Samuel Joseph

“ A still more significant recognition of the exceptional forces behind the Jewish immigration was given by the Jews of Western Europe and the United States, living in a state of freedom, security and comparative wealth, to whom the oncoming of thousands of Jewish refugees at all the critical periods, and the steady stream of Jewish immigrants at other times has meant a taking-up of onerous burdens and a sharing of the hardships of the situation thus suddenly thrust upon them. ”

“ Russia and the United States, indeed, stand, in Leroy-Beaulieu's phrase, at the two poles of modern civilization. So far apart are they in the character of their economic, social and political structures, in the degree in which they utilize the forms and institutions of modern life, and, in the difference in the mental make-up of their peoples, that there exist few, if any, points of real contact. ”

“ The introduction of the May Laws at the very beginning of the eighties awakened the Jews to the realization that their future in Russia was threatened. The May Laws and the laws that were developed from them, the obstacles that were placed in the way of Jewish education and, in general, the administrative difficulties that were created, have affected every movement of their life.
Freedom of movement of the individual is the very essence of the life of modern states and the basis of their economic, social and political institutions. ”

“ To the autocracy and the bureaucracy there was the added fear from their intellectual superiority and their zeal for education of their playing a powerful part among the liberal forces seeking political freedom. Indeed, the Jews, whose economic and cultural activities and interests bound them closely to Western Europe and were in themselves modernizing and liberalizing influences, growing all the stronger through the greater freedom offered them during the liberal epoch, excited the deep repugnance of the feudal forces now directing the destinies of the state. ”

“ The facts of governmental pressure amounting to an expulsive force, and reflected in an extraordinary rate of immigration, in a movement of families unsurpassed in the American immigration, the largest part economically dependent, in an occupational grouping of skilled artisans, able to earn their livelihood under normal conditions, and in a permanence of settlement in this country incomparable in degree and indicating that practically all who come stay—all these facts lead irresistibly to the conclusion that in the Jewish movement we are dealing, not with an immigration, but with a migration. ”

“ The most striking fact in the economic life of present-day Russia is that it is overwhelmingly agricultural. More than three-fourths of her population are engaged in some form of agricultural labor. The vast majority are peasants living in villages. Towns are relatively few and sparsely populated. Agricultural products constitute 85 per cent of the annual exports. What a contrast does this agricultural state, this "peasant empire", present to the industrially and commercially developed countries of Western Europe and the United States! ”

“ The purpose of our generous treatment of the alien immigrant is to benefit us and him alike—not to afford to another state a field upon which to cast its own objectionable elements. The alien, coming hither voluntarily and prepared to take upon himself the preparatory and in due course the definitive obligations of citizenship, retains thereafter, in domestic and international relations, the initial character of free agency, in the full enjoyment of which it is incumbent upon his adoptive State to protect him. ”

“ The contrast between the broad freedom of this democracy and the intolerable despotism from whose yoke most of them fled, has given them a sense of appreciation of American political and social institutions that is felt in every movement of their mental life. ”

“ The one great political fact of Russia has been the autocracy. The degree of control which the autocratic Czars exercised unopposed over their subjects marks an important difference between the political development of Russia and that of the countries of Western Europe. At an early period the Czars had transformed the nobility into a body of state officials, thus at a blow depriving them of any real powers, apart from the will of the Crown, and making them serve the interests of the state. ”

“ The very fact of an immigrant-nucleus formed in this country and serving as a center of attraction to relatives and friends abroad—a force which increases in direct and multiple proportion to the growth of immigration—is an active and positive force in strengthening the immigration current. This was early understood by the Alliance Israélite Universelle which had acted upon this principle in the seventies and had prophetically sought to direct a healthy movement of Jewish immigrants to this country in the hope of thereby laying a foundation for future Jewish immigration to this country. ”

“ Another method of judging the degree of intensity of the Russian Jewish movement is to compare the proportion the number of Jewish immigrants for a period bears to the total Jewish population in Russia—their rate of immigration—with that of the other Russian peoples represented in the immigration to the United States. The rate of immigration of the Jews is by far the highest among the peoples of Russia. From 1899 to 1910 the Jewish immigrants to the United States constituted on the average one out of every 79 of the Jewish population in Russia. ”

“ The political disabilities of the Jews in Roumania, their exclusion from the public service and the learned professions, the limitations of their civil rights and the imposition upon them of exceptional taxes, involving as they do wrongs repugnant to the moral sense of liberal modern peoples, are not so directly in point for my present purpose as the public acts which attack the inherent right of man as a breadwinner in the ways of agriculture and trade. The Jews are prohibited from owning land, or even from cultivating it as common laborers. ”

