The fifth period of his activity comprises various philanthropic works. The large number of Russian Jews who emigrated to the United States attracted his benevolent interest; and in 1891 he was instrumental in organizing under the laws of the state of New York the Baron _de_ Hirsch Fund, with a capital of 2,500,000 dollars, which sum was afterwards increased. The national Jewish character of Hirsch’s activity lies here again in the fact that he identified himself with his suffering brethren all over the world. Many men of his immense wealth and distinguished position would no doubt have used such advantages chiefly, if not exclusively, for the promotion of causes that fill a large place in the popular estimation. The cause of the Russian Jews would have been too remote, too intricate, or too small to engage all their sympathies and efforts. He made it his life-work to undertake something big on behalf of the Russian Jews. His benevolence was not that weak sentimentalism which too often obscures the plain behests of duty. He liked society, but he never stooped to win a cheap popularity by an unbecoming complaisance. There have been Jews enjoying the same high station, who have put it to quite a different use. But to him wealth and social power were simply one continuous challenge――a challenge to his nobler self, to his reverence for duty. And never could his higher self stand forth more conspicuously than when it impelled him to think and to work for his disinherited people. His leading idea was not to combat the persecutors of the Jews, but to emancipate the Jews themselves――to extricate them from their mediæval life, to revitalize them with the breath of “Western culture,” to give them a wider range of occupations, to transform the pedlar into an artisan and the shopkeeper into an agriculturist, in short, to render their political emancipation a necessity by convincing their oppressors of their sound economic worth. It was a repetition of the programme of the “Alliance Israélite Universelle” and the Anglo-Jewish Association (Appendix lxxvi), but it had the merit of being in the hands of a man who knew nothing of the difficulty of collecting resources from an inert public. As he lived the greater part of his life in Austria, it is quite natural that the deplorable condition of the Jews in that empire appealed strongly to him. In 1889, after consultation with Dr. Adolf Jellinek (1821‒1893) of Vienna, he formulated a plan to aid the Jews of Galicia by educational work, support for handicraftsmen and agriculturists, loans to artisans, _etc._ In 1891 the Austrian Government agreed to the plan, and Baron _de_ Hirsch thereupon placed 12,000, 000 francs at the disposal of the trustees.