CHAPTER VI[ToC]
Summary and Conclusions
Some of the principal characteristics of the Jewish immigration to the United States have been presented in the preceding pages. The Jewish immigration has been shown to consist essentially of permanent settlers. Its family movement is incomparable in degree, and contains a larger relative proportion as well as absolute number of women and children, than any other immigrant people. This in turn is reflected in the greater relative proportion as well as absolute number of those classified as having "no occupation". The element of dependency thus predicated is another indication of the family composition of the Jewish immigration. Its return movement is the smallest of any, as compared both with its large immigration and the number of total emigrants. The Jewish immigrants are distinguished as well by a larger relative proportion and absolute number of skilled laborers, than any other immigrant people. In these four primary characteristics the Jewish immigrants stand apart from all the others.
It is with the neighboring Slavic races emigrating from the countries of Eastern Europe and with whom the Jewish immigrants are closely associated that the contrasts, in all these respects, are strongest. The Slavic immigrants are chiefly male adults. Their movement is largely composed of transients, as evidenced by a relatively large outward movement and emphasized by the fact that the vast majority of them are unskilled laborers. An exception, in large measure, must be made of the Bohemian and Moravian immigrants who present characteristics strongly similar to those of the Jewish immigrants.
The division into "old" and "new" immigration brings out even more clearly the exceptional position of the Jews in regard to these characteristics. Although the Jewish immigration has been contemporaneous with the "new" immigration from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and is furthermore essentially East-European in origin, its characteristics place it altogether with the "old" immigration.[140] Most striking, however is the fact that in all of these respects—family composition, and small return movement (both indicating permanent settlement) and in the proportion of skilled laborers—the Jewish immigration stands apart even from the "old" immigration.
Further confirmation may be obtained, in the study of the characteristics of the Jewish immigration, of the principle established in the preceding sections that the rejective forces of governmental oppression are responsible for the largest part of this immigration. The large family movement of the Jewish immigration is a symptom of abnormal conditions and amounts almost to a reversal of the normal immigration, in which single or married men without families predominate. Even the family movement of the "old" immigrants may largely be attributed to the longer residence of their peoples in the United States as well as to their greater familiarity with the conditions and customs of the United States. That so large a part of the Jewish immigrants is composed of dependent females and children creates a situation of economic disadvantage for the Jewish immigrants, all the stronger because of their relative unfamiliarity with the language or the conditions facing them in this country.
Again, the Jews respond slowly and incompletely to the pressure of unfavorable economic conditions in this country. This was emphasized by the almost complete lack of response to the panic of 1907, as well as expressed in the small, practically unchanging return movement of the Jews to their European homes.