“ The Russian peasant still practices a primitive system of agriculture. His method of extensive cultivation, the three-field system in vogue, his primitive implements, his domestic economy of half a century ago, with its home production for home consumption, which is still maintained in many parts of Russia to this day—all these present conditions not far removed from those of the middle ages of Western Europe. ”

“ Geographically, racially and socially, Galicia is a part of Russia. Galicia is a preponderatingly agricultural land and possesses the densest agricultural population in Europe. Modern industry is relatively little developed, its place being held to a great extent by the domestic system of industry. The contrast between the large and small estates is sharper here than perhaps in any other section of Europe. The Polish nobility, in whose hands the large estates are mostly found, are the ruling social and political, as well as economic, power in Galicia. ”

“ It is in effect a Jewish industry: practically all the tailors and shoemakers in the Pale are Jews. They predominate as well in the preparation of food products, in the building trades, in the metal, wood and tobacco industries. [15] Hampered by legal restrictions, lack of technical education, and lack of capital, they nevertheless have become an essential part of the economic life of the Pale, supplying the needs for industrial products not only of the Jews but of the entire Pale, and, especially of the peasants. ”

“ Starting from the arbitrary and controvertible premise that the native Jews of Roumania domiciled there for centuries are "aliens not subject to foreign protection," the ability of the Jew to earn even the scanty means of existence that suffice for a frugal race has been constricted by degrees, until nearly every opportunity to win a livelihood is denied; and until the helpless poverty of the Jew has constrained an exodus of such proportions as to cause general concern. ”

“ The large part taken by the Jews in Roumanian commerce may be gathered from the fact that, in 1904, one-fifth of those who paid the merchant-license tax were Jews. Equally great is their participation in large-scale industry, where, as an inquiry in 1901-2 shows, nearly one-fifth of the large industries were conducted by Jewish entrepreneurs. In some of the most important ones—the glass industry, the clothing industry, the wood and furniture industry and the textile industry—from one-fourth to one-half of the total number of entrepreneurs were Jews. ”

“ Thus, at the time when the emancipation of the Jews had begun to be in Western Europe a concomitant of social progress, Russia set to work to recreate almost typically medieval conditions for a vaster Jewish population than had ever before been assembled in any European country. ”

“ The Slavic immigrants are chiefly male adults. Their movement is largely composed of transients, as evidenced by a relatively large outward movement and emphasized by the fact that the vast majority [153] of them are unskilled laborers. An exception, in large measure, must be made of the Bohemian and Moravian immigrants who present characteristics strongly similar to those of the Jewish immigrants.
The division into "old" and "new" immigration brings out even more clearly the exceptional position of the Jews in regard to these characteristics. ”

“ Nearly seven and a half-million Jews—more than half of the Jews of the world—live in these countries. Of this number more than five millions are in Russia, more than two millions in Austria-Hungary, and a quarter of a million in Roumania. The great majority of these are massed on the contiguous borders, in a zone which embraces Poland, and Western Russia, Galicia, and Moldavia. This is the emigration zone. The relative density of the Jews is greatest in these parts. Every seventh man in Poland, every ninth man in Western Russia and in Galicia, and every tenth man in Moldavia, is a Jew. ”

“ The process of wrestling the monopoly of industry, trade and commerce from the Jews in favor of the Polish petty merchants and artisans was considerably accelerated by the official bodies, the autonomous Galician Diet and the municipal boards, controlled chiefly by the Polish-Catholic nobility, who saw in the national-industry movement a means of capturing the votes of the middle class and of thus retaining their position as leaders of the Polish people. Communal funds were used to establish Poles in business. ”

“ In all of these countries, economic and social conditions closely resembling those that obtained in the countries of Western Europe several centuries ago were found until comparatively recent times. The abolition of serfdom in Russia and in Roumania, and of feudal dues in Austria-Hungary, paved the way for the entrance of these states into modern European civilization. The succeeding period has been marked by a rapid transition from the old domestic economy to a modern exchange economy, through the growth of industry and commerce. ”

“ It is estimated that over 1,000,000 will be forced from Russia in a few years. The Hebrew is never a beggar; he has always kept the law—life by toil—often under severe and oppressive civil restrictions. It is also true that no race, set or class has more fully cared for its own than the Hebrew race. But the sudden transfer of such a multitude under conditions that tend to strip them of their small accumulations and to depress their energies and courage is neither good for them nor for us. ”