late Benjamin Harrison, former president of the United States, as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. His oldest brother, Isidor Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1845; a. 1854; drowned with the “Titanic” April 15, 1912), was a well known merchant and philanthropist in New York, who was a member of the Fifty-third Congress, and has been for many years President of the Educational Alliance. Another brother, Nathan Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1848: a. 1854), who is also known as a philanthropist and served as Park Commissioner, and, for several months, as President of the Board of Health of New York, is two years older than the former Cabinet Minister. CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE AMERICAN-JEWISH COMMITTEE. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND FEDERATIONS. Formation of the American Jewish Committee――Its first fifteen members and its membership in 1911――The experimental Kehillah organizations――The re-organized Jewish Theological Seminary―― Faculty of the Hebrew Union College――The Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning――The Rabbi Joseph Jacob School―― Other Orthodox “Yeshibot”――Talmud Torahs and “Chedarim”――Hebrew Institutes――They become more Jewish because other agencies now do the work of Americanizing the immigrant――Technical Schools―― Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Associations――Federations of various kinds. The massacres of 1905 aroused and united the Jews of the civilized world, and the necessity of an organization to cope with the situation and with similar situations in the future began to be generally felt. The time when the Alliance Israelite Universelle, with its preponderance of French Jews and French methods, could act for the Jewry of all countries was now past, and only a new organization in which each country was independently represented could answer the purpose. The same was also true, in a more restricted sense, in the United States itself. None of the national Jewish bodies, not even the Order B’nai B’rith, with its Board of Delegates, could now assume to speak with undisputed authority in the name of American Jewry as it is now constituted. An attempt to form a representative international Committee of Jews was made at the General Jewish Conference which was convened at Brussels, Belgium, in the last days of January, 1906, where a resolution to that effect was adopted. But the plan was not carried out. Illustration: Judge Mayer Sulzberger. Photo by Gutekunst, Phila.