THE RUSSIAN JEWISH REFUGEES IN AMERICA.
CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE GENERAL SUBJECT OF IMMIGRATION IN ITS HISTORICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS.
(Note.—In the preparation of the following article the editor has utilized the contents of a paper read by him before the Board of Presidents of the National Societies of Philadelphia, as a member of that body, December 12th, 1891).
A review of the subject of American Jewish citizenship necessarily involves a consideration of the recent accretions to the Jewish population in this country through the immigration of those of the expatriated Russian Jews who have found and are yet finding their way to our shores. The influx and settlement here of this practically new element of the population has attracted a large measure of public attention, notwithstanding the fact that it comprises an average of not over 8 per cent. of the total immigration. This has been due not only to the extraordinary causes of the influx, but also to the fact that the settlement of a large number of the newcomers in the seabord cities has caused some disturbances in the labor market at those points.
The influence of this movement on the future development of American Judaism is beyond our immediate purview, and its present bearing on the Jewish community need be considered but incidentally. In view, however, of the repeated changes in our immigration laws since 1882, when the immigration of the Russian Jews began to reach its present marked proportions by reason of their expulsion from their homes, and of the agitation for such further legislation as will result in a practically complete disbarment of these and other unfortunate victims of European oppression, we may here properly proceed to a brief consideration of the social, political and economic aspects of the question, both as regards the Russian Jewish immigrants and immigration in general.
The earliest immigration movement of which a record has come down to our day is that which carried the Hebrew Abram from "Ur of the Chaldees" westward to the plains of Canaan. It carried with it the latent energy whose force has been the most potent in the world's affairs; which has become the moving spirit of the Caucasian race, and which afforded the vehicle of development for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The far-reaching consequences of that first of recorded immigrations need not be dwelt upon; it forms the prologue to the history of civilization, a history whose epilogue is yet to be enacted, and whose processes are not only still a living reality in the present, but are proceeding towards an infinitely greater compass in the future.
The migration of Abraham is to be regarded, not only from the historic standpoint, but in the most abstract scientific sense, as a force, resulting as all forces must, from some cause of equal or greater potentiality, and moving, as all forces do, along the lines of least resistance. The movement proceeded, as we know, from the East, away from, if not out of, the cradle of the Caucasian race; from where expansion was hemmed and development was hampered, towards the West and South where the possibilities of both were greater and the requisite conditions more favorable. This was forty centuries ago; from that time to the present the movement has still been westward and southward, and by virtue of the same natural law that operated in the early dawn of history, its course is manifestly destined to trend in the same direction for some time longer.
In the meantime, throughout all the course of the historic past, migration after migration has successively marked the greatest epochs in the annals of mankind. The migration of Abraham was followed by many others, none indeed of more far-reaching significance, but all or nearly all of greater magnitude, and not a few of them of vast importance as factors in the history of man. Some centuries after Abraham's time the migration of the Canaanite Cadmus westward to the Isles of Greece, or perhaps the migration of the Pelasgic tribes westward from Asia Minor, opened the first chapter in the history of Europe. Still later, through the great migrations at the close of the Roman period, and in the early Middle Ages, the barbarians of Europe became imbued with the leaven of Jewish ideals in the form of Christianity, and further still in the course of time the migrations of the hunted Jews from Germany to Poland, and from Spain to Holland and to England, influenced permanently the current of the world's affairs. Subsequently, the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America left an indelible impress in our modern civilization, and finally the migrations of yesterday and to-day, trending still westward to the Pacific, and the offshoots of the current to Australia, to New Zealand and to South America, have opened in the history of mankind a chapter which the Twentieth Century will not complete.
It is remarkable that of all these notable migrations, that of Abraham may be considered as not only first in point of time, but also as altogether normal in its character. In all the later historic movements of this kind, the element of force is more or less definitely manifest, but Abraham's migration was a peaceful one, and when he took up the sword at all, it was only to benefit the people among whom he dwelt. We find him earnestly pleading the cause of his adopted countrymen, notwithstanding their great wickedness; he bought and paid for even his last resting place rather than accept it as a gift, and in general he figures on the historic horizon as in all respects not only a typical but a model immigrant.
