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Read Ebook: Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 Studies in History Economics and Public Law Vol. LIX No. 4 1914 by Joseph Samuel
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EASTERN EUROPE: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS.
THE JEWS IN EASTERN EUROPE: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POSITION
THIRTY YEARS OF JEWISH HISTORY
CONCLUSION
A. ITS MOVEMENT
DETERMINATION OF NUMBER OF JEWISH IMMIGRANTS
IMMIGRATION OF JEWS FROM EASTERN EUROPE 1. Jewish immigration East-European 95 2. Summary by decades of Jewish immigration from Russia, Roumania and Austria-Hungary 95 3. Annual contributions of Jewish immigration from Russia, Roumania and Austria-Hungary 96
IMMIGRATION OF JEWS FROM RUSSIA 1. Russian Jewish immigration a movement of steady growth 98 a. Summary by decades 98 b. Annual variations: effect of the Moscow expulsions 98 2. Participation of Jews in the immigration from Russia 101 a. Annual variations 101 b. Summary by decades 102 c. Relative predominance of Jewish in total 102 3. Intensity of Jewish immigration from Russia 103 a. Rate of immigration 103 b. Fluctuations of rate 104
IMMIGRATION OF JEWS FROM ROUMANIA 1. Roumanian Jewish immigration a rising movement 105 a. Summary by decades 105 b. Annual variations 105 2. Participation of Jews in the immigration from Roumania 107 a. Jewish and total synonymous 107 b. Annual variations 107 3. Intensity of Jewish immigration from Roumania 108 a. Rate of immigration 108 b. Fluctuations of rate 108
IMMIGRATION OF JEWS FROM AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 1. Jewish immigration from Austria-Hungary a rising movement 109 a. Summary by decades 109 b. Annual variations 109 c. Comparison of Jewish with total 2. Participation of Jews in the immigration from Austria-Hungary 110 a. Summary by decades 110 b. Annual variations 111 3. Comparison of immigration of Jews from Austria and Hungary 111 a. Numbers 111 b. Participation in total 111 4. Immigration of Jews and other peoples from Austria-Hungary 112 5. Rate of Jewish immigration from Austria-Hungary 112
JEWISH IMMIGRATION 1. Total movement one of geometrical progression 113 a. Summary by decades 113 b. Summary by six-year periods 113 c. Annual variations 114
PARTICIPATION OF JEWS IN TOTAL IMMIGRATION 1. Rise in proportion of Jewish to total 117 2. Summary by decades 117 3. Annual variations 117 4. Comparison of annual variations of Jewish and total immigration 118 5. Rank of Jewish in total immigration 119 6. Rate of immigration 120
SUMMARY
B. ITS CHARACTERISTICS
FAMILY MOVEMENT
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT
OCCUPATIONS
ILLITERACY
DESTINATION
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
STATISTICAL TABLES
PAGE
IA. Participation of Jews in occupations in the Russian Empire, 1897 158
IB. Participation of Jews in occupations in the Pale of Jewish Settlement, 1897 159
IVA. Jewish immigration at the port of Philadelphia, 1886 to 1898, by country of nativity 160
IVB. Jewish immigration at the port of Baltimore, 1891 to 1898, by country of nativity 160
XL. Sex, 1899 to 1910, and age, 1899 to 1909, of Slavic immigrants 181
XLIA. Sex of Roumanian immigrants, 1899 to 1910, and of immigrants from Roumania. 1900 to 1910 181
XLIB. Age of Jewish and Roumanian immigrants, 1899 to 1909 181
L. Total European immigrants admitted and total of those admitted during this period in the United States previously, 1899 to 1910 186
APPENDICES
INTRODUCTION
Thirty years have elapsed since the Jews began to enter the United States in numbers sufficiently large to make their immigration conspicuous in the general movement to this country. A study of Jewish immigration, in itself and in relation to the general movement, reveals an interesting phase of this historic and many-sided social phenomenon and throws light upon a number of important problems incident to it.
Generally speaking, in the forces which are behind the emigration of the Jews from the countries of the Old World, in the character of their immigration--its movement and its distinguishing qualities--the Jewish immigration strikes a distinctly individual note.
