The pressure upon the Jewish artisans, or skilled laborers, in Eastern Europe is reflected in the predominance of this class among the Jewish immigrants to this country. That so useful an element in Eastern Europe with its still relatively backward industrial development—a fact that was given express recognition by the permission accorded the Jewish artisans in Alexander II's time to live in the interior of Russia—should have been compelled to emigrate indicates that the voyage across the Atlantic was easier for them than the trip into the interior of Russia, access to which is still legally accorded to them.
That the oppressive conditions created particularly in Russia and Roumania and operating as a pressure equivalent to an expulsive force does not explain the entire Jewish immigration to this country is evident from the preceding pages. In a great measure, the immigration of Jews from Austria-Hungary is an economic movement. The existence, however, of a certain degree of pressure created by economic and political antisemitism has however been recognized. The Jewish movement from Austria-Hungary shares largely with the movement from Russia and Roumania the social and economic characteristics of the Jewish immigration which we have described. A strong family movement and a relative permanence of settlement, especially as compared with the Poles, and a movement of skilled laborers must be predicated of the Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary, though undoubtedly not to the same degree as in the case of the Jewish movements from Russia and Roumania.
It is also clear that the forces of economic attraction in the United States do not play an altogether passive part in the Jewish immigration. The very fact of an immigrant-nucleus formed in this country and serving as a center of attraction to relatives and friends abroad—a force which increases in direct and multiple proportion to the growth of immigration—is an active and positive force in strengthening the immigration current. This was early understood by the Alliance Israélite Universelle which had acted upon this principle in the seventies and had prophetically sought to direct a healthy movement of Jewish immigrants to this country in the hope of thereby laying a foundation for future Jewish immigration to this country. This current, however, once started and growing only by the force of its increasing attraction, would reflect in its movement almost wholly the economic conditions in this country. That so large a part of the Jewish immigration, and so many of the phenomena peculiar to it, find their explanation, for the largest part of the thirty years, in the situation and the course of events in the countries of Eastern Europe leads to the inevitable conclusion that the key to the Jewish immigration is to be found not in the force of economic attraction exercised in the United States but rather in the exceptional economic, social and legal conditions in Eastern Europe which have been created as a result of governmental persecution.
Reviewing the various phases of the history of Jewish immigration for these thirty years, we are enabled to see more closely its nature. The study of the immigration, its movement and its social and economic characteristics, in comparison with those of other immigrant peoples, has revealed in it a number of distinguishing traits. In the causes of the emigration of the Jews, in the pressure exerted upon their movement as reflected in their rate of immigration, in their family movement, in the permanence of their settlement, and in their occupational distribution have been found characteristics which mark them off from the rest of the immigrant peoples. The number of these characteristics and the degree in which they are found in the Jewish immigration, put it in a class by itself.
The facts of governmental pressure amounting to an expulsive force, and reflected in an extraordinary rate of immigration, in a movement of families unsurpassed in the American immigration, the largest part economically dependent, in an occupational grouping of skilled artisans, able to earn their livelihood under normal conditions, and in a permanence of settlement in this country incomparable in degree and indicating that practically all who come stay—all these facts lead irresistibly to the conclusion that in the Jewish movement we are dealing, not with an immigration, but with a migration. What we are witnessing to-day and for these thirty years, is a Jewish migration of a kind and degree almost without a parallel in the history of the Jewish people. When speaking of the beginnings of Russian Jewish immigration to Philadelphia, David Sulzberger said: "In thirty years the movement of Jews from Russia to the United States has almost reached the dignity of the migration of a people," he used no literary phrase. In view of the facts that have developed, this statement is true without any qualification.
This migration-process explains the remarkable growth of the Jewish population in the United States, within a relatively short period of time. In this transplantation, the spirit of social solidarity and communal responsibility prevalent among the Jews has played a vital part.
The family rather than the individual thus becomes the unit for the social life of the Jewish immigrant population in the United States. In this respect the latter approaches more nearly the native American population than does the foreign white or immigrant population. One of the greatest evils incident to and characteristic of the general immigration to this country is thereby minimized.
Again, the concentration of the Jewish immigrants in certain trades explains in great measure the peculiarities of the occupational and the urban distribution of the Jews in the United States. The development of the garment trades through Jewish agencies is largely explained by the recruiting of the material for this development through these laborers.
These primary characteristics of the Jewish immigration of the last thirty years will serve to explain some of the most important phases of the economic and social life of the Jews in the United States, three-fourths of whom are immigrants of this period.
Of all the features of this historic movement of the Jews from Eastern Europe to the United States, not the least interesting is their passing from civilizations whose bonds with their medieval past are still strong to a civilization which began its course unhampered by tradition and unyoked to the forms and institutions of the past. The contrast between the broad freedom of this democracy and the intolerable despotism from whose yoke most of them fled, has given them a sense of appreciation of American political and social institutions that is felt in every movement of their mental life.