FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VToC

Conclusion

An intimate connection has thus been established between the present state of economic and social transition through which the countries of Eastern Europe are passing and the situation which has confronted the Jews in each of these countries and has profoundly influenced their position and their history for the last third of a century. What the forces are behind the emigration of the Jews from these countries to Western Europe and the United States during this period now become clear.

The industrial and commercial development of the recent decades brought about changes in themselves unfavorable to the economic activities of the Jews. The improvements in communication and transportation through the extension of railroads, the building of roads, and the creation of credit facilities especially for the peasantry served partly to displace the Jews, whose economic position had been largely based upon the services they rendered in a relatively backward industrial and commercial civilization. The rise of a middle class among the Christian populations, chiefly engaged in industry, added an element of competition not before present. Not the least important in its effects was the increasing poverty of the peasantry, which seriously affected the Jews, as the principal buyers of their produce and sellers of finished products. Agricultural crises, so frequent in recent years in Eastern Europe, have often involved the Jews in financial ruin.[47]

These purely economic factors served to weaken the position of the Jews and to cause an over-concentration in trade and industry, to their detriment. The gradual readjustment that would have followed naturally was, however, prevented by the existence of other forces, in the action of which we find the key to the situation faced by the Jews and the impelling forces of Jewish emigration.

One of these was the economic antisemitism that rose partly from the competition of the middle classes of both populations. This competitive jealousy awakened racial and religious prejudices and found particularly in Galicia an active expression in the organization of economic boycotts, and in the co-operative agencies that were created to foster the growth of the Christian artisans and merchants. The sufferings of the agricultural population, again, were charged to the Jews, with whom the peasants were in close business relations and to whom they were deeply indebted. Preached from platform, press and pulpit, the doctrine of Jewish exploitation of the peasantry found a ready acceptance among all classes.

Economic and social hostility was furthered by the feudal ruling classes whose antagonism to the Jews was deep-seated and many-sided. As these formed the ruling economic, social and political power in Eastern Europe, they were the chief instrument in creating a situation that was full of danger for the Jews. In the politico-economic struggles between these privileged classes and the liberal middle classes that accompanied the transition, the Jews were found, consciously or unconsciously, on the side of the liberals, who sought to introduce the economic, social and political conditions of modern civilization. Thus they served as a convenient object of attack. In Russia, where, since the reaction, the control of the feudal classes over the government was complete, the new laws restricting residence, movement, occupations and economic activity in general, checked the economic growth of the Jews and put them at a great disadvantage in the struggle for existence. This situation was created to an even greater degree in Roumania, where the economic interests of the Roumanian middle class were furthered at the expense of the Jews. Economic helplessness was essentially the condition created for the Jews, so narrow was the margin left for the exercise of their powers. The social pressure that was added, through laws limiting the entrance of Jews to the educational institutions and the liberal professions, seeking to limit their cultural influence, was part and parcel of the same policy. In the case of Russia, repression reached the form of massacres of Jews, when these were found politically useful.

Governmental oppression was thus the chief force in unsettling the economic and social position of the Jews. Throughout the course of thirty years the leading motive of the Russian and Roumanian governments was the reduction, through every possible means, of the number of their Jewish populations.

This governmental pressure which began to be applied at the beginning of the eighties became equivalent in the course of time to an expulsive force. The only outlet to the intolerable conditions that had been created by the forces of governmental repression and oppression was emigration. This was sensed by the Jews at the very beginning of the period. How eagerly it has been seized upon the following pages will show. It is enough for the moment to point out that the vast and steadily increasing stream of Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States alone, has risen to such proportions that its average for the past decade has approached the estimated annual increase of the Jews in Russia. In other words, emigration has begun to mean the decline, not only relatively, but even absolutely, of the Jewish population in Russia.

The fact that the persecution of the Jews in the case of Russia and Roumania amounts to a force of rejection has been widely recognized during the course of the emigration of the Jews from Eastern Europe. In England, where the number of Jewish immigrants increased rapidly, it found expression in the official reports, and in the United States, it became a subject of direct diplomatic correspondence in the formal protest to Russia in 1891 by President Harrison, and in 1902 in the circular note to the Powers by Secretary Hay, regarding Roumania's treatment of the Jews.

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. The attempt to organize and regulate Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe was a task early undertaken by the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The Jewish Colonization Association was expressly founded by Baron de Hirsch to open up, in various countries, new paths for the Jewish emigrants. At all periods of exceptional emigration, national and international committees met to consider the problems of the immigrants thrown upon their responsibility.

The vast majority of the emigrants made the United States their goal. In their movement and their economic and social characteristics we shall find a striking reflection of the impelling forces of their emigration.

FOOTNOTES:

PART II

JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

A. ITS MOVEMENT

CHAPTER IToC

Determination of Number of Jewish Immigrants

In a study of Jewish immigration to the United States the first problem is to determine the number of Jews who entered this country during the thirty years from 1881 to 1910, and their nationality, or their countries of nativity. The determination of these figures meets with the difficulty that prior to 1899, immigrants were classified in the official statistics by country of nativity or residence, and not by race or nationality. Thus the figures regarding Jewish immigration are obtainable from official sources only from 1899. Those relating to previous years have to be sought for elsewhere.

