Of the total number of immigrants to the United States from Russia, somewhat less than one tenth are Russians. The balance are Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, Germans, and Jews. Agricultural, social, and political conditions in Russia are sufficiently well understood to make it no cause for wonder that almost any of its common citizens should be glad to leave. The Russian peasant is said to be the most oppressed in Europe, but he is also probably the most ignorant and degraded, and as yet is only beginning to learn to emigrate. There is a great reservoir there which will be ready to furnish us untold millions when the current gets well started. But so far the great stream from Russia is made up principally of other races. Of these, we are particularly interested in the Jews, partly because they are the most numerous, partly because they are a unique and striking people, partly because the reasons for their coming are more definite and easily comprehended.
We have seen that during the Middle Ages the Jews were expelled from almost every country of Europe. Almost the only region where they were allowed a settlement was in Poland, and hence they gathered there in large numbers. Under Russian domination this has been made the “Pale of Settlement” for the Jews, and now contains about one third of the 11,000,000 people of that race in the world. Life in any other part of the Empire is made practically impossible for them, and it is far from easy there. Among the other restrictions put upon the Jews during the Middle Ages was a prohibition of engaging in agriculture. But they were allowed to take usury, which was forbidden to Christians. The natural result was that they were driven almost entirely into trade, and particularly into money lending, so that those pursuits which seem to be so well adapted to the natural proclivities of the Jews were in a sense thrust upon them. As a result the Jews in Russia are engaged primarily in the two businesses of lending money and selling liquor. When the Russian serfs were liberated in 1861, and left in a most helpless state without either capital or land, the Jews became their merchants, middlemen, and usurers. It was perfectly natural that the ignorant peasant should come to blame the money lender and the saloon keeper for evils which were really due to the wretched political, social, and economic organization, but of which they seemed to be the immediate agents. There is reason to believe that the government encouraged this popular antipathy toward an unpopular race for the sake of diverting the indignation of the masses from itself. Certain it is that the attitude of the government has been most hostile to the Jews. In 1881 this antagonism culminated in a series of terrible anti-Semitic riots, and then began the exodus to America.
In the next year, 1882, were passed a set of laws, known as the May Laws, which, with other subsequent ones of a similar nature, have made existence for the Jews almost intolerable in the Russian Empire. These laws, inspired largely by the Greek Orthodox Church, have made it impossible for the Jew “to foreclose a mortgage or to lease or purchase land; he cannot do business on Sundays or Christian holidays; he cannot hold office; he cannot worship or assemble without police permit; he must serve in the army, but cannot become an officer; he is excluded from schools and universities; he is fined for conducting manufactures and commerce; he is almost prohibited from the learned professions.”[[119]] The press is against them. Here in America we hear of only the climaxes of this persecution, but the oppression is constant and untiring. Is it any wonder that the Jews seek relief in flight?
It will become evident from time to time that our Jewish immigration is in many respects unique, and stands as an exception to many of the general principles which one might lay down concerning immigration. So in respect to the causes of their emigration it is not surprising to find a situation somewhat different from other branches of the new immigration, or from any other immigration, in fact. The Jews have always been a “peculiar people,” and religion has played a larger part in their history than in the case of probably any other modern people. The persecutions to which they have been subjected from age to age have had religious diversity as their ostensible and obvious, if not always their only, motive. And in the modern emigration from Russia, while the oppression under which they suffer touches almost every phase of their life, and imposes numberless economic handicaps, it rests ultimately upon religious grounds. Russia is the only modern country from which numerous emigrants are driven by actual persecution, though it is said that Roumania has within the last ten years passed anti-Jewish laws more stringent than those of Russia.
Conditions in Austria-Hungary and Italy, and to a less extent in Russia, may be taken as typical of the circumstances which prevail in other countries of southern and eastern Europe, and Asia Minor, from which our new immigrants come. In Bulgaria the following four particular reasons have been assigned for emigration:
(1) Bulgaria is distinctively an agricultural country, and while a large per cent of the people own their farms, the holdings are too small to enable them to make a sufficient living, and the methods of cultivation are poor.
(2) There is a great dearth of manufacturing industry. In 1907 there were only 166 factories of any size, with 6149 workers.
(3) Taxes are very heavy, amounting to one fifth, one fourth, or even one third of the earnings of families.
(4) There is much dissatisfaction with the government among the peasants on the grounds of expense, and of the very oppressive terms of military service.[[120]]
Summing up the facts regarding the volume and racial character of immigration during this period, it appears that, as regards the former, the series of waves has been continued, responding to the economic conditions, but reaching a much higher culmination than ever before. As regards the latter, there has been a most distinct and profound change. The main source of the immigrant current has shifted away from northern and western Europe, to the southern and eastern portions of the continent, whose people are by no means so closely related in physique or so similar in mental characteristics to the people of the United States as the immigrants of earlier periods. The causes of this change lie primarily in altered conditions in the United States which make it less attractive to the residents of the more advanced nations of Europe than formerly. In the more backward countries the political and economic situation is still so inferior to the United States that an ample motive for emigration exists. All that was needed to start a large movement was a knowledge of the possibilities across the Atlantic, and the means of getting there. Both of these have been provided within the period in question.