Talk:Edward Jacobson

Untitled
There are several inaccuracies in the second and third paragraphs of this page.

Jacobson and Truman met in about 1915 when both were working in Kansas City. They lost touch when Truman moved back to Grandview to work on his family's farm, but then they reconnected during World War I. Historians have said their store went bust because of a farm depression in 1921. While there may have been some poor business decisions, most historians don't consider either Truman or Jacobson to have been a bad businessman - an impression that this write-up gives.

As the timeline notes, after Truman became president Jacobson ended his traveling salesman days by opening another haberdashery in Kansas City, so it wasn't his work that brought him to Washington - it was his friendship with Truman. Historians have said Jacobson declined many pleas by Jewish leaders (and others) for access to the President. What he said to Truman about the plight of the Jews during and after the Holocaust during their many discussions of the subject may have been influenced to some extent by pressures put on him by Jewish and Zionist leaders, but he spoke to Truman on his own behalf and from his own heart. His decision to go to the White House in March 1948 may have had more to do with his reverence for Chaim Weitzman than pressure from Jewish leaders. David McCullough's book is an excellent source, and there is a new book - "A Safe Haven" by Allis and Ronald Radosh - which I am just now reading.

I hope someone will correct this page. DCwikiHB (talk) 18:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Further contradiction?
Paragraph 3 says that Jacobson was a traveling salesman for the rest of this live, yet the timeline correctly shows that he owned Westport Menswear for the final ten years of his life. 2601:2C6:4300:B8C0:B117:6986:98A0:D018 (talk) 03:27, 20 October 2023 (UTC)