Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 / Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LIX, No. 4, 1914

E-text prepared by Jeannie Howse, Fritz Ohrenschall, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Transcriber's Note:
This document was produced from an AMS Press reprint. All modern material has been removed. The original, printed in 1914, is an article in a journal, with it's own page numbering (as well as the journal page numbering, which has been removed from this transcription).
Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.
Whole Number 145


In this survey of Jewish immigration to the United States for the past thirty years, my purpose has been to present the main features of a movement of population that is one of the most striking of modern times. The causes of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe, the course of Jewish immigration to the United States and the most important social qualities of the Jewish immigrants are studied, for the light they throw upon the character of this movement. The method employed in this investigation has been largely statistical and comparative, a fact which is partly due to the kind of material that was available and partly to the point of view that has been taken. Certain economic and social factors, having a close bearing upon the past and present situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe and frequently neglected in the discussion of the various phases of this movement, have been emphasized in the examination into the causes of the emigration of the Jews from Eastern Europe and have been found vital in determining the specific character of the Jewish immigration to this country.
I desire gratefully to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to Mr. A.S. Freidus, head of the Jewish department of the New York Public Library, for his ever-ready assistance in the preparation of this work. Thanks are due as well to Dr. C.C. Williamson, head of the Economics department of the library, and to his able and courteous staff; to Professor Robert E. Chaddock for his many valuable suggestions and aid in the making of the statistical tables and in the reading of the proof; and to Professor Edwin R.A. Seligman for his painstaking reading of the manuscript.