Sol Bloom

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sol Bloom
Charles A. Eaton
Personal details
Born(1870-03-09)March 9, 1870
Pekin, Illinois, U.S.
DiedMarch 7, 1949(1949-03-07) (aged 78)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse
Evelyn Hechheimer
​
​
(m. 1897; died 1941)​
Children1

Sol Bloom (March 9, 1870 – March 7, 1949) was an American song-writer and politician from New York City who began his career as an entertainment impresario and sheet music publisher in Chicago. He served fourteen terms in the United States House of Representatives from the West Side of Manhattan, from 1923 until his death in 1949.

Early life

Bloom was born March 9, 1870, in

Paris, where he was particularly taken with the dancers and acrobats of the "Algerian Village," somewhat representative of France's Algerian
colony.

Bloom could converse sparingly in four or five European languages, and was adept in sign language.[3]

Chicago World's Fair

Bloom established his reputation in 1893 at the age of 23 while developing the mile-long

The Streets of Cairo, or the Poor Little Country Maid", whose century-old lyrics had traditionally been sung by young boys: "O they don't wear pants/on the sunny side of France"; "There's a place in France/where the women wear no pants"; "...where the naked ladies dance", etc. Bloom did not copyright the tune, which he'd conceived on a piano at the Press Club of Chicago. In her book Striptease, The Untold Story of the Girlie Shows, Rachel Shteir stated that Bloom made money equal to that of U.S. President Grover Cleveland from his exotic dance shows.[4][5] Bloom also published and promoted “Coon, Coon, Coon”, one of the most famous entries in the coon song
genre.

Bloom's role in helping to develop the fair had been at the behest of Mayor

"Hinky Dink" Kenna. Soon, he became Chicago branch manager of M. Witmark & Sons, the largest publisher of sheet music in the United States, and by 1896 he was publishing under his own name and introducing photolithographs to make the scores more visually appealing. In 1897 he married Evelyn Hechheimer and settled in a fashionable district on South Prairie Avenue, billing himself as "Sol Bloom, the Music Man".[6]
At the turn of the 20th century, he was awarded, to much fanfare, the first musical copyright of the new century for "I Wish I Was in Dixie Land Tonight" by Raymond A. Browne.

Move to New York and politics

In 1903 he moved to New York City, where he dabbled in real estate and expanded his national chain of

Victor Talking Machines. Bloom soon switched his political affiliation from Republican to the Democrats' Tammany Hall, so that when Representative-elect Samuel Marx
of New York's 19th Congressional District died in 1922, Bloom was invited to run and won the usually Republican Upper West Side district of Manhattan by 145 votes. He represented the district until his death in 1949.

A confidential 1943 analysis of the

Foreign Office stated that[7]

(The committee's) main weakness is probably the leadership of Sol Bloom, whose chairmanship of the committee is due solely to the processes of seniority, and certainly not to any outstanding ability or knowledge of foreign affairs, but this is made up for by his blind loyalty to the President's policies ... Has been in Congress since 1923. Is politically friendly toward the British and has been a consistent supporter of F.D.R.'s foreign policies. A Jew, who was elected mostly by Jewish and foreign elements in his New York district, he tends, therefore, to be Europe-conscious and strongly anti-Nazi. He is of the easy-going, superficial, glad-handish type rather than a man of outstanding intellect; intensely patriotic in an emotional way despite his leaning towards internationalism. He helped to pilot the original

Lend-Lease Act
through the committee, and introduced the Act to extend Lend-Lease for one year. Age 73.

In Congress Bloom oversaw celebration of the George Washington Bicentennial (1932) and presided over the U.S. Constitution Sesquicentennial Exposition (1937). He chaired the

House Committee on Foreign Affairs beginning in 1939. A strong supporter of Zionism, Bloom was a delegate to the convention in San Francisco that established the United Nations. The first words of the Preamble to the United Nations Charter, "We, the Peoples of the United Nations .. ." were suggested by Bloom.[8]

In January 1946, Bloom represented the US at the first meeting of the

UN General Assembly in London. He called his success in persuading a majority of the Assembly to allow the new United Nations organization to assume the finances of the earlier United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration "the supreme moment" of his life.[9]

In the House of Representatives

Bloom was the chairman of the

Lend Lease in 1940. He oversaw Congressional approval of the United Nations and of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which worked to assist millions of displaced people in Europe. He was a member of the American delegation at the creation of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 and at the Rio Conference
in 1947.

