168 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all through the Alpine highlands, especially in the Tyrol. These 

 districts are so essentially agricultural that few footholds for the 

 Jew are to be found. 



A small secondary center of Jewish aggregation appears upon our 

 map to be manifested about Frankfort. It has a peculiar signifi- 

 cance. The Hebrew settlers in the Rhenish cities date from the third 

 century at least, having come there over the early trade routes from 

 the Mediterranean. Germany being divided politically, and Rus- 

 sia interdicting them from 1110, a specific center was established, 

 especially in Franconia, Frankfort being the focus of attraction. 

 Then came the fearful persecutions all over Europe, attendant upon 

 the religious fervor of the Crusades. The Polish kings, desiring to 

 encourage the growth of their city populations, offered the rights of 

 citizenship to all who would come, and an exodus in mass took place. 

 They seem to have been welcomed, till the proportions of the move- 

 ment became so great as to excite alarm. Its results appear upon our 

 map. Thus we know that many of the Jews of Poland came to Russia 

 as a troublesome legacy on the division of that kingdom. At the end 

 of the sixteenth century but three German cities remained open to 

 them — namely, Frankfort, "Worms, and Furth.* Yet it was obvious- 

 ly impossible to uproot them entirely. To their persistence in this 

 part of Germany is probably due the small secondary center of Jew- 

 ish distribution, which we have mentioned, indicated by the darker 

 tint about Frankfort, and including Alsace-Lorraine. Here is a 

 relative frequency, not even exceeded by Posen, although we gen- 

 erally conceive of this former Polish province as especially saturated 

 with Jews. It is the only vestige remaining to indicate what was 

 at one time the main focus of Jewish population in Europe. It 

 affords us a striking example of what legislation may accomplish 

 ethnically, when supplemented, or rather aggravated, by religious 

 and economic motives. 



Does it accord with geographical probability to derive our large 

 dark area of present Jewish aggregation entirely from the small 

 secondary one about Frankfort, which, as we have