"The death of Baron Hirsch," says the New York Tribune, April 22, 1896, "is a loss to the whole human race. To one of the most ancient and illustrious branches of that race it will seem a catastrophe. No man of this century has done so much for the Jews as he.... In his twelfth century castle of Eichorn in Moravia he conceived vast schemes of beneficence. On his more than princely estate of St. Johann in Hungary he elaborated the details. In his London and Paris mansions he put them into execution. He rose early and worked late, and kept busy a staff of secretaries and agents in all parts of the world. He not only relieved the immediate distress of the people, he founded schools to train them to useful work. He transported them by thousands from lands of bondage to lands of freedom, and planted them there in happy colonies. In countless other directions he gave his wealth freely for the benefit of mankind without regard to race or creed."

Baron Hirsch died at Presburg, Hungary, April 20, 1896, of apoplexy. He was the son of a Bavarian merchant, and was born in 1833. At eighteen he became a clerk in the banking-firm of Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt, and married the daughter of the former. He was the successful promoter of the great railway system from Budapest to Varna on the Black Sea. He made vast sums out of Turkish railway bonds, and is said to have been as rich as the Rothschilds.

He gave away in his lifetime an enormous amount, stated in the press to have been $15,000,000 yearly, for the five years before his death.

The New York Tribune says he gave much more than $20,000,000 for the help of the Jews. He gave to institutions in Egypt, Turkey, and Asia Minor, which bear his name. He offered the Russian Government $10,000,000 for public education if it would make no discrimination as to race or religion; but it declined the offer, and banished the Jews.

To the Hirsch fund in this country for the help of the Jews the baron sent more than $2,500,000. The managers of the fund spent no money in bringing the Jews to this country, but when here, opened schools for the children to prepare them to enter the public schools, evening schools for adults, training-schools to teach them carpentry, plumbing, and the like; provided public baths for them; bought farm-lands for them in New Jersey and Connecticut, and assisted them to buy small farms; provided factories for young men and women, as at Woodbine, N.J., where 5,100 acres have been purchased for the Hirsch Colony, and a brickyard and kindling-wood factory established. The baron is said to have received 400 begging letters daily, some of them from crowned heads, to whom he loaned large amounts. The favorite home of the baron was in Paris, where he lost his only and idolized son Lucien, in 1888, at the age of twenty. Much of the fortune that was to be the son's the father devoted to charity, especially to the alleviation of the condition of the European Jews, in whom the son was deeply interested. Many millions were left to Lucienne, the extremely pretty natural daughter of his son Lucien.