In coordination with America's mainstream Jewish leadership, especially

Nachum Goldman, Bloom strongly opposed and obstructed the Hillel Kook-led Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry, (also known as the Bergson Group
).

In the fall of 1943, Bloom initiated a Congressional hearing to investigate Kook and his group's rescue-oriented actions and their demand that America do something meaningful to protect the Jews of Europe. Right before

Franklin D Roosevelt for some meaningful way to save remnants of Jews abandoned in Europe. Along with some progressive American Jewish leaders, Bloom felt the rabbis looked too un-American and that their march would be an unseemly spectacle. The "Rabbis' March
" proceeded, however, with Hillel Kook. (Roosevelt avoided meeting them on the advice of a Jewish adviser.)

Bloom adopted the mainstream

Zionist position that the only way to save the doomed Jews of Europe was for Britain to open the gates to Mandatory Palestine. Stephen Wise
stated the same ideology at the Congressional hearing. Hillel Kook said one of the main reasons his group's rescue activity was intensely obstructed was that his desire to save Jews from the Nazis with any possible place of refuge, not just Palestine. This was considered a betrayal of Zionism.

In spite of the obstruction, Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board (WRB) in January 1944 due to the persistent pressure, publicity and lobbying by the Bergson Group and the demand from Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and his team. Per Prof. David Wyman, the WRB protected close to 200,000 people. Some consider this to be an overestimate. One of the WRB's known achievements was convincing Swedish noble Raoul Wallenberg to go to Budapest, where he saved large number of Jews from the Hungarian Fascists and the Nazis.

Bloom urgently lobbied President

Harry Truman in 1948 to immediately recognize the Jewish state of Israel, which Truman did. When the Republicans took control of the Foreign Affairs Committee after the 1946 election, Bloom worked closely with the new chairman, Charles Eaton. They secured approval for the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.[10]

Legacy

The Sol Bloom Playground in Manhattan is named in his honor.[11]

His papers, most of them dating from 1935 to 1949, are stored at the New York Public Library.

Bloom lost a bet with

Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson after Johnson successfully threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Although the wager had been highly publicized, Bloom cited technicalities and refused to pay.[12]

In 1937, Bloom spearheaded the writing and publication of The Story of the Constitution by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission.

His wife Evelyn (died 1941) was a composer and singer,[13] and their daughter Vera was an author and lyricist who provided words to the tango "Jalousie".[14][15][16]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Bloom was elected on January 30, 1923, for the term beginning March 4, 1923. The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress incorrectly states the beginning of his term as his election date.
  2. ^ "Bloom, Sol. Autobiography (Book Review)". ProQuest.
  3. Newspapers
    .
  4. ^ https://books.google.com/books?id=qKzbHAAACAAJ&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false
  5. ^ https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/the-origins-of-the-striptease-and-burlesque/
  6. ^ Sol Bloom, The Autobiography of Sol Bloom, New York: Putnam House, 1948.
  7. JSTOR 4634869. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on October 21, 2013.
  8. ISBN 0-8133-3275-3
    .
  9. ^ "Representative Sol Bloom". Retrieved April 27, 2008.
  10. ^ Eleonora W. Schoenebaum, ed. Political Profiles: The Truman Years (1978) pp 40–41
  11. ^ "Sol Bloom Playground : NYC Parks". www.nycgovparks.org. Retrieved September 28, 2018.
  12. ^ Hornbaker, Mark (February 22, 1936). "Big Train's Throw Across the Rappahannock River – D.C. Baseball History". Dcbaseballhistory.com. Retrieved September 28, 2018.
  13. Evening Star
    . June 25, 1941. p. A-2.
  14. ISBN 978-0-313-31992-1
    .
  15. ISSN 2331-9968
    .
  16. ISBN 978-1-881907-09-1
    .

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sol Bloom.
  • Resnick, Elliot. America First: The Story of Sol Bloom, the Most Powerful Jew in Congress During the Holocaust (New York: Brenn Books, 2023).
  • Schoenebaum, Eleonora W. ed. Political Profiles: The Truman Years (1978) pp 40–41

Primary sources

U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 19th congressional district
March 4, 1923 – January 3, 1945 		Succeeded by
Samuel Dickstein
Preceded by Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 20th congressional district
January 3, 1945 – March 7, 1949 		Succeeded by
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.
Preceded by
Sam D. McReynolds
 Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
1939 – 1949 		Succeeded by
Charles A. Eaton
Preceded by
Charles A. Eaton
 Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
1949 		Succeeded by
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sol_Bloom&oldid=1286281560"