RECENT JEWISH IMMIGRATION. 341 



associated in the public mind, and still exhibiting a predilection 

 for commercial life, they or their children are also to be found 

 in nearly every trade and profession, and are coming into increasing 

 prominence in connection with those positions in the public service 

 which are open to competitive examinations. 



This immigration has also another side. The fact that it has 

 been stimulated by pressure from behind rather than a demand in 

 the industrial market here has tended not only to make it possible 

 for the movement to override or evade our immigration laws but 

 also to get beyond the control of the philanthropic organizations 

 which have the best interests of the immigrants at heart. 



The tendency of Hebrews to prosper diminishes as they congre- 

 gate together, and, quite apart from the matter of civil disabilities, 

 there is a proportion above which they are unable to thrive in any 

 given city or town. These conditions have already been realized in 

 certain localities here, and philanthropic effort which was once con- 

 cerned principally in inducing emigration from unfavorable surround- 

 ings in Europe is now attempting to prevent and relieve the equally 

 serious evils of congestion in localities to which it is tending. With 

 reference to the situation in New York city the 27th Annual Eeport 

 of the United Hebrew Charities (October, 1901) makes the state- 

 ment 'that a condition of chronic poverty is developing in the Jewish 

 community of New York that is appalling in its immensity.' It 

 goes on to state that, of the applicants to that society for assistance 

 during the year, 45 per cent., 'representing between 20,000 and 25,000 

 human beings, have been in the United States over five years; have 

 been given the opportunities for economic and industrial improve- 

 ment which this country affords, yet notwithstanding all this, have 

 not managed to reach a position of economic independence.' It, 

 furthermore, makes the estimate that 'from 75,000 to 100,000 mem- 

 bers of the New York Jewish community are unable to supply them- 

 selves with the immediate necessaries of life, and who for this reason 

 are dependent, in some form or other, upon the public purse.' 



To a degree wholly unlooked for among Jews, the above-mentioned 

 phase of the present Hebrew immigration is accompanied by a moral 

 degradation which has, to some extent, been made familiar through 

 recent events in local municipal politics. 



As the report of the society above referred to stated in 1898, 'those 

 who are familiar with the crowded section on the lower east side know 

 that vices are beginning to spring up which heretofore have been 

 strangers to the Jewish people.' Eeferring to the same conditions, 

 it is asserted in the report for 1901 that 'the vice and crime, the 

 irreligiousness, lack of self-restraint, indifference to social conventions, 



