Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 Part 1

Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910.

by Samuel Joseph.

PREFACE

In this survey of Jewish immigration to the United States for the past thirty years, my purpose has been to present the main features of a movement of population that is one of the most striking of modern times. The causes of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe, the course of Jewish immigration to the United States and the most important social qualities of the Jewish immigrants are studied, for the light they throw upon the character of this movement. The method employed in this investigation has been largely statistical and comparative, a fact which is partly due to the kind of material that was available and partly to the point of view that has been taken. Certain economic and social factors, having a close bearing upon the past and present situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe and frequently neglected in the discussion of the various phases of this movement, have been emphasized in the examination into the causes of the emigration of the Jews from Eastern Europe and have been found vital in determining the specific character of the Jewish immigration to this country.

I desire gratefully to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to Mr. A.S.

Freidus, head of the Jewish department of the New York Public Library, for his ever-ready a.s.sistance in the preparation of this work. Thanks are due as well to Dr. C.C. Williamson, head of the Economics department of the library, and to his able and courteous staff; to Professor Robert E. Chaddock for his many valuable suggestions and aid in the making of the statistical tables and in the reading of the proof; and to Professor Edwin R.A. Seligman for his painstaking reading of the ma.n.u.script.

SAMUEL JOSEPH.

CHAPTER I

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.

Especially does it become clear that the Jewish immigration, although in part the result of the same forces as have affected the general immigration and the separate groups composing it, differs, nevertheless, in certain marked respects, from the typical immigration. Some of these differences indeed are fundamental and far-reaching in their effects and practically stamp the Jewish immigration as a movement _sui generis_.

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.[1] 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 ma.s.sed 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 const.i.tuted before the part.i.tions 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:

[1] _Cf. infra_, p. 95.

PART I

THE CAUSES OF JEWISH EMIGRATION

CHAPTER II

EASTERN EUROPE: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS

I. RUSSIA

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 inst.i.tutions 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 n.o.bility, its immunities in the matter of taxes, its exclusive right to landed property, and its seignorial rights."[2] Her modern era dates from the emanc.i.p.ation 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 spa.r.s.ely populated. Agricultural products const.i.tute 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.[3]

The existence to our day of this almost primitive economy finds its explanation in the fact that serfdom existed in Russia, in all its unmitigated cruelty, until comparatively recent times. Its abolition through the Emanc.i.p.ation Act of Alexander II--antedating our own Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation by a few years--struck off the chains that bound twenty millions of peasants to the soil. The emanc.i.p.ation, however, was not complete. The land the peasants received was insufficient for their needs. Other conditions co-operated in the course of time with this primary one, to create a situation of chronic starvation for the great ma.s.s of the Russian peasants. Forced by the government to pay heavy taxes, in addition to redemption dues for the land, which they paid until recently, and receiving little help from either government or the n.o.bility for the improvement of their position, they are virtually exploited almost as completely as before the emanc.i.p.ation.

Thus, though freed in person, the peasants are to a great extent bound by economic ties to their former masters, the n.o.bles. These two social-economic cla.s.ses maintain towards each other practically the same relative position held by them before the emanc.i.p.ation. The manor still controls the hut.

The former servile relations have persisted psychologically as well.

The Russian peasant is still largely a serf in his mentality, in his feeling of dependence, in his inertia and lack of individual enterprise, and, above all, in the smallness of his demands upon life.[4] This fact permeates, as it serves to explain, many aspects of contemporary Russian life.

The industrial and commercial stage of Russian economy began with the emanc.i.p.ation, which set free a great supply of labor. The changes that have taken place have nevertheless not obliterated many of the landmarks of the feudal, pre-reformation period. The economic activities of the last half-century present a curious juxtaposition of old and new, medieval and modern. Cottage and village industries but little removed from the natural economy of the earlier period exist by the side of great factories and industrial establishments employing thousands of workmen. Fairs and markets still play a large part in supplying the needs of the peasants, rapidly as they are being supplanted by the commercial activities of the towns. The industrial laborers, recruited mainly from the country, retain largely their peasant interests, relations and characteristics. The payment of wages in kind, which is still in vogue in many parts, and the right of inflicting corporal punishment retained by the employers, give evidence of the strong impress of the servile conditions of the past.

Vast changes have nevertheless taken place since the emanc.i.p.ation.

Capitalism has made rapid, if uneven, progress. Under the fostering care of the government, industry and commerce have made immense strides. The factory system has taken firm root and has been developing a specialized cla.s.s of industrial laborers. Great industrial centers have sprung up; towns have grown rapidly. The middle cla.s.s, hitherto insignificant, has increased in number, wealth and influence. Among the peasants as well, freedom has given birth to the spirit of individualism. The differentiation of the peasantry into wealthier peasants and landless agricultural laborers, the great ma.s.s of the peasantry occupying the middle ground, and the gradual dissolution of the two great forces of Russian agricultural life--the patriarchal family and the village community--have been the most important results.

Russia is clearly in a state of transition from the agricultural or medieval to the industrial and commercial or modern economic life.

This transformation of the economic structure is being effected under great difficulties and the strong opposition of the ruling cla.s.ses, whose privileges are threatened by the new order of things.

The Russian social and political order reflects the medieval background which formed the setting for her entrance upon the modern stage. The cla.s.s distinctions, naturally obtaining, are hardened into rigidity by the law, which divides Russian society into a hierarchy of five cla.s.ses or orders--the n.o.bles, the clergy, the merchants, the townsmen and the peasants--each with separate legal status, rights and obligations.

The individual is thus not an independent unit, as in the legal codes of Western Europe or the United States. Accompanying the legal stratification there is an exceedingly strong, almost caste-like, sense of difference between the members of the different groups.

This emphasis on the person is characteristic of the medieval social order. In Russia it finds additional expression in the control of individual movement by means of the pa.s.sport, without which doc.u.ment a Russian may be said to have no legal existence.

Even more striking is the position of the Russian Church, as well as the religio-national conception which dominates the Russian mind and according to which orthodoxy and nationality are regarded as one. The Russian Orthodox is the only true Russian; all others are foreigners.