A Jewish merchant, who lives in a certain town in the Middle West, told me that strong Anti-Semitic feelings were aroused in the community by the arrival there of Russian Jews, and that as soon as they moved away the feeling vanished.
Another Jewish merchant told me that in visiting various places with a view to locating his business, his first inquiry was: “Are there any Russian Jews in the town?” He said that business for the Jew is better where there are no Russian Jews.
The feeling of the Americanized Jew towards this new immigrant was thus expressed by one of them: “We have to stand by them, but we wish they hadn’t come.”
My fourth question refers to the attitude of the groups towards our social and political ideals.
If the family ideal is the basis of our social and political life, it is certainly safe in the keeping of the Jew, who, if he errs at all in that direction, errs in making the well-being of the community or state, secondary to the well-being of his family.
In spite of the fact that divorce, according to the rabbinic law, is easily obtained, almost as easily as in some of our Western states, it is rarely resorted to. Sexual immorality, wife desertion and divorce, become more common among the Jews only under stress of changed economic and religious environment.
The criminal record of the Jew is still good; although he is under suspicion of merely being too shrewd to be caught.
In the so-called lesser and meaner crimes, such as receiving stolen goods and pocket-picking, he has almost a monopoly; while in burglary and murder his record is fairly clean.
At present there are no reliable statistics on this point, and there is much chance of juggling with figures, for friend and foe alike.
The report of the Commission of Immigration of the state of New York presents a table of foreign born white offenders in the state’s prisons in 1904, but unfortunately does not classify the Jews as such. However, if one took the entire number of criminals tabulated under the countries from which the Jews come, namely: Austria, Hungary, Russia and Poland, and counted all as Jews—a procedure manifestly unfair, even then the prison population of the state of New York contains over twelve per cent. more Irish than all the natives from these four countries, who of course are not all Jews, but represent different faiths.