Emil Kiss, a Hungarian Success Story

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
According to the Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, in fiscal year 1899, 13,777 Hungarian speakers immigrated
to the USA, of whom 17.6% settled in New York State. One of the immigrants was Emil Kiss, who like most of the immigrants, arrived penniless. This paper will look at his start as a ticket agent to his founding of a private bank in 1903. Both businesses prospered. The accomplishments of his travel agency will be shown by the advertising placed in various English and Hungarian language newspapers, while the bank’s success will be evaluated on the quarterly balance sheets that were submitted to the Superintendent of Banking in New York. His bank through various mergers still exists.

Though he never married, he was not all work. Emil Kiss was an active member in several Hungarian social and fraternal organizations. Post WWI he was one of the founders of the American Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and in this capacity in 1923 he wrote an article for the American Academy of Political and Social Science advocating that “debtor countries present and future capacities to pay” should determine the size of war reparations. Kiss died in 1930, and in his will he left a Munkacsy painting to the New York Public Library and funds to several New York institutions.

This paper is not only a testimony of an immigrant's success story but also of his trials and tribulations in achieving his goals.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Susan Glanz is a professor of Administration & Economics at St. John's University, Queens, NY.