As the emigration from the countries of oppression does not diminish the number of Jews, because of the high birth-rate there, and as conditions of life grow worse daily, the emigrants have to support their families and friends who stay behind. The Russian Ministry of Post and Telegraph published statistical tables a few years ago, which show that the Russian immigrants in the United States, mostly Jews, send annually to their relatives and friends from $15,000,000 to $18,000,000 a year. A good part of this sum goes to the Russian post office officials. This fact became known four years ago when a group of Jews in Petrograd and Moscow started a movement with the purpose of founding a Jewish immigrants' bank.
When speaking of necessary and incidental expenses of immigration one must not overlook the losses accruing from re-immigration and from a decrease of productive energy of many immigrants because of their inability to adapt themselves to new surroundings.
These are expenses caused by the decision of Jews to remain Jews. We maintain that the sums of money paid by Jews who are determined to have the world think them non-Jews, or to have the world forgive them for being Jews, are at least as large.
When, a few years ago, the Jewish millionaire Efrussi died in Paris, the French press without exception paid high tribute to his French patriotism and omitted all mention of his Jewish origin. Efrussi used to spend 2,000,000 francs on French national sports, races, etc. This was also the case with the French Jew, Osiris, who left his fortune of 60,000,000 francs to the French people and French institutions, and 60,000 francs to the Jewish people in the form of a copy of Michael Angelo's Moses erected in the court of the Jewish Teachers' Seminary of the Alliance Israelite in Paris. An Austrian Jew, Taussig, gave 1,000,000 kronen to the Catholic Eucharist Congress in Vienna, while a relative of the same name left 500,000 kronen to the Catholic church with the request that on his Jahr-Zeit two Franciscan monks visit the synagogue to pray for his soul. The new university in Frankfort-on-Main, which cost many million marks, is a Jewish university in so far as large parts of this sum were contributed by Jews. Most of the contributors were Jews who in no way support Jewish institutions. A Prussian statistician discovered a few years ago that not only do Jews contribute to funds for the building of monuments to national heroes, but also to funds for Catholic cathedrals and other institutions that are anti-Semitic in character.
In England there are hundreds of wealthy Jews who make annual contributions to the Church of England, refusing at the same time to support any Jewish institutions. Lord Rothschild, who is by no means the richest man in England, spends more in New Year's gifts to various non-Jewish classes in London than ten other rich lords combined. Another English Jew, Sir Ernest Cassel, the son of a Hebrew teacher in Germany, has spent in the last decade £1,500,000 in the support of non-Jewish institutions. Their contributions to Jewish institutions have been insignificant in comparison.
The gift of these large sums is always made public, but the sum total of smaller gifts, which are not made public, exceed by far the amounts given by very rich Jews to non-Jewish institutions. If we compare the sums given by so-called Jewish philanthropists to Jewish and non-Jewish institutions we discover that they give at least five times as generously to the non-Jewish as to the Jewish. Mr. Jacob H. Schiff's gift of $500,000 to Barnard College is a striking instance. At a time when his own people experienced the greatest calamity in its history, when millions of Jews were starving, and when Jewish blood was being shed freely, Schiff gave $100,000 for Jewish relief purposes and five times as much to a single institution for the erection of one building in New York. This is the usual proportion that marks the giving of Jews to Jewish and non-Jewish institutions.
We think that the form of bribery which the oppressed Jews practice to mollify their oppressors is sad enough as a commentary on Jewish life. But the more ostentatious form of bribery—a form of gift bestowal which seeks to hide the giver's identity as a Jew or at least to purchase pardon for his Jewishness—is the greater tragedy. These Jews spend millions to make the world forget they are Jews, but the world remembers and laughs up its sleeve.