FOOTNOTES:

[139] Cf. reports of the United Hebrew Charities of New York City, 1886 to 1906.

CHAPTER VI[ToC]

Summary and Conclusions

Some of the principal characteristics of the Jewish immigration to the United States have been presented in the preceding pages. The Jewish immigration has been shown to consist essentially of permanent settlers. Its family movement is incomparable in degree, and contains a larger relative proportion as well as absolute number of women and children, than any other immigrant people. This in turn is reflected in the greater relative proportion as well as absolute number of those classified as having "no occupation". The element of dependency thus predicated is another indication of the family composition of the Jewish immigration. Its return movement is the smallest of any, as compared both with its large immigration and the number of total emigrants. The Jewish immigrants are distinguished as well by a larger relative proportion and absolute number of skilled laborers, than any other immigrant people. In these four primary characteristics the Jewish immigrants stand apart from all the others.

It is with the neighboring Slavic races emigrating from the countries of Eastern Europe and with whom the Jewish immigrants are closely associated that the contrasts, in all these respects, are strongest. 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 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. Although the Jewish immigration has been contemporaneous with the "new" immigration from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and is furthermore essentially East-European in origin, its characteristics place it altogether with the "old" immigration.[140] Most striking, however is the fact that in all of these respects—family composition, and small return movement (both indicating permanent settlement) and in the proportion of skilled laborers—the Jewish immigration stands apart even from the "old" immigration.

Further confirmation may be obtained, in the study of the characteristics of the Jewish immigration, of the principle established in the preceding sections that the rejective forces of governmental oppression are responsible for the largest part of this immigration. The large family movement of the Jewish immigration is a symptom of abnormal conditions and amounts almost to a reversal of the normal immigration, in which single or married men without families predominate. Even the family movement of the "old" immigrants may largely be attributed to the longer residence of their peoples in the United States as well as to their greater familiarity with the conditions and customs of the United States. That so large a part of the Jewish immigrants is composed of dependent females and children creates a situation of economic disadvantage for the Jewish immigrants, all the stronger because of their relative unfamiliarity with the language or the conditions facing them in this country.

Again, the Jews respond slowly and incompletely to the pressure of unfavorable economic conditions in this country. This was emphasized by the almost complete lack of response to the panic of 1907, as well as expressed in the small, practically unchanging return movement of the Jews to their European homes.

The pressure upon the Jewish artisans, or skilled laborers, in Eastern Europe is reflected in the predominance of this class among the Jewish immigrants to this country. That so useful an element in Eastern Europe with its still relatively backward industrial development—a fact that was given express recognition by the permission accorded the Jewish artisans in Alexander II's time to live in the interior of Russia—should have been compelled to emigrate indicates that the voyage across the Atlantic was easier for them than the trip into the interior of Russia, access to which is still legally accorded to them.

That the oppressive conditions created particularly in Russia and Roumania and operating as a pressure equivalent to an expulsive force does not explain the entire Jewish immigration to this country is evident from the preceding pages. In a great measure, the immigration of Jews from Austria-Hungary is an economic movement. The existence, however, of a certain degree of pressure created by economic and political antisemitism has however been recognized. The Jewish movement from Austria-Hungary shares largely with the movement from Russia and Roumania the social and economic characteristics of the Jewish immigration which we have described. A strong family movement and a relative permanence of settlement, especially as compared with the Poles, and a movement of skilled laborers must be predicated of the Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary, though undoubtedly not to the same degree as in the case of the Jewish movements from Russia and Roumania.

It is also clear that the forces of economic attraction in the United States do not play an altogether passive part in the Jewish immigration. 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. This current, however, once started and growing only by the force of its increasing attraction, would reflect in its movement almost wholly the economic conditions in this country. That so large a part of the Jewish immigration, and so many of the phenomena peculiar to it, find their explanation, for the largest part of the thirty years, in the situation and the course of events in the countries of Eastern Europe leads to the inevitable conclusion that the key to the Jewish immigration is to be found not in the force of economic attraction exercised in the United States but rather in the exceptional economic, social and legal conditions in Eastern Europe which have been created as a result of governmental persecution.

Reviewing the various phases of the history of Jewish immigration for these thirty years, we are enabled to see more closely its nature. The study of the immigration, its movement and its social and economic characteristics, in comparison with those of other immigrant peoples, has revealed in it a number of distinguishing traits. In the causes of the emigration of the Jews, in the pressure exerted upon their movement as reflected in their rate of immigration, in their family movement, in the permanence of their settlement, and in their occupational distribution have been found characteristics which mark them off from the rest of the immigrant peoples. The number of these characteristics and the degree in which they are found in the Jewish immigration, put it in a class by itself.

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. What we are witnessing to-day and for these thirty years, is a Jewish migration of a kind and degree almost without a parallel in the history of the Jewish people. When speaking of the beginnings of Russian Jewish immigration to Philadelphia, David Sulzberger said: "In thirty years the movement of Jews from Russia to the United States has almost reached the dignity of the migration of a people," he used no literary phrase. In view of the facts that have developed, this statement is true without any qualification.

This migration-process explains the remarkable growth of the Jewish population in the United States, within a relatively short period of time. In this transplantation, the spirit of social solidarity and communal responsibility prevalent among the Jews has played a vital part.

The family rather than the individual thus becomes the unit for the social life of the Jewish immigrant population in the United States. In this respect the latter approaches more nearly the native American population than does the foreign white or immigrant population. One of the greatest evils incident to and characteristic of the general immigration to this country is thereby minimized.

Again, the concentration of the Jewish immigrants in certain trades explains in great measure the peculiarities of the occupational and the urban distribution of the Jews in the United States. The development of the garment trades through Jewish agencies is largely explained by the recruiting of the material for this development through these laborers.

These primary characteristics of the Jewish immigration of the last thirty years will serve to explain some of the most important phases of the economic and social life of the Jews in the United States, three-fourths of whom are immigrants of this period.

Of all the features of this historic movement of the Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States, not the least interesting is their passing from civilizations whose bonds with their medieval past are still strong to a civilization which began its course unhampered by tradition and unyoked to the forms and institutions of the past. 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.