The Jew answers well to the first part of the question; in fact, better than the Latin or the Slav. Although he may be compelled to eat plain and coarse food, he craves the richer and daintier fare; if he has to live in a tenement on the East Side, he does it with an eye to a flat in Harlem; for the Jew has never ceased looking for the “land flowing with milk and honey,” or longing for the “flesh-pots of Egypt.” His standard of living is not low, but as some one has said: “elastic.” He may eat red herring to-day, but to-morrow he will eat carp with garlic sauce; that is, if he can afford it.
He will control his historic appetite in order to “get on,” and it is the subordination of health and decency to this desire which often makes him an economic problem, if not a menace.
But when he has attained, he is no miser. His children must have the best education, and his wife the most expensive clothing; he will save his children from the sweat shop if he can, and his wife whether he can or not. He is not willing to live off his children or on the town; although he is not always above living on his more fortunate brethren, whom he thus gives a chance to earn the divine favour by bestowing alms; he rarely sinks into pauperism.
The agencies which minister to pleasure, the theatre, the concert hall and vaudeville, would lose a fair share of their patronage if Jews were excluded from them.
The Jew is neither a total abstainer, nor is he intemperate, and his expenditure for alcohol, compared with that of the Irish, is about as one to a hundred. None dreads the coming of Jews into a neighbourhood more than the saloon-keeper, and some of the vilest localities in New York have been made fairly decent by the expansion of the Ghetto.
One of the most difficult questions to answer is, whether Jewish ideals of making a living accord with those which characterize the older groups. The popular judgment is that they do not. It is commonly charged that the Jew degrades the industries upon which he enters; that as a competitor he is unscrupulous and as an advertiser, dishonest. “Jewing down” is a phrase too well known in commercial life to need interpretation.
Whether it is the “quality of the Jewish mind” which has created this judgment, as Professor Shaler indicates, or whether it is the quality of his moral nature, I am not in a position to determine. All I can say with a sense of assurance is, first, that the business morality of the Jew not only compares favourably with other commercial groups which are coming to the United States, but is generally admitted to be higher than that of the Greeks and Armenians.
Second, That the so-called Jewish business ethics, which in reality are Oriental and not essentially Jewish, and are also prevalent on the continent of Europe, do not compare favourably with the straightforward business methods traditional in America.
Third, That the Jew has adopted these American standards in the lines of business which he controls, and that in every city he is counted among its most substantial and reliable business men.
Fourth, That although the methods used by large numbers of Jews in business are often questionable, as is often the business itself, they have a remarkably clear record in the sphere of high finance, and that it is most fortunate for the well-being of the Jews in America that the so-called “Captains of Industry” are a native product.