To these deductions, based on official findings, as well as on outside observation, the important fact must be added that one of the main pursuits of the Jews at that time was the liquor traffic, that is, the keeping of taverns in the towns and villages. As far as the manorial estates were concerned, the sale of liquors was closely connected with land-leasing and innkeeping. In leasing from the noble landowner the various items of agrarian wealth, such as dairies, pastures, timber, etc., the Jew farmed at the same time the "propination," the right of distilling and selling spirits in the taverns and inns. These pursuits often resulted in a clash between the Jew and the peasant, that outlawed serf who was driven to the tavern, not by opulence, but by extreme poverty and suffering, brought upon him by the heavy hand of the aristocratic landlord. The final stage in the economic breakdown of the peasant was reached at the door of the tavern, and the Jewish liquor-dealer was in consequence looked upon as the despoiler of the peasant. This accusation against the Jews was brought forward by the slaveholding magnates, who were the real cause of the impoverishment of their peasant serfs, and pocketed the proceeds of the "propination" which they let out to the Jews.
As for the Jews themselves, there is no doubt that the traffic in liquor had a demoralizing effect upon them. The position of the Jewish arendar, sandwiched between the spendthrifty and eccentric pan, on the one hand, and the downtrodden khlop, on the other, was far from enviable. In the eyes of the landowner the arendar was nothing but a servant, who received no better treatment at his hands than the khlop. If perchance the roads or bridges on the estate were found in bad condition, the arendar would sometimes be subjected to corporal punishment for it. When the pan engaged in one of his frequent orgies, the first victims of his recklessness were the arendar and his family. A good illustration is afforded by an entry in the diary of a Volhynian country squire, from the year 1774:
The arendar Hershko[218] has remained ninety-one thaler in arrears from last term. I was forced to attach his goods. According to the clause of the contract I have the right, in case of non-payment, to keep him with his wife and children in prison as long as I like, until he pays up. I gave orders to have him put in chains and locked up in the pig-sty together with the swine; the wife and the bahurs [young sons] I left in the inn, except for the youngest son Layze [Lazarus]. The latter I took to the manor, and I had him instructed in the [Catholic] catechism and the prayers.
The boy in question was forced to make the sign of the cross and to eat pork. Only the arrival of Jews from Berdychev, who remitted the debt of the arendar, saved the father from imprisonment and the son from enforced conversion.
It is interesting to inquire into the causes which drove the Jewish populace into the unenviable pursuits of land-leasing and rural liquor-dealing. Although forming but one-eighth of the population of Poland, the Jews furnished 50% of the whole number of artisans in the realm and 75% of those engaged in the export trade—the export, be it noted, of agricultural products, such as timber, flax, skins, and all kinds of raw material. All these occupations were obviously insufficient for their maintenance. In Poland no less than in Western Europe neither the mercantile guilds nor the trade-unions, which to a considerable extent were made up of Germans, admitted Jewish artisans and merchants into their corporations, and as a result the sphere of Jewish activity was extremely limited.
The same burghers and business men were also the predominating element in the composition of the magistracies, and in the majority of cities it lay in their power to grant or refuse licenses to their Jewish competitors for pursuing commerce or handicrafts. The clause in the Polish parliamentary Constitution of 1768, which placed the economic activity of the Jews in the cities under the control of the magistracies, might have been literally dictated by the latter. It ran as follows:
Whereas the Jews inflict intolerable damage upon the cities and the burghers, and rob them of their means of subsistence..., be it resolved that in all towns and townlets in which the Jews have no special, constitutionally guaranteed privileges, they be forced to conduct themselves according to the agreements entered into with the municipalities, and be forbidden, on pain of severe fines, to arrogate to themselves any further rights.
It goes without saying that these "agreements" with the Christian business men consisted as a rule in nothing else than the prohibition or limitation of local Jewish competition. In this manner the originators of the parliamentary Constitution, the landed proprietors and townspeople, were those who forced the Jews out of the cities, and drove them into land-leasing and liquor-dealing.
The parliamentary Constitution of 1775, which was promulgated after the first partition of Poland, and instituted a supreme administrative body, the Permanent Council, increased the Jewish per capita tax from two gulden to three, to be levied on both male and female, and including the new-born. It also made the attempt, though not after the cruel pattern of Western Europe, to place certain restrictions on Jewish marriages. The rabbis were interdicted from performing the marriage service for the Jews who were not engaged in one of the legitimate occupations, such as handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, or manual labor, or who were unable to indicate their sources of livelihood. Parenthetically it may be remarked that this law was never applied in practice.
Ancient Poland never had a "Pale of Settlement," the Jews being merely barred from residing in several so-called "privileged" towns. One of these forbidden places was the capital, Warsaw.[219] The Jews had long been refused the right of permanent settlement in that city. They were only allowed to sojourn there temporarily during the sessions of the various Diets, simultaneously with which the commercial fairs were generally timed to take place.