Three European countries--Russia, Austria-Hungary and Roumania--furnish the vast majority of the Jewish immigrants to the United States. It is to these countries, therefore, that we must turn for light upon the causes of this movement.
Geographically, these countries are closely connected; they form practically the whole of the division of Eastern Europe. Here the Slavonic races so largely predominate that the term Slavonic Europe has been applied to this section of Europe.
Eastern or Slavonic Europe is a social as well as a geographical fact. In racial stratification, economic and social institutions, cultural position and, in part, religious traditions as well, these countries present strong similarities to one another and equally strong differences in most of these respects from the countries of Western Europe.
It is here that the Jews are found concentrated in the greatest numbers. Nearly seven and a half-million Jews--more than half of the Jews of the world--live in these countries. Of this number more than five millions are in Russia, more than two millions in Austria-Hungary, and a quarter of a million in Roumania. The great majority of these are massed on the contiguous borders, in a zone which embraces Poland, and Western Russia, Galicia, and Moldavia. This is the emigration zone. The relative density of the Jews is greatest in these parts. Every seventh man in Poland, every ninth man in Western Russia and in Galicia, and every tenth man in Moldavia, is a Jew. Thus the center of gravity of the Jewish populations is still the former kingdom of Poland, as it was constituted before the partitions at the end of the eighteenth century.
United originally in Poland, the Jews of Eastern Europe still retain the same general characteristics, in spite of the changes that have been brought about by a century of rule under different governments. Speaking a common language, Yiddish, and possessing common religious traditions, as well as similar social and psychological traits, the East-European Jews present on the whole a striking uniformity of character.
Through the centuries they have become deeply rooted in the East-European soil, their economic and social life intimately connected with the economic and social conditions of these countries and their history deeply influenced by the transformations that have been taking place in them for half a century.
As these conditions and transformations furnish the foundation of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and contain the explanation of the situation that has been largely responsible for the recent Jewish emigration to Western Europe and the United States, a rapid review of the economic, social and political conditions of Russia, Roumania and Austria-Hungary will be made.
FOOTNOTES:
PART I
THE CAUSES OF JEWISH EMIGRATION
EASTERN EUROPE: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS
The difficulty of the average American to understand the character of Russian life, some traits of which have been so vividly brought home to him in recent years, may be attributed to a general idea that a country rubbing elbows as it were with Western civilization for several centuries must perforce itself possess the characteristics of modern civilization. A closer survey of the economic, social and political conditions prevailing in Russia to-day, however, reveals many points of difference from those of the countries of Western Europe, and presents a remarkable contrast with those prevailing in the United States. Russia and the United States, indeed, stand, in Leroy-Beaulieu's phrase, at the two poles of modern civilization. So far apart are they in the character of their economic, social and political structures, in the degree in which they utilize the forms and institutions of modern life, and, in the difference in the mental make-up of their peoples, that there exist few, if any, points of real contact.
Up to the middle of the 19th century, Russia was, in nearly all respects, a medieval state. She was a society, which, in the words of Kovalevsky, "preserved still of feudalism, not its political spirit but its economic structure, serfdom, monopoly and the privileges of the nobility, its immunities in the matter of taxes, its exclusive right to landed property, and its seignorial rights." Her modern era dates from the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, when she became, at least in form, a European state. But, though the Russia of our day has witnessed great transformations in the direction of modernization, she still retains many of the conditions and much of the spirit of her medieval past.
A rapid review of the economic, social and political conditions of Russia will serve to make clearer this situation, which has an important bearing upon the exceptional position, legal, economic, social, of the Jews in the Empire, and upon the fateful events of their history for a third of a century.
The most striking fact in the economic life of present-day Russia is that it is overwhelmingly agricultural. More than three-fourths of her population are engaged in some form of agricultural labor. The vast majority are peasants living in villages. Towns are relatively few and sparsely populated. Agricultural products constitute 85 per cent of the annual exports. What a contrast does this agricultural state, this "peasant empire", present to the industrially and commercially developed countries of Western Europe and the United States!
The Russian peasant still practices a primitive system of agriculture. His method of extensive cultivation, the three-field system in vogue, his primitive implements, his domestic economy of half a century ago, with its home production for home consumption, which is still maintained in many parts of Russia to this day--all these present conditions not far removed from those of the middle ages of Western Europe.
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