Roughly speaking, then, the charges that the Jew is an unfair competitor in the industries and in business may be true; yet if the case were put to a jury which could to some degree free itself from prejudice, the result would probably be a disagreement. What could not be easily denied is, that the sense of truth in the Jew from the east of Europe, notably from Poland, is low.
I quote Mr. H. S. Lewis of London, a Jew, and an unprejudiced authority.[2] “One is sometimes tempted to conclude in despair that the bulk of the Polish immigrants have no sense of truth whatever. No more painful spectacle can be witnessed than the hearing of a summons at an East-End police court, where the parties concerned are foreign Jews. Obvious perjury on the slightest provocation is committed in case after case. The comments of Judge Bacon at the Whitechapel County Court on this fact have been at times severely criticised by the Jewish press. His generalizations may have been too sweeping, being based on his experience of petty litigation, where the seamy side of life is necessarily prominent. At the same time, his remarks have been based on a substantial substratum of truth. It is the experience of most visitors among the foreign poor for charitable societies, that although absolute imposture is exceptional, falsehoods with regard to the details of cases are constantly met with.
“It is to this taint of untruthfulness that most of the other defects of the foreign Jews are to be traced. I fear that it cannot be denied that their standard of business morality is often defective. A statement of this kind may be regarded as unfair, and it is, of course, difficult to put it to any exact test. An illustration is, however, afforded by a return of convictions, periodically issued in the minutes of the London County Council, for the use of false weights and measures and kindred offenses. Judging by the names of the offenders, an altogether undue proportion of them appear to be foreign Jews.
“We meet also in East London with far too many cases where the Bankruptcy laws are evaded by persons who pass through the courts and reappear in business with suspicious celerity and without apparent loss.”
The testimony of Rev. Max Wertheim of Ada, Ohio, ought to have some weight—it concerns the Americanized Jew. He was a rabbi at Dayton, Ohio, and after passing through various religious crises, became a Baptist, and is now doing devoted work on a small salary. Naturally, he has not received the most generous treatment from his former co-religionists, and would hardly flatter them. In answer to my question whether he found any difference in business standards between his Jewish and his Christian flocks, he unhesitatingly said that there was no difference.
More weighty is the testimony which Prof. Graham Taylor gave recently before a Christian Brotherhood. “I know as good Christians among the Jews as among the churches.”
I am quite sure that basically there is no difference; although I should characterize some Jewish methods as mean, and those of some Gentiles as dangerous. In making this distinction, however, I realize that “wooden nutmegs,” high-bottomed fruit boxes, sun-kissed apples at the top of the barrel and gnarled ones at the bottom, as well as other tricks of the native trade, are mean enough; while the methods of the theatrical trust, the adulteration of foods and drugs, the white slave trade and other questionable forms of business engaged in by both Jew and Gentile, may be called both mean and dangerous.
It is also interesting to note that in the great industrial struggle the Jew is represented largely on the capitalistic side; but on the other hand, some of the strongest leaders in the labour unions and many of the Socialists of the rank and file are Jews; consequently the vox populi may condemn them for being both.
The third question is: Does the group possess ethnic qualities that will prevent normal assimilation, and therefore will increase race friction already dangerously strong?
Disagreeable as is the Jewish type when very pronounced, it is undergoing such rapid changes where the environment is favourable, that it does not present a serious barrier to assimilation. The issues of intermarriage are exceptionally good and the resultant types normal. Yet in spite of the vanishing type, the Jews are a peculiar people and will long remain so. Their historic inheritance and their religious traditions, no less than their attitude towards the Gentiles and the attitude of the Gentiles towards them, will naturally keep them a group apart. The hostile attitude on both sides ought not to be strengthened, and I believe that for a period at least, Jewish emigration from the east of Europe should cease. Not because I believe the Russian Jew inferior, but merely because he is numerous and the ethnic and cultural difference between him and the native is so marked as to aggravate an antipathy already intense; this the Jews themselves feel.