The main sources that have been used to obtain the figures before 1899 are the reports of three Jewish societies which were concerned with the care of the Jewish immigrants arriving at the principal ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. These were the United Hebrew Charities, of New York; the Association for the Protection of Jewish Immigrants, of Philadelphia; and the Hebrew Benevolent Society, of Baltimore. Each of these maintained an agent who, besides his other duties, collected statistical information concerning the sex, age, country of nativity, occupation, destination, etc., of the Jewish immigrants, partly from the ships' manifests and partly through personal inquiry. The statistical information thus obtained was regularly included in the annual reports of these societies. These records were begun by the New York and Philadelphia societies, in 1884, and by the Baltimore society, in 1891.

As the yearly statistical tables of these reports were made to correspond with the annual meeting of these societies,[48] it was found advisable to rearrange them from July to June, in order to have them correspond with the fiscal year, and thus allow for a proper comparison with the official data furnished by the immigration authorities.

As rearranged, the tables presented the number of Jewish immigrants entering the ports of New York and Philadelphia from July 1, 1886, to June 30, 1898, and the number of Jewish immigrants entering the port of Baltimore from July 1, 1891, to June 30, 1898.[49] As these three ports were, up to recent years, the places of entry of all but a very small number of Jewish immigrants, the figures thus obtained represent practically the total Jewish immigration to the United States from 1886 to 1898.

To ascertain the nationality or country of nativity of the Jewish immigrants from 1886 to 1898, it was necessary to redistribute in accordance with the fiscal year the monthly arrivals found in the tables of the United Hebrew Charities, which contain the figures for each nationality.[50] As the reports of the Philadelphia society gave only the totals of arrivals of each nationality for each year but not distributed by months, the following method was employed. The percentage the immigration of each nativity constituted of the total immigration from November to October (the society's year) was used as the basis for calculating the annual immigration of each nativity from July to June.[51] There being no essential difference between Baltimore and Philadelphia, so far as Jewish immigrants of each nationality are concerned, the same percentages were used as for Philadelphia.[52]

The discrepancy between the official figures of the total immigration from Roumania from 1886 to 1898 and those of the Jewish societies for the Jewish immigrants from Roumania for the same period is worthy of note. In each of four years the number of Jewish immigrants from Roumania as reported by the Jewish societies exceeded the total immigration from Roumania as reported in the official statistics. For two years, 1892 and 1893, the official statistics do not report any immigrants from Roumania, whereas the Jewish societies report,[53] respectively, 740 and 555 Jewish immigrants from Roumania, which represented a normal number from this country, as the other years indicate.[54]

The total number of immigrants of each nationality arriving from July 1, 1886, to June 30, 1898, was thus obtained. The total number of Jewish immigrants arriving from Russia, Austria-Hungary and Roumania, at each of the principal ports, for each year from 1886 to 1898, are summarized in table V.[55]

The figures of Jewish immigration before 1886 were not obtainable either from the official or the Jewish sources, there being only an estimate of the number of the Jewish immigrants from 1881 to 1884 in the American Jewish Year Book of 1899-1900 (as 74,310), and in the Jewish Encyclopedia (as 62,022), without any indications as to how these were obtained. To secure a fairly accurate statement, the proportion the Russian Jewish immigration from 1886 to 1898 bore to the total Russian immigration was used as the basis for calculating the total number of Russian Jewish immigrants from 1881 to 1885.[56] This was distributed yearly according to the proportion of each year's contribution to the five years' total. By a similar calculation the number of Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary was obtained.[57] For Roumania, the proportion of Jews being more than ninety per cent, and at this period practically the entire Roumanian immigration being Jewish, the figures were taken in toto. The results for each year added together constituted the total Jewish immigration for the year.

The general tendency among writers on the subject of Jewish immigration has been to exaggerate the magnitude of this movement. In a discussion in the Jewish Encyclopedia regarding the dimensions of the Jewish immigration before 1899, exact figures were given that are on their face erroneous.[58] The inaccuracy of these figures is explained by the fact that the writer committed a gross error in making his table. The total Russian immigration to the United States from 1880 to 1898 was designated as the Jewish immigration from Russia, though it should have been evident that the number of other peoples coming from Russia and included in these figures must have been very large. Another column gave as Jewish immigrants coming from countries other than Russia, the totals of the Jewish immigrants entering the United States from 1885 to 1898, as reported in the American Jewish Year Book of 1899 (the latter figures of which included Russian Jews as well as those of other nativities), thereby doubling the number of Russian Jewish immigrants for this period. The result has been to more than triple the numbers of the Jewish immigrants. These figures have been widely used and quoted, and have generally created the impression of a Jewish immigration larger by several hundred thousands than is really the case.[59]

The results of the foregoing are summarized in Table VI, which gives the number of Jewish immigrants arriving in each of the thirty years from 1881 to 1910, and the principal countries of nativity of these immigrants. We are thus in a position closely to study the movement of Jewish immigration for practically the entire period since it became a significant part of the recent immigration to the United States, and thereby to throw light upon the character of this movement, in itself and as a part of the general immigration.

Table VI

JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1881 TO 1910

Table VII

PERCENTAGE OF ANNUAL JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES
CONTRIBUTED BY EACH COUNTRY OF NATIVITY, 1881 TO 1910

FOOTNOTES: