Nothing was impressed more forcibly upon me during my study of conditions in Europe than this—namely, that we can tell very little from the mere fact that this or that political institution exists in a country just what privileges or disadvantages these institutions bring to the masses of the people. In fact, it seems to be just as true in Europe as it is in America, that mere legislative enactments can of themselves no more produce justice and freedom than they can produce industry and thrift. After the physical bondage has been destroyed there still remains the bondage of superstition, of ignorance, and of religious, class, and racial prejudice. The act of this Jew in kissing my hand was a revelation to me, not only of his own state of mind, but of the conditions by which he was surrounded.
I think this one incident, more than anything else I saw or heard while I was in Galicia, gave me an insight into the life of the people. It seemed to me I could understand, for example, from this alone, why the Jews have made little more progress in Galicia than they have in the neighbouring provinces of Roumania and Russia.
As for my guide, I might add that I never heard from him afterward. If he wrote to me the letter never reached me, and I do not know what finally became of the cousin whom he had lost.
Perhaps I ought, before I attempt to describe the condition of the poorer class of Jews in Cracow, to say something of another Ghetto which I saw while in Europe.
During my stay in Prague I took a walk one day through an ancient quarter of the city which had been formerly inhabited by Jews. The Ghetto of Prague is said to have been the largest and most famous in Europe. It was, in fact, a city in itself, for it contained not merely the oldest synagogue in Europe, with a famous old Jewish burial ground attached to it, but also a Rathhaus, or city hall, and a market in which, according to tradition, Jewish traders at one time sold Christian slaves. So thoroughly were the Jews at one time established in this quarter of the city that it went under the name of Judenstadt, or Jewtown. There they maintained, in a small way, a separate civil government of their own, just as they do, to a lesser extent, in Russia to-day. In his book on the Jews, already referred to, Mr. M. Fishberg, to whom I am indebted for many facts and statistics concerning the condition of the Jew, says of the Jews in Russia to-day:
They speak their own language, Yiddish, and many conduct their affairs, keep their ledgers, write contracts, wills, and many other documents in this dialect; the registration of births, marriages, and deaths is done by their rabbis, and the divorces granted by them are recognized by the state as valid; in the smaller towns they prefer to settle their differences before their own judiciary (Beth din), and not in the state courts; they collect the greater part of their own taxes for the Government in the name of the Jewish community; not only is each individual Jew required to do military duty, but the Jewish community as a whole is held responsible for delivering annually a certain number of recruits. This separateness goes as far as the calendar with many Jews, who date their letters and documents according to the Hebrew and not the Russian calendar. Up to about fifty years ago it was a disgrace for a Jew to be able to read Russian or German, or even to have in his possession a book in one of these vulgar languages; it was a sin next to apostasy. But during the last two generations a profound change has taken place.
At the time I was in Prague the ancient Ghetto was in process of demolition, and it illustrates the change which has come in recent years that most of the people living in the narrow streets and battered ancient buildings of the former Ghetto were not Jews but Christians.
After Prague, the city which has the oldest and most interesting Ghetto in Europe is Cracow, and the most interesting thing about it is the fact that it is still inhabited by Jews. They live there to-day very much, I suppose, as they did a hundred years ago, a race separate and apart, more removed, apparently, from the manners, customs, and comprehension of the rest of the world than any people this side of China.
I have known Jews nearly all my life. I have done business with them and have more than once talked to them in their synagogues, and have always found sympathy and support among them for the work I have had to do for my own people. I have frequently visited and studied, to some extent, the poorer classes in the Jewish quarter on the East Side in New York. In spite of this, however, when certain strange figures in long black coats, soft felt hats, with pale faces, lighted by dark glittering eyes and framed by glossy curls which hung down on either side in front of their ears, were pointed out to me in Vienna, I had not the slightest notion to what race or nationality of people they belonged. Later on, when I reached Cracow, these same slender figures and pale, delicate faces became very familiar to me, and I learned to recognize in them the higher type of Polish Jew.