166 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The number decreases as we approach Egypt and Palestine, the 

 ancient center of Jewish dispersion. As to America, it is estimated, 

 although we know nothing certainly, that there are about a half 

 million Jews scattered through our cities in the United States. New 

 York city, according to the last census, contained about eighty thou- 

 sand Poles and Russians, most of whom, it may be assumed, were 

 Jews. But they have come since in ever-increasing numbers, with 

 the great exodus from Russia, at the rate of scores of thousands 

 annually. A recent writer places their present number in New York 

 city at a quarter of a million. The British provinces, on the other 

 hand, do not seem to offer great attractions; as late as 1870, for 

 example, the census in Nova Scotia could not discover a solitary Jew. 

 A more suggestive index of the problems of Jewish distribution, 

 however, is offered in the ratio of the number of Jews to the entire 

 population. This is directly illustrated by our map. To be sure, 

 this represents the situation twenty years ago, but no great change 

 in relativity is to be suspected since that time. Even the wholesale 

 exodus from Russia of recent years has not yet drawn off any large 

 proportion of its vast body of population. Inspection of our map 

 shows that the relative frequency of Jews increases in proportion to 

 the progressive darkening of the tints. This brings out with startling 

 clearness the reason for the recent anti-Semitic uprisings in both 

 Russia, Austria, and the German Empire. A specific " center of 

 gravity " of the Jewish people, as Leroy-Beaulieu puts it, is at once 

 indicated in western Russia. The highest proportion, fifteen per 

 cent, more or less, appears, moreover, to be entirely restricted to the 

 Polish provinces, with the sole exception of the government of 

 Grodno. About this core lies a second zone, including the other 

 west Russian governments, as well as the province of Galicia in the 

 Austro-Hungarian Empire. Germany, as it appears, is sharply 

 divided from its eastern neighbors, all along the political frontier. 

 Not even its former Polish territory, Posen, is to-day relatively thick- 

 ly settled with Jews. Hostile legislation it is, beyond a doubt, which 

 so rigidly holds back the Jew from immigration along this line. 

 Anti-Semitismus is not, therefore, to-day to any great extent an up- 

 rising against an existing evil; rather does it appear to be a protest 

 against a future possibility. Germany shudders at the dark and 

 threatening cloud of population of the most ignorant and wretched 

 description which overhangs her eastern frontier. Berlin must not, 

 they say, be allowed to become a new Jerusalem for the horde of 

 Russian exiles. That also is our American problem. This great 

 Polish swamp of miserable human beings, terrific in its proportions, 

 threatens to drain itself off into our country as well, unless we re- 

 strict its ingress. As along the German frontier, so also toward the 



