Posen, of all German provinces, contains the largest number of Poles. 62 per cent of its 2,100,000 inhabitants belong to this nationality. Within provincial boundaries the process of Germanizing the people has been carried on most actively in the district of Bromberg. The reason is obvious. The region is the connecting link between Germany proper and the province of Old Prussia, which forms an enclave of German speech within the territory of the Polish language. The effort to connect the ancient cradle of Prussia with the motherland is apparent in the figures which reveal the percentage of Poles in the intermediary land. The district of Bromberg numbers 53 per cent of Poles in a population of 750,000. In the provincial district of Posen, however, the percentage of Poles attains 68 for a population of 1,350,000.
The German element of the province is confined mainly to the cities, the country being peopled largely by Poles. Often the proportion of this native population attains as high a figure as 91 per cent and it is rare to find it below 75 per cent. Apart from the German administration of the province, Posen thus remains Polish to the core. Its nobility and landed gentry consist mostly of Poles who have strenuously opposed German encroachments by abstaining from commercial or financial intercourse with their rulers. They founded their own banks, in order to be independent of German institutions; and by means of native agricultural associations they came to the aid of Polish farmers, who were thus saved from having recourse to German colonization banks chartered for the purpose of buying out Polish landowners. The influence of the Polish element is best shown by the fact that eleven Polish representatives are delegated by its population to the Reichstag, out of a body of fifteen sent by the province.
We thus see that the Poles scattered in the eastern section of Germany constitute the largest foreign-speaking element in the Empire’s population. Their number is estimated by Niederle at 3,450,000. German census returns for 1900 give 3,086,489. The percentage of Jews in German Poland is high, particularly in the urban areas. The practice of census-takers is to classify them with the German or Polish population according to their vernacular. In Russia the last (1897) available census figures report the existence of 1,267,194 Jews[112] scattered throughout the Polish provinces. This represents 13.48 per cent of the population of Russian Poland. Here, as elsewhere, they are rarely engaged in agricultural pursuits but show a tendency to invade prosperous towns and cities.[113]
The Polish Jews, speaking a vernacular of their own, and conscious of the advantage derived from their number, live apart from the Poles, with whom they are generally at odds on economic questions. The presence of this racially alien element has often assisted Russian administrators in their policy of holding Polish urban populations well in hand by pitting one people against the other. Jewish parties wield considerable influence in the local politics of Polish cities. They are openly anti-Slavic and side with the German inhabitants, from whom they receive guidance regarding policy and conduct. The strength of the Polish vote was felt in the 1912 elections for the Duma when Lodz sent a Jewish representative to the national council, while in Warsaw where they form 38 per cent of the population they succeeded in forcing the election of a Polish socialist who in that same year had failed to obtain a majority of the city’s Polish votes.
The confinement of Jews within the pale of Poland dates from the time of the first partition, when an edict signed by Catherine II was proclaimed, forbidding them to emigrate from the annexed territory into Russia proper. Since then every succeeding Russian monarch maintained this policy of segregation until, at the time of Poland’s last partition, the ten governments into which the unfortunate nation was divided became the only territory in which the Jews were tolerated.
This arrangement was made largely because of the Jew’s well-known aptitude for commerce and through fear that the unsophisticated and large-hearted Russian mujik was no match for him. The state of Poland prior to its dismemberment made such measures imperative for the Russian government. The Poles were either landowners, tillers of the soil or soldiers. Few engaged in trade. The country’s commerce was in the hands of Germans or Jews. Poland’s weakness in the presence of foreign aggression was due to this state of economic inferiority, no less than to her lack of natural frontiers on the east and west.
The large proportion of the Jewish element in Poland may be traced ultimately to the very circumstances which impart distinctiveness to the Polish region. It was inevitable that the Jew should find cordial welcome in the broad drainage valley of the Vistula and its tributaries, tenanted by a landed nobility at the one end of the social scale and a retinue of serfs at the other. Between these two classes the Jew supplied a needed trading element and thrived. Polish kings accordingly adopted the policy of inviting and protecting Jews within their domains as early as in the fourteenth century, a time when the Jews were being expelled in hundreds from other nations. Emigration of the Jews from Germany during the period of Catholic persecution was particularly heavy. This movement helped to increase the number of Jews in Poland.
The position of the Jews in Poland varies, therefore, according to the circumstances which determined their immigration. They may be classed into two groups. The descendants of early settlers feel the welding influence of time and are united with the Poles by the bond of historical association and of common interests. The newcomers, mostly refugees from Russian cities, form an unassimilated nucleus whose tendencies and temper differ materially from the aims that actuate the native population, whether Polish or Jewish. Racial animosity in Poland is chiefly directed against these newcomers. It has reached an acute stage in recent years, owing to the strenuous efforts of Poles to control their country’s industry and commerce in face of the menace of German economic absorption.