THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 167 



east, it is curious to note how rapidly the percentage of Jews de- 

 creases as we pass over into Great Russia. The governments of St. 

 Petersburg, Novgorod, and Moscow have no greater Jewish contin- 

 gent of population than has France or Italy; their Jewish problem is 

 far less difficult than that of our own country is bound to be in the 

 future. This clearly defined eastern boundary of Judenthum is also 

 the product of prohibitive legislation. The Jews are by law confined 

 within certain provinces. A rigid law of settlement, intended to cir- 

 cumscribe their area of density closely, yields only to the persuasion 

 of bribery. Not Russia, then, but southwestern Russia alone, is 

 deeply concerned over the actual presence of this alien population. 

 And it is the Jewish element in this small section of the country 

 which constitutes such an industrial and social menace to the neigh- 

 boring empires of Germany and Austria. In the latter country the 

 Jews seem to be increasing in numbers almost four times as rapidly 

 as the native population. The more elastic boundaries of Jewish 

 density on the southeast, on the other hand, are indicative of the legis- 

 lative tolerance which the Israelites there enjoy. Wherever the bars 

 are lowered, there does this migratory human element at once 

 expand. 



The peculiar problems of Jewish distribution are only half real- 

 ized until it is understood that, always and everywhere, the Israelites 

 constitute pre-eminently the town populations.* They are not 

 widely disseminated among the agricultural districts, but congre- 

 gate in the commercial centers. It is an unalterable characteristic of 

 this peculiar people. The Jew betrays an inherent dislike for hard 

 manual or outdoor labor, as for physical exercise or exertion in any 

 form. He prefers to live by brain, not brawn. Leroy-Beaulieu 

 seems to consider this as an acquired characteristic due to mediaeval 

 prohibition of land ownership or to confinement within the Ghetto. 

 To us it appears to be too constant a trait the world over to justify 

 such a hypothesis. Fully to appreciate, therefore, what the Jewish 

 question is in Polish Russia, we must always bear this fact in mind. 

 The result is that in many parts of Poland the Jews form an actual 

 majority of the population in the towns. This is the danger for Ger- 

 many also. Thus it is Berlin, not Prussia at large, which is threat- 

 ened with an overload of Jews from the country on the east. 

 This aggregation in urban centers becomes the more marked as the 

 relative frequency for the whole country lessens. Thus in Saxony, 

 which, being industrial, is not a favorite Jewish center, four fifths 

 of all the Jewish residents are found in Dresden and Leipsic alone. f 

 This is probably also the reason for the lessened frequency of Jews 



* This is clearly shown by Schimmer in Statistische Monatsschrift, vii, pp. 489 et seq. 

 f See also map in Kettler, 1 880. 



