[Footnote 2: See p. 199 et seq.]

Yet, despite this curious encouragement of Jewish patriotism, the Government had the audacity to charge the Jews continually with the "evasion of their military duty." That a tendency towards such evasion was in vogue among the Jews admits of no doubt. It would have been contrary to human nature if people who were subject to assaults from above and kicks from below, whose right of residence was limited to one-twentieth of the territory of their fatherland, who were robbed of shelter, air, and bread, and deprived of the hope to place themselves, even by means of military service, on an equal footing with the lowest Russian moujik, should have felt a profound need of sacrificing themselves for their country, and should not have shirked this heaviest of civil obligations to a larger extent than the privileged Russian population, in which cases of evasion were by no means infrequent. In reality, however, the complaints about the shortage of Jewish recruits were vastly exaggerated. Subsequent statistical investigations brought out the fact that, owing to irregular apportionment, the Government demanded annually from the Jews a larger quota of recruits than was justified by their numerical relation to the general population in the Pale of Settlement. On an average, the Jews furnished twelve per cent of the total number of recruits in the Pale, whereas the Jewish population of the Pale formed but eleven per cent of the total population. The Government further refused to consider the fact that, owing to inaccurate registration, the conscription lists often carried the names of persons who had long since died, or who had left the country to emigrate abroad. In fact, the annual emigration of Jews from Russia, the result of uninterrupted persecutions, reduced the number of young men of conscription age. But the Russian authorities were of the opinion that the Jews who remained behind should serve in the Russian army instead of those of their brethren who had become citizens of the free American Republic. The "evasion of military duty" and the annual shortage of a few hundred recruits, as against the many thousands of those enlisted, was charged as a grave crime against that very people towards which the Government on its part failed to fulfil even its most elementary obligations. Reams of paper were covered with all kinds of official devices to "cut short" this evasion of military duty by the Jews. On one beautiful April morning of 1886, the Government came out with the following enactment:

The family of a Jew guilty of evading military service is liable to a fine of three hundred rubles ($150). The collection of the fine shall be decreed by the respective recruiting station and carried out by the police. It shall not be substituted by imprisonment in the case of destitute persons liable to that fine.

In addition, a military reward was promised for the seizure of a Jew who had failed to present himself to the recruiting authorities.

By virtue of this barbarous principle of collective responsibility, new hardships were inflicted upon the Jews of Russia. Since the law provided that the fine for evading military service be imposed upon the family of the culprit, the police interpreted that term "liberally," taking it to include parents, brothers, and near relatives. The following procedure gradually came into vogue. In the autumn of every year, the Russian conscription season, the names of the young Jews who have completed their twenty-first year are called out at the recruiting station from a prepared list. When a Jew whose name has been called has failed to present himself on the same day, the recruiting authorities issue an order on the spot imposing a fine on his family. The police then appear in the house of his parents to collect the sum of three hundred rubles. In default of cash, they attach the property of the paupers and have it subsequently sold at public auction. In the case of those who possess nothing that can be taken from them the police insist on their giving a signed promise not to leave the town. Their passports are taken from them, so that, not being able to absent themselves from town to earn a living, they are frequently left to starve. If the parents are dead or absent, the brothers and sisters of the culprit, and then his grandfathers and grandmothers are held answerable with their property.

Thus, a large number of Jewish families were completely ruined, merely because one of their members had emigrated abroad, or, as was frequently the case, had surrendered his soul to God in his beloved fatherland itself, and the relatives had failed to see to it that the dead soul was stricken from the recruiting lists. Yet, despite all these efforts, there still remained a considerable number of uncollected fines—"arrears," as they were officially termed—to the profound regret of the Russian Jew-baiters, who had to look on while the victims were slipping unpunished from their hands.

CHAPTER XXVII

RUSSIAN REACTION AND JEWISH EMIGRATION

1. AFTERMATH OF THE POGROM POLICY

In this wise, beginning with the May laws of 1882, the Government gradually succeeded in monopolizing all anti-Jewish activities by letting bureaucratic persecutions take the place of street pogroms. However, in 1883 and 1884, the "street" made again occasional attempts to compete with the Government. On May 10, 1883, on the eve of Alexander III.'s coronation, a pogrom took place in the large southern city of Rostov-on-the-Don. About a hundred Jewish residences and business places were demolished and plundered. All portable property of the Jews was looted by the mob, and the rest was destroyed. As was to be expected, "the efforts of the police and troops were unable to stop the disorders," and only after completing their day's work the rioters fled, pursued by lashes and shots from the Cossaks. The Russian censorship strictly barred all references to the pogroms in the newspapers, for fear of spoiling the solemnity of the coronation days. The press was only allowed to hint at "alarming rumors," the effect of which extended even to the stock exchange of Berlin. Not before a year had passed was permission given to make public mention of the Rostov events.