the years following his defeat. Strauss was active in Kuhn Loeb until 1941, although he resented restrictions imposed on investment banking by regulators in the Roosevelt administration and derived less enjoyment from the business. Nonetheless, in his role as an investment banker Strauss had become vastly wealthy, and given his humble original circumstances he has been considered a self-made millionaire and a Horatio Alger tale. As one historian has written, Strauss's business success was the residue of "luck, pluck, hard work, and good contacts". Strauss's biographer reaches a similar conclusion: "Strauss reached the top because of his ability, ambition, choices of the right firm and the right wife, and the good luck to start out at a prosperous time." Due to his lack of higher education, Strauss has also been characterized as an autodidact. Lay religious activities A proudly religious man, Strauss became a leader in Jewish causes and organizations. In 1933 he was a member of the executive committee of the American Jewish Committee. He was active in the Jewish Agricultural Society, for whom by 1941 he was honorary president. By 1938 he was also active in the Palestine Development Council, the Baron de Hirsch Fund, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. However, he was not a Zionist and opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. He did not view Jews as belonging to a nation or a race; he considered himself an American of Jewish religion, and consequently he advocated for the rights of Jews to live as equal and integral citizens of the nations in which they resided. Strauss fully recognized the brutality of Nazi Germany. He first made his concern known in early 1933, writing to President Hoover during the final weeks of Hoover's time in office. Strauss attended a London conference of concerned Jews later that year on behalf of the American Jewish Committee, but the conference fell apart over the issue of Zionism. Following the November 1938 Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in Germany, Strauss attempted to persuade prominent Republicans to support the Wagner–Rogers Bill that would legislatively allow the entry of 20,000 German refugee children into the United States. Long allied with both Hoover and Taft, he asked each of them to support the bill. Hoover did, but Taft did not, telling Strauss, "With millions of people out of work, I can't see the logic of admitting others." The bill