Besides the Russian Jews we are receiving large numbers from Galicia, Hungary, and Roumania. The last are said to be of a high type, whereas the Galician Jews are the lowest. It is these whom Joseph Pennell, the illustrator, found to be "people who, despite their poverty, never work with their hands; whose town ... is but a hideous nightmare of dirt, disease and poverty" and its misery and ugliness "the outcome of their own habits and way of life and not, as is usually supposed, forced upon them by Christian persecutors."
OCCUPATIONS
The Hebrew immigrants rarely lay hand to basic production. In tilling the soil, in food growing, in extracting minerals, in building, construction and transportation they have little part. Sometimes they direct these operations, often they finance them, but even in direst poverty they contrive to avoid hard muscular labor. Under pressure the Jew takes to the pack as the Italian to the pick.
In the '80's numerous rural colonies of Hebrews were planted, but, despite much help from outside, all except the colonies near Vineland, New Jersey, utterly failed. In New York and New England there are more than a thousand Hebrew farmers, but most of them speculate in real estate, keep summer boarders, or depend on some side enterprise—peddling, cattle trading or junk buying—for a material part of their income. The Hebrew farmers, said to number in all 6000, maintain a federation and are provided with a farmers' journal. New colonies are launched at brief intervals, and Jewish city boys are being trained for country life. Still, not over one Hebrew family in a hundred is on the land and the rural trend is but a trickle compared with the huge inflow.
Perhaps two-fifths of the Hebrew immigrants gain their living from garment-making. Naturally the greater part of the clothing and dry goods trade, the country over, is in their hands. They make eighty-five per cent. of the cigars and most of the domestic cigarettes. They purchase all but an insignificant part of the leaf tobacco from the farmers and sell it to the manufacturers. They are prominent in the retailing of spirits, and the Jewish distiller is almost as typical as the German brewer.
None can beat the Jew at a bargain, for through all the intricacies of commerce he can scent his profit. The peddler, junk dealer, or pawn broker is on the first rung of the ladder. The more capable rise in a few years to be theatrical managers, bankers or heads of department stores. Moreover great numbers are clerks and salesmen and thousands are municipal and building contractors. Many of the second generation enter the civil service and the professions. Already in several of the largest municipalities and in the Federal bureaus a large proportion of the positions are held by keen-witted Jews. Twenty years ago under the spoils system the Irish held most of the city jobs in New York. Now under the test system the Jews are driving them out. Among the school teachers of the city Jewesses outnumber the women of any other nationality. Owing to their aversion to "blind-alley" occupations Jewish girls shun housework and crowd into the factories, while those who can get training become stenographers, bookkeepers, accountants and private secretaries. One-thirteenth of the students in our seventy-seven leading universities and colleges are of Hebrew parentage. The young Jews take eagerly to medicine and it is said that from seven hundred to nine hundred of the physicians in New York are of their race. More noticeable is the influx into dentistry and especially into pharmacy. Their trend into the legal profession has been pronounced, and of late there is a movement of Jewish students into engineering, agriculture and forestry.
MORALS
The Jewish immigrants cherish a pure, close-knit family life and the position of the woman in the home is one of dignity. More than any other immigrants they are ready to assume the support of distant needy relatives. They care for their own poor, and the spirit of coöperation among them is very noticeable. Their temper is sensitive and humane; very rarely is a Jew charged with any form of brutality. There is among them a fine élite which responds to the appeal of the ideal and is found in every kind of ameliorative work.
Nevertheless, fair-minded observers agree that certain bad qualities crop out all too often among these eastern Europeans. A school principal remarks that his Jewish pupils are more importunate to get a mark changed than his other pupils. A settlement warden who during the summer entertains hundreds of nursing slum mothers at a country "home" says: "The Jewish mothers are always asking for something extra over the regular kit we provide each guest for her stay." "The last thing the son of Jacob wants," observes an eminent sociologist, "is a square deal." A veteran New York social worker cannot forgive the Ghetto its littering and defiling of the parks. "Look at Tompkins Square," he exclaimed hotly, "and compare it with what it was twenty-five years ago amid a German population!" As for the caretakers of the parks their comment on this matter is unprintable. Genial settlement residents, who never tire of praising Italian or Greek, testify that no other immigrants are so noisy, pushing and disdainful of the rights of others as the Hebrews. That the worst exploiters of these immigrants are sweaters, landlords, employers and "white slavers" of their own race no one gainsays.