334 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



RECENT JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED 



STATES. 



By ROGER MITCHELL, 



NEW YOEK CITY. 



FEOM a stretch of territory of irregular breadth, and extending 

 from the Baltic Sea to the Levant, there are now coming here 

 in considerable numbers as immigrants a people of unmistakable iden- 

 tity of origin and differentiated from the other inhabitants of the 

 districts whence they come not only by physical appearance, but by 

 the possession of distinctive customs, traits of character and a lan- 

 guage of their own. Even though the purity of their blood may 

 be questioned, they stand as the modern representatives of one branch 

 of the ancient Hebrew race. Their language is composite like Eng- 

 lish, and also like English it has a Germanic basis whose old inflec- 

 tions have been largely lost and to which words and suffixes of other 

 origin, mainly Hebrew and Polish, have been added. This language 

 is invariably expressed in Hebrew characters and read from right to 

 left. Although occasionally efforts are made in certain quarters to 

 disparage its claims to independent recognition, it is to be noted that 

 it has served since ancient times as the medium of a literature, both 

 meritorious and extensive, and is spoken whether in Eiga or Constan- 

 tinople with as little variation as may be found in the case of spoken 

 English within the limits of the United States. In this language, 

 solely by their own efforts, those who use it have lowered the illiteracy 

 among the immigrant class to twenty per cent, while their Slavic 

 neighbors, in spite of some public provision for instruction, show an 

 illiteracy of about forty per cent. 



All the people of whom Yiddish is the mother tongue are given 

 special recognition in our Immigration Bureau's classification of 

 arriving immigrants under the term 'Hebrews.' The people thus 

 designated do not constitute the only branch of the Hebrew race in 

 the region above mentioned, nor is Yiddish the mother-tongue of 

 them all, but where the modern Hebrew fails to show this distinctive 

 tongue and has become so merged with the nation in which he lives 

 as to be indistinguishable except by pedigree or religious creed, he 

 is classified with the immigrants of the nationality he has assumed. 



By thus removing this one element of so distinctly a national 

 character, not only is a means furnished for differentiating the other 