Had the great migrations of later times been as peaceful as that of Abraham, the annals of humanity would have been less troubled than we find them. But the subsequent movements of population were migrations of masses of people, forced from their native soil by extraneous pressure or lured away by the incitements of conquest, or by both agencies combined, and such movements must in their very nature, be violent and sanguinary.
The earliest peoples required for their sustenance far more space than do equal numbers in a more civilized state. They had no developed means of subsistence; the most primitive inhabitants relied solely on the products of unaided nature, and these they found mainly in the chase. As this became more difficult, or its produce scarcer, they betook themselves to herding, a culture in itself, the first step in civilization, and the first expedient to support an increasing population. In this respect the inhabitants of the Eastern plains were far in advance of their Western contemporaries; the Asiatic herdsman was more favorably situated than the huntsman in the forests of primeval Europe, and hence we find both culture and population first evolved in the East and flowing thence by natural sequence towards the West. Culture, the outgrowth of population, was first planted in the East; there it rooted and there it blossomed, and there humanity gathered its first fruits, but its ripened products have fructified upon its Western grafts. Westward indeed the star of Empire has made its way, and here on our Western Continent, under the ægis of our great Republic, under the influence of American liberty and freedom, it seems destined to reach its ascendant.
In the upbuilding of this Republic the descendants of the first great emigrant have taken, as we have recorded in the preceding pages, an ample share, and among these descendants the compatriots of the present victims of Russian barbarity were by no means wanting. The emigration of the Slavic Jews to America had been going on in a normal manner, and therefore to a limited extent, for a long time before the present exodus, and in fact, so to speak, from the beginning. After each of the successive uprisings of Poland against the barbarous tyranny of its Russian oppressors, from the time of Pulaski, who after leading his countrymen vainly against the Russian hordes in 1768, came to America to die in the struggle for liberty here; from the time of Kosciuszko, who came here to fight successfully for the independence of our country and then returned to fight vainly for the independence of his own, there have been Polish emigrants to America and among them were many Jews. Haym Solomon, who afforded one of the noblest examples of devotion to American liberty that is recorded in our annals, was as we have seen[122] a Polish Jew and an intimate of the two patriots named above, and on Pulaski's staff was a Jewish officer[123] and others of his Jewish countrymen were doubtless serving in his command.
Down to the bloody outbreak of Russian fanaticism in 1879-1880, followed by the officially decreed expulsions of the succeeding years the influx of the Slavic Jews, was, as we have noted, a normal tide, like that which brought to these shores millions of immigrants from every European country. Normally, without being forced, and of their own volition they had come, as had the Sephardic Jews from England and Holland during our Colonial period and in the early decades of our independence, and as the German Jews came with the stream of German immigration after the beginning of steam navigation and the Revolution of 1848. The English Sephardim ceased to emigrate after their enfranchisement in 1850; the German Jews have ceased to emigrate since their enfranchisement in 1871, and the Polish and Russian Jews would come in fewer numbers if they were not driven from their homes, and would scarcely come at all if but the boon of unhampered domicile, not to mention political liberty, were accorded to them there.
The calamitous condition of general suffering into which the Russian Jews were plunged by the proscriptive policy of their government, appears to have passed its acute stage. While the expulsion of the Jews from the interior of the Empire and their settlement, permanent or temporary, in the "Pale" of the Western Russian provinces, including Poland, was in the height of its progress a few years ago, the number of those who were eventually forced to emigrate was very large, aggregating, it is estimated, nearly two hundred thousand in a single year. The newcomers in the Pale, nearly all of them utterly impoverished through pillage by the low element of the populace and by the extortion of the officials, disorganized the economic condition of the older settlers in the district and caused a most excessive competition for the means of livelihood. The emigration of some of the surplus population and the gradual reorganization of the remainder, has tended to render the general condition less acute, and while a considerable emigration from the Pale must, in the nature of things, be looked for until the existent conditions are fully ameliorated, the great exodus that marked the years 1891-2 is not likely to be repeated unless further measures of oppression and repression are adopted by the Russian government.
Meanwhile the world looks on while the Jews of Western Europe and America are laboring to help those of their Russian brethren who, unable to gain a foothold in the Pale, are forced out from their wretched surroundings. The world looks on while the philanthropist Maurice de Hirsch, emulating the spirit of Montefiore, is devoting his wealth to the succor of his co-religionists and striving to found an asylum for them on the plains of Argentina. It looks on while the Alliance Israélite Universelle, from its headquarters in Paris, is establishing and maintaining primary schools for the Jews throughout the Orient, and agricultural schools for the Russian refugees in Palestine; while this educational work is being seconded by both the American and European branches of the Order of B'nai B'rith, and while Edmond de Rothschild is fostering agricultural colonies near Jaffa and Jerusalem and aiding Russian Jews to gain a foothold in the land of their forefathers.
In our own country agricultural colonies of Russian Jews have been founded, educational institutions built up, distribution of the refugees effected, through the efforts of Jewish communal organizations or by means of the funds devoted for the purpose by Baron de Hirsch, or by both in unison. The de Hirsch Trust dispenses in this manner the income of $2,500,000 donated for this purpose by the great-hearted and open-handed philanthropist, supplementing to this large extent the charitable efforts of the American Jews in their work of succor. That work is carried on by independent local organizations both in Europe and America, ramifying from the Vistula westward to the Golden Gate; centering in Königsberg, Memel, Lemberg and Brody, in Berlin and Vienna, Hamburg and Bremen, in Paris, London and Liverpool, in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, in Chicago, San Francisco and Portland, and at other intervening points. These organizations are apart from the great movement organized by Baron de Hirsch and chartered in England under the title of "The Jewish Colonization Association." That institution, which the Baron has endowed with the sum of $10,000,000, has its headquarters in St. Petersburg and affiliated centers throughout the Jewish Pale, and is devoted exclusively to furthering the Jewish emigration to the Argentine Republic. The Russian Jewish emigrants to other lands proceed wholly by dint of their own means or those of their relatives already in the haven of rest, and these wayfarers are frequently impoverished and always in need of protection and counsel. Onerous as has been the burden which the wickedness of Russian folly has imposed on the Jewish people at large, they have thus far coped with a reasonable degree of success against the almost overwhelming difficulties of the situation.[124]
During the progress of this movement a hue and cry has repeatedly been raised all along the roads which the Russian refugees have taken in escaping from their oppressors and in seeking an asylum and resting place. Here in our country, where many of our State governments have made organized efforts to induce immigration into their borders, where numerous towns and hamlets in the interior are organizing "booms" to increase their population, here, where the single State of Texas, with less than two and a half millions of population, extends over an area greater than Germany and England together; where a state like Montana, larger than England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland combined, has a population of but 132,000, only half as many as the single English town of Leeds, here there have not been wanting those who have constantly urged in Congress and in the press, that European immigration should be not only regulated, but largely restricted and even entirely debarred. All this because in the metropolitan centres and at times at other points, a surplus of wage workers in one or two industries was causing friction and disturbance.
This agitation, by reason of its obvious causes, may well claim our attention in connection with our present subject.
The effort towards better material conditions which has formed the main impulse of all emigration movements, has, as we learn from history, been always fraught with suffering and misery for the populations first effected, and frequently for several of the succeeding generations, but, in the end, improvement has resulted to the greater number at least. Even when the natural surroundings of a migrated population are not more favorable than those of their previous experience, the mere change of environment has generally furthered an improvement of their social arrangements. The change of their location may disappoint an immigrant people in their hopes of material betterment, but they never fail to take advantage of their new beginnings to eliminate from their new organization such conditions as their previous experience had proved objectionable. Migrations, whether peaceful or otherwise, and for that matter sudden changes of material conditions generally, inevitably consume a large part of the existing powers of those effected, but where those powers are not totally exhausted and destroyed, where enough energy remains to form a nucleus of recuperative force, and especially where the new material surroundings are more favorable than those which were left behind, there a marked improvement of all the conditions of life, physical and intellectual, material and social, becomes developed. It would be superfluous to cite the proofs of this proposition; the history of civilization is a record of its examples, and its latest annals are but statements of this fact.
Palpable as is this fact, and nowhere is it more so than on this Western Continent, and especially in our own country, there are yet many who regard an immigrant with the narrow prejudice of mediæval ignorance, and to whom a stranger is still, as to the barbarians of old, an enemy. Over and over again in the course of the great new departure which the establishment and growth of these United States has made in the world's history, over and over again in the course of our development, has the debarment of immigrants been proposed and advocated. At times the opposition to the new comers has been born of Old World animosities, at other times of religious prejudice, and latterly we hear most frequently of restrictions proposed on political and economic grounds.
That political reasons may justify a restriction, or even dictate the entire debarment of certain defined classes of immigrants, is to be admitted. Thus the exclusion of Chinese immigrants may be defended on the grounds of a broad public policy, with reasons which cannot logically be adduced with regard to any branch of the Caucasian race. The most cogent of these reasons, and the one that has afforded the only rational basis for the policy adopted, is not the economic element of the subject, not that the Chinese live cheaply and work cheaply, but that their assimilation with the rest of the population is practically impossible. To what extent the theoretical possibility of their being merged in the general population could be realized, to what extent its realization would be desirable or the contrary, to what extent a mixture of the Caucasian and Mongolian races would enhance or deteriorate their respective qualities, physical and psychical, we need not here stop to inquire. Suffice it to re-state the fact that political, or perhaps ultimately ethnological reasons may here be considered as prompting a course which could not reasonably be adopted on any other ground. But in the case of immigrants of the Caucasian race, such opposition as has been made from time to time, though frequently insisted upon as a political necessity, can only, in the absence of any broad ethnological basis, be argued on economic grounds.
The discussions engendered by propositions to restrict immigration have recurred at various periods of our history and have been factors in our politics from the beginning of our institutions. There was indeed already in the old Colonial times an anti-immigration or Nativist Party, almost before there were any natives to make it up. In fact, the subject has cropped out whenever some slight occasion offered, and particularly whenever politicians on the in- or the outside needed a new string to harp upon. Some of us are old enough to remember something of the native American agitation which began as far back as 1835, and which took shape in the so-called "American" party, afterwards generally known as the "Know-Nothings," about 1844. In that year the Know-Nothing Party carried the city of New York on a mayoralty election by a large majority, and for a time the movement spread widely throughout the country. It developed strong religious prejudices, and was marked by the memorable anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia. The odium which those disgraceful outrages brought on the "American" party was attempted to be overcome by making it a secret organization, and in the political confusion resulting from the breaking up of the old Whig party, the former grew to such proportions that in 1855 it carried no less than nine state elections. That the movement then had no vital force, but was only a political stalking-horse for partisan purposes, became manifest in the Presidential election of 1856, when the Know Nothing candidates carried only the State of Maryland, and that only by aid of the remnant of the Whig party and the bludgeons of the "Plug-Uglies." The outcome of the whole movement, politically considered, was the complete extinction of the party organization which had fostered, and the permanent discredit of the party leaders who had promoted it.
But the lessons of the past, the arguments and considerations which have repeatedly led to the rejection of a prescriptive policy, have now to be gone over again in this later generation, and the reason for this is plain enough. The economic aspect of the question is more permanent than the political, and the economic argument more plausible than the other. The objectionable features inseparable from a considerable influx of newcomers into a community, large or small, are palpable and on the surface, while the inestimable value of these newcomers, by virtue of the added material and social forces with which they endow the community, becomes perceptible only upon a closer investigation of the subject. It thus happens that when an unusually large number of new arrivals disturbs for a time some existing economic condition, the community is startled by those immediately affected with an outcry against the intruding force, and it is then only on investigation that it becomes apparent that while indeed a comparatively few individuals suffer, and even they but temporarily, the new element is of far-reaching benefit to the community at large.
A quite parallel instance, as far as it goes, is the effect of the introduction of machinery in substitution of hand labor. The history of inventions is burdened with the details of opposition which gathered at every step of the process through which Man has brought to his service the forces of Nature. So too, the practical aid of immigration in subduing the domain of Nature on this Western Continent has often been decried as inimical to the interests of those native to the soil, notwithstanding that even a cursory analysis of the question proves clearly the fact that the immigrant not only does not travail against the native's interest, but on the contrary, aids and enhances that interest beyond all computation. Just as the throng of new inventions temporarily disarranges existent conditions of commerce and of industry, with the immediate result of causing economic distress to some groups of individuals, so the tide of immigration temporarily affects existent conditions in the centers of population, but the eventual benefit of the new force is as certain to be felt in the latter case as in the former.
Let us for a moment consider the character and extent of the impulses which the influx of the newcomers imparts to the social organism. The nature of these impulses is two-fold; the increase of numbers adds power to the community, and the diversity of interests which is an inevitable concomitant of increased population, brings wealth, culture, and all the higher gains of human effort.
To elucidate these propositions we cannot do better than here quote the carefully considered statements of the foremost of American publicists, Henry C. Carey, himself an American of Americans, and the great expounder of the protective system of political economy. As Chairman of the Committee on Industrial Interests and Labor, in its report to the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania in 1873, referring to the Immigration question, he writes as follows:
"Closing their eyes to the important facts which have been thus presented, very many of our working men look with jealous eyes at every measure tending toward bringing those of other countries to take a place side by side with them, believing, as they do, that the more the supply of labor the lower must certainly become the price. Nevertheless, could they but be persuaded to study carefully the facts of even the last twenty years they could not fail to become impressed with the fact, that growth of wages has always kept even pace with growth of immigration; the reward of labor on the contrary declining as immigration has been arrested or destroyed. At no previous period had the demand for labor, or its reward, grown so rapidly as in the early years of the great California one, say from 1850 to 1854, when immigration grew to 400,000. At none, has labor been more in excess of the demand than in the years that followed the great crisis of 1857, when immigration declined to figures scarcely greater than had been attained 20 years before; and when, as in 1860-61, not one out of five of the skilled workmen of the country was steadily employed. Here, in Philadelphia, when it was desired to build a street railroad they advertised for two hundred and fifty hands at but sixty cents a day, and had more than five thousand offered, a majority of whom were skilled artisans who were wholly out of work. In the neighborhood of one great establishment, a rolling mill, the number of unemployed men was so great that the county authorities, to save its skilled workmen from open pauperism, determined to build a turnpike, employing experienced hands at breaking stone, for fifty cents a day, rather than supporting them as paupers. At no period of our history has the reward of labor grown so rapidly as in the last ten years, when the exodus of European working men has so rapidly increased that the states of Central and Western Europe now find themselves forced to consideration of the measures required for retaining their countrymen at home; and when the highest German authorities admit that the pecuniary loss resulting from training and educating men for export to this country has now already more than counterbalanced the French indemnity of $1,200,000,000. To all appearance the immigration of the present year will closely approach to half a million; and yet it is at this moment, in face of so wonderful an addition to our stock of working men and women, that we have a determined agitation for bringing about a reduction of time and increase of wages. In the years prior to the rebellion, when immigration so largely declined, the agitation was for employment at almost any price. Why is this? Why is it that, contrary to the rule elsewhere observed, demand for labor goes ahead of supply when this latter is great, and falls behind it when the supply is small? To this the answer is, that the power to compel nature to labor in man's service increases almost geometrically as numbers increase arithmetically; as employment becomes diversified; and as men are more enabled to combine their efforts for attainment of that object."
"As a consequence of the great increase in the power of combination that has thus been brought about, we find the manufacturing product of the country to have grown in the period 1860 to 1872, from 1800 to 5000 millions, the mere increase having been almost twice the total amount to which the country had attained in the centuries that had preceded the war of the rebellion. Adding to the figures the foreign manufactures consumed, we obtain for the first—a period when immigration was rapidly declining—a total consumption of about $65 per head; whereas in the period which since has passed, and in which immigration has so greatly grown, it has risen to more than $130 per head. So far, therefore, is the working man from having occasion to dread the competition of the immigrant, that he needs, night and morning, to pray for maintenance of that policy which is now making demand on Europe for so much of its half fed and half clothed population, thereby compelling both landed and manufacturing capitalists to the adoption of measures tending so to improve the condition of them who are left behind as to induce them to forego the idea of abandoning their native land. Never in the world's history has there been furnished such conclusive evidence of the fact, that measures tending to benefit the working man anywhere tend toward raising his condition everywhere; and that, therefore, there is a perfect harmony in the real and permanent interests of mankind at large."
As still more directly bearing on this subject, I quote from the same report as follows:
"Less than a dozen years since, our working men looked jealously upon the negro, believing that any measure tending toward his emancipation would certainly be followed by such an influx of cheap labor as must seriously affect themselves. Directly the reverse, the negro migrates to Texas and there becomes a customer for manufactured products of a class greatly higher than that of those which his master had been accustomed to purchase for his slave."
Carey here reaches the very pith of the question. Every newcomer becomes a customer for those already on the ground, for all that he needs for his maintenance, just as the new born babe furnishes a new customer for the dry goods store, the milk man, not to mention the doctor and sometimes the lawyer. The baby, it is true, does not, as the phrase goes, "enter into competition" for a living, while the immigrant does, but in this respect the latter is the more valuable acquisition, for unless the immigrant is supported by charity, he has to produce at least as much as he consumes, and thus the community is an inevitable gainer by his presence. Inasmuch as a very large proportion of the immigrants produce more than they consume, in other words, save something of their earnings, it is manifest that the community gains doubly by their presence. It gains through the increase by the immigrant of the general social force, in his contribution to the total of the community's traffic and exchange, and also gains through the newcomer's addition to the general capital stock.
But, it is urged on the other hand, this may all be true of some kinds of immigrants, and not be true of others who are low in the scale of moral worth and of physical and intellectual capacity, and it is these whose coming should be restricted. Be it so; we may safely admit this proposition, and proceed thence to the sole remaining problem of drawing the line.
Where shall this line be drawn? The native American agitation proceeded on the very ground we have postulated, and grew to the proportions of carrying a majority in no less than nine states. It grew to these proportions as the result of an agitation that arose from the influx of impoverished Irishmen after the famine of 1847, and of their followers from Scotland and England in the succeeding decade. Has the agitation been justified by time? Have the prophecies of the Know Nothings that our people could not possibly assimilate the great mass of foreigners who were then thronging hither, whose proportion to the native population was even greater than it is now, who were alien to our institutions and our laws, in habits and in religion at variance with the great majority of the citizens, been fulfilled? Of course not; the facts have but developed what the common sense of the people soon perceived to be true. These immigrants have all been assimilated. Those of them that survive, and their children assuredly, have become thoroughly Americanized and effectually welded into the commonalty of our republic.
How was it with the Germans who came hither in such swarms under the allurements of the great gold finds in the West, and the growth of steam navigation on the ocean after 1850? They too have been assimilated, notwithstanding that through their variance in language they were even more differentiated from the native inhabitants than the immigrants from the British Isles. How about the Scandinavians and the Holland Dutch, the French and Italians? Has the grafting of these scions on the rooted stem degenerated the stock? We have ample evidence to the contrary, sufficiently palpable to need no citation in detail.
Where then shall we draw the line? We have seen that the immigrant, though he arrives penniless as tens of thousands of them have done and do, does certainly not impoverish the community. We have seen, on the contrary, that though he arrives penniless, he enhances the wealth of the community by bringing with him the germ of all commodities, Labor. Where then shall we draw the line? Shall we exclude the poor Roman Catholic Pole, who is driven from his home by the vindictive policy of his barbarous conquerer? Does he not bring energy and labor? Shall we exclude the Russian Jew, who is driven from his native soil by the stupid villany of the same Tartar barbarism? Is his thrift and industry likely to impoverish our community? The pious fools who, four hundred years ago, drove three hundred thousand of such people from the Iberian Peninsula had a bigger majority than the Know Nothings of later date who wanted to do as much for the Roman Catholics fifty years ago, and they had their way. They diminished the population according to their wish, but they wrought the ruin of the then richest nation of Europe, a ruin from which it has even to this day not yet arisen.
No; let the immigrants come, as they have come. Let us but guard ourselves against the preventable evils which are likely to attend their coming, by the careful enforcement of the laws that are enacted to that end. Let us draw the line so as to exclude the habitual paupers, the habitual criminals, the incurably insane; the rest will take care of themselves and add to our well being and our wealth by filling up the waste stretches of the great expanse behind us; they will but follow in the way trodden by the immigrants who landed two hundred and seventy years ago at Plymouth Rock, and will work out their salvation as did their predecessors by making the desert to blossom as the rose.
Note:—Various movements for the relief of the Russian refugees have been organized independently from 1882 on by the Jewish communities throughout the country and especially in the seabord cities. The renewed severity of the Russian persecutions in 1890 called forth a general movement for the relief of the sufferers which was focused at a convention held in Philadelphia, February 16, 1891, and which resulted in the formation of the "Jewish Alliance of America."[125] This organization was composed in the main of Russian Jews already settled in this country, but the increasing demand on the Jewish people by the extraordinarily large influx of the refugees during 1891 necessitated a more general organization of the measures for their relief. To that end the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund issued a call[126] for a general convention of representatives of the Jewish organizations throughout the country, which accordingly met in New York City on September 23, 1891. This convention[127] resolved itself into "The American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Russian Refugees," and elected an Executive Committee[128] to carry out its plans. With this organization the Jewish Alliance of America was merged in February, 1892, but with the diminution of the influx in the course of that year the united organization devolved its functions on a "Central Committee" composed of members of the American Committee, the Baron de Hirsch Trust and the United Hebrew Charities of New York.
The several organized movements above noted elicited earnest expressions of sympathy from many leading men in our community. A number of these are so pointed and relevant to our present subject matter as to dictate their citation in this connection.
On the occasion of the movement for the formation of the Jewish Alliance, CARDINAL GIBBONS wrote as follows, under date of Baltimore, Dec. 15th, 1890.
"Every friend of humanity must deplore the systematic persecution of the Jews in Russia.
"For my part, I cannot well conceive how Christians can entertain other than kind sentiments towards the Hebrew race, when I consider how much we are indebted to them. We have from them the inspired volume of the Old Testament, which has been a consolation in all ages to devout souls. Christ, our Lord, the Founder of our religion, His blessed mother, as well as the Apostles, were all Jews according to the flesh. These facts attach me strongly to the Jewish race."
The call for the convention which resulted in the organization of the American Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Russian Refugees, elicited the following letter from Judge DILLON to Mr. Seligman:
Dear Sir: Coming to this place (Saratoga) on the train from New York, I saw in the Evening Post a statement that prominent Hebrews in all parts of the United States have been invited by the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch fund to meet in this city on Wednesday, September 23rd in the building of the Hebrew Educational Alliance at East Broadway and Jefferson streets, for the purpose of co-operating in the formation of an American Relief Committee to make the best possible disposition of the exiled Russian Jews coming to this country.
The persecution of your people with mediæval cruelty, whereby they are exiled without cause, suddenly and en masse, with all the multiplied and nameless hardships and sufferings which must necessarily attend such an exodus, from a country in which they had lived for generations and had the right to peacefully remain, has awakened among all right-thinking persons sympathy for the victims and indignation against their oppressors. This is not a matter that appeals alone to the people of your race. It appeals to every man with a heart of flesh in his bosom. There remains no longer any place for prejudice or selfishness. Reports are made that some Jewish refugees have already been sent back from this country for fear that they may become a public charge. This must not be. Without shame we cannot remain idle and cold spectators and see this done under our very eyes. Ever since the establishment of our nation, it has been its just boast that it was the asylum of the toiling and oppressed people of all other countries, who in good faith sought our shores with a view of permanent residence and citizenship. I am not criticising necessary or provident defensive modification of this policy, but the former considerations have a rightful application to your fugitive people, who in their necessity come from preference to this land of freedom to find and make themselves homes.
I would as soon shut my door against a benighted wanderer seeking refuge from the merciless blizzard as to shut our national ports against those of your people, who, stricken like wild beasts, are driven here in the stress of the raging storm which threatens their destruction. Let us receive them with welcome and hospitality. Let us show to the nations of the world that there is one spot on God's earth where these unfortunate exiles may rest their tired feet, set up again their household goods, reconstruct their ruined homes and worship in peace the God of their fathers.
I notice in the article referred to that it is proposed "to appeal to the Jews of the United States to unite in a co-operative plan to find homes and employment for Russian immigrants." I beg to suggest that this concerns not your people alone. It quite as deeply concerns the good name of the American people to see that no refugee shall be returned for poverty, or for any cause, save for crime, or shall be allowed to suffer until he can find work.
I do not rest these sentiments upon the unfeigned respect I feel for the immemorial traditions and glorious history of your people, who in theology, ethics, philosophy, arts, literature, jurisprudence and legislation have either led the thought of the world or kept abreast with it. I prefer to rest them upon the broader, higher and truer ground, that these exiles are men, with all the inprescriptable rights that belong to men because they are men, irrespective of religion, race or nationality, rights which governments do not create or confer, so they cannot rightfully deny or destroy. I enclose my check for the cause (would it were more), and in doing so, I could not refrain, before resting my head upon my pillow, to thus state the reasons why I did it.
With great respect, I am as ever,
Very truly yours,
John F. Dillon.To Jesse Seligman, Esq.
On the same occasion as that noted above, Hon. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW expressed himself as follows:
"We behold to-day in Russia with horror the amazing spectacle in the nineteenth century of the whole power of the government brought to bear upon three millions of Hebrews to treat them as aliens and enemies. They have been for three hundred years the subjects and the citizens of the Russian Empire, and yet the whole power of the state, of its army, of its civil force, is brought to bear to deprive them of the opportunities of employment and to refuse them, except within certain limits, the right to live in the country where their ancestors have lived for ten to twenty generations. It is because monarchical institutions, autocratic institutions, class institutions do not possess the power of assimilation and of homogeneity.
"In the past fifty years, fifteen millions of people have come to this country from abroad. They belonged to every race, they spoke every language but our own. They worshipped in every form, under every symbol and in every creed. But American liberty solved the problem. These people did not know about our institutions, or understand them. They had been taught to believe that liberty was license, and yet the solvent power of American liberty made them citizens and gave to the immigrants of a few years ago, the same rights before the law and in making the law that is possessed by the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers. These fifteen millions of people, under the operation of this glorious principle, have become bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. They have aided in the development of the country; they have assisted in increasing its wealth, its power and its glory, and have marched with equal step and equal love under the old flag for the preservation of the glorious Republic which had made them free."
Following is an extract from a letter written to Hon. Simon Wolf by Father Sylvester Malone, of St. Peter and Paul Church, Brooklyn:
I have listened to St. Patrick's Day discussions in time past in which your co-religionists were likened to the Irish. Both suffered because of their holding with such tenacity to what was their belief. This was true in the case of the Hebrew in his own native land and in every other land whither tyranny forced him to emigrate. The Irish have been the victims of cruel persecution in their own native land. Here, however, they are free, and are always successful when they do not by some fault of their own mar their best hopes of success. The Jewish people too have had great success in America, but the later emigration, directly from Russia, has not been acceptable to many of our citizens. They have run the gauntlet, as my countrymen had to do some fifty years ago. They must learn wisdom and patience."
As an instructive conclusion to our present subject we add the following extract from the New York Sun of September 1st, 1894. It needs no further comment:
"In the Jews, Judaism is deeply ingrained. As many as 10,000 or 12,000 of the Jewish tailors of this city were on a strike for higher wages all last week; and day after day they loitered in the streets, or congregated in their hall, or sat down any where to talk in their jargon. But upon the forenoon of Saturday last the strikers, who had been highly excited the day before, were not to be found at their usual places of rendezvous. Nearly all of them had gone to their synagogues. They were engaged in Divine worship. They were at prayer. They were listening to the voice of the rabbi. They were following a custom established by Moses, and kept up through all the ages ever since his time. In the hundreds of garrets, rear halls, and rickety old edifices which are used as synagogues in what is called the "ghetto," on the east side of New York, the Jews on strike celebrated the everlasting name of "Jahveh" last Saturday forenoon, the holy Sabbath.
"This is Judaism in New York and the world over.
"Lots of workingmen, who are called Christians, go on a strike from time to time, but who is there that ever heard of any body of strikers other than Jews, giving heed to the ceremonies of their religion during the heat of a strike? We are told that nearly all of these Jewish strikers are orthodox, and all wore their hats in the synagogues. Many of them, we are assured, are familiar with the Torah and the Talmud, and can quote Ben Ezra and Maimonides....
"Judaism is in the bones of the Jews, and of all Jews, from the equator to the poles.
"Was there ever any crowd of Presbyterian strikers, or of Baptist, Methodist, or Unitarian strikers, or of Roman Catholic strikers, who made it their business to go to church in a body, for the purpose of engaging in worship and prayer, during a strike? Let us ask Rev. Dr. John Hall, or Bishop Simpson, or that learned and mirthful priest, Father Flattery, not to speak of the eminent Dominican, Father O'Neil, or our three Universalist preachers.
"The Jews of New York, like the Jews of all the rest of the world, believe in Judaism, and are rooted and grounded in it.
"Oh, that we could say that the people who call themselves Christians believe in Christianity and practise it, either at work or when on strike!"