The earliest peoples required for their sustenance far more space than do equal numbers in a more civilized state. They had no developed means of subsistence; the most primitive inhabitants relied solely on the products of unaided nature, and these they found mainly in the chase. As this became more difficult, or its produce scarcer, they betook themselves to herding, a culture in itself, the first step in civilization, and the first expedient to support an increasing population. In this respect the inhabitants of the Eastern plains were far in advance of their Western contemporaries; the Asiatic herdsman was more favorably situated than the huntsman in the forests of primeval Europe, and hence we find both culture and population first evolved in the East and flowing thence by natural sequence towards the West. Culture, the outgrowth of population, was first planted in the East; there it rooted and there it blossomed, and there humanity gathered its first fruits, but its ripened products have fructified upon its Western grafts. Westward indeed the star of Empire has made its way, and here on our Western Continent, under the ægis of our great Republic, under the influence of American liberty and freedom, it seems destined to reach its ascendant.
In the upbuilding of this Republic the descendants of the first great emigrant have taken, as we have recorded in the preceding pages, an ample share, and among these descendants the compatriots of the present victims of Russian barbarity were by no means wanting. The emigration of the Slavic Jews to America had been going on in a normal manner, and therefore to a limited extent, for a long time before the present exodus, and in fact, so to speak, from the beginning. After each of the successive uprisings of Poland against the barbarous tyranny of its Russian oppressors, from the time of Pulaski, who after leading his countrymen vainly against the Russian hordes in 1768, came to America to die in the struggle for liberty here; from the time of Kosciuszko, who came here to fight successfully for the independence of our country and then returned to fight vainly for the independence of his own, there have been Polish emigrants to America and among them were many Jews. Haym Solomon, who afforded one of the noblest examples of devotion to American liberty that is recorded in our annals, was as we have seen[122] a Polish Jew and an intimate of the two patriots named above, and on Pulaski's staff was a Jewish officer[123] and others of his Jewish countrymen were doubtless serving in his command.
Down to the bloody outbreak of Russian fanaticism in 1879-1880, followed by the officially decreed expulsions of the succeeding years the influx of the Slavic Jews, was, as we have noted, a normal tide, like that which brought to these shores millions of immigrants from every European country. Normally, without being forced, and of their own volition they had come, as had the Sephardic Jews from England and Holland during our Colonial period and in the early decades of our independence, and as the German Jews came with the stream of German immigration after the beginning of steam navigation and the Revolution of 1848. The English Sephardim ceased to emigrate after their enfranchisement in 1850; the German Jews have ceased to emigrate since their enfranchisement in 1871, and the Polish and Russian Jews would come in fewer numbers if they were not driven from their homes, and would scarcely come at all if but the boon of unhampered domicile, not to mention political liberty, were accorded to them there.
The calamitous condition of general suffering into which the Russian Jews were plunged by the proscriptive policy of their government, appears to have passed its acute stage. While the expulsion of the Jews from the interior of the Empire and their settlement, permanent or temporary, in the "Pale" of the Western Russian provinces, including Poland, was in the height of its progress a few years ago, the number of those who were eventually forced to emigrate was very large, aggregating, it is estimated, nearly two hundred thousand in a single year. The newcomers in the Pale, nearly all of them utterly impoverished through pillage by the low element of the populace and by the extortion of the officials, disorganized the economic condition of the older settlers in the district and caused a most excessive competition for the means of livelihood. The emigration of some of the surplus population and the gradual reorganization of the remainder, has tended to render the general condition less acute, and while a considerable emigration from the Pale must, in the nature of things, be looked for until the existent conditions are fully ameliorated, the great exodus that marked the years 1891-2 is not likely to be repeated unless further measures of oppression and repression are adopted by the Russian government.
Meanwhile the world looks on while the Jews of Western Europe and America are laboring to help those of their Russian brethren who, unable to gain a foothold in the Pale, are forced out from their wretched surroundings. The world looks on while the philanthropist Maurice de Hirsch, emulating the spirit of Montefiore, is devoting his wealth to the succor of his co-religionists and striving to found an asylum for them on the plains of Argentina. It looks on while the Alliance Israélite Universelle, from its headquarters in Paris, is establishing and maintaining primary schools for the Jews throughout the Orient, and agricultural schools for the Russian refugees in Palestine; while this educational work is being seconded by both the American and European branches of the Order of B'nai B'rith, and while Edmond de Rothschild is fostering agricultural colonies near Jaffa and Jerusalem and aiding Russian Jews to gain a foothold in the land of their forefathers.
In our own country agricultural colonies of Russian Jews have been founded, educational institutions built up, distribution of the refugees effected, through the efforts of Jewish communal organizations or by means of the funds devoted for the purpose by Baron de Hirsch, or by both in unison. The de Hirsch Trust dispenses in this manner the income of $2,500,000 donated for this purpose by the great-hearted and open-handed philanthropist, supplementing to this large extent the charitable efforts of the American Jews in their work of succor. That work is carried on by independent local organizations both in Europe and America, ramifying from the Vistula westward to the Golden Gate; centering in Königsberg, Memel, Lemberg and Brody, in Berlin and Vienna, Hamburg and Bremen, in Paris, London and Liverpool, in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, in Chicago, San Francisco and Portland, and at other intervening points. These organizations are apart from the great movement organized by Baron de Hirsch and chartered in England under the title of "The Jewish Colonization Association." That institution, which the Baron has endowed with the sum of $10,000,000, has its headquarters in St. Petersburg and affiliated centers throughout the Jewish Pale, and is devoted exclusively to furthering the Jewish emigration to the Argentine Republic. The Russian Jewish emigrants to other lands proceed wholly by dint of their own means or those of their relatives already in the haven of rest, and these wayfarers are frequently impoverished and always in need of protection and counsel. Onerous as has been the burden which the wickedness of Russian folly has imposed on the Jewish people at large, they have thus far coped with a reasonable degree of success against the almost overwhelming difficulties of the situation.[124]
During the progress of this movement a hue and cry has repeatedly been raised all along the roads which the Russian refugees have taken in escaping from their oppressors and in seeking an asylum and resting place. Here in our country, where many of our State governments have made organized efforts to induce immigration into their borders, where numerous towns and hamlets in the interior are organizing "booms" to increase their population, here, where the single State of Texas, with less than two and a half millions of population, extends over an area greater than Germany and England together; where a state like Montana, larger than England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland combined, has a population of but 132,000, only half as many as the single English town of Leeds, here there have not been wanting those who have constantly urged in Congress and in the press, that European immigration should be not only regulated, but largely restricted and even entirely debarred. All this because in the metropolitan centres and at times at other points, a surplus of wage workers in one or two industries was causing friction and disturbance.