Otto H. Kahn was born at Mannheim, Germany, February 21, 1867. His father had emigrated to the United States in 1848, where he became a naturalized citizen, returning to Germany ten years later. The son was educated in Germany and served one year in the German army. He then learned banking, and for five years was with the London branch of the Deutsche Bank. In 1893 he came to the United States, where he became connected with the banking house of Speyer & Co., and later with the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
During the Great War Mr. Kahn delivered several patriotic speeches which were collected under the title, “Right Above Race.”
The following excerpt is part of an address given at Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, April 24, 1919.
CAPITAL AND LABOR—A FAIR DEAL
We have often heard it said recently—it has become rather the fashion to say it—that the rulership of the world will henceforth belong to labor. I yield to no one in my respect and sympathy for labor, or in my cordial and sincere support of its just claims. The structure of our institutions cannot stand unless the masses of workmen, farmers, indeed all large strata of society, feel that under and by these institutions they are being given a square deal within the limits, not of Utopia, but of what is sane, right and practicable.
But the rulership of the world will and ought to belong to no one class. It will and ought to belong neither to labor nor to capital, nor to any other class. It will, of right and in fact, belong to those of all classes who acquire title to it by talent, hard work, self-discipline, character and service.
He is no genuine friend or sound counselor of the people nor a true patriot who recklessly, calculatingly or ignorantly raises or encourages expectations which cannot or which ought not to be fulfilled.
We must deal with all these things with common sense, mutual trust, with respect for all, and with the aim of guiding our conduct by the standard of liberty, justice and human sympathy. But we must rightly understand liberty. We must resolutely oppose those who in their impatient grasping for unattainable perfection would make of liberty a raging and destructive torrent instead of a majestic and fertilizing stream.
Liberty is not fool-proof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the reality of things, of the practicable and attainable, and a realization of the fact that there are laws of nature and of economies which are immutable and beyond our power to change.
Nothing in history is more pathetic than the record of the instances when one or the other of the peoples of the world rejoicingly followed a new lead which it was promised and fondly believed would bring it to freedom and happiness, and then suddenly found itself, instead, on the old and only too well-trodden lane which goes through suffering and turmoil to disillusionment and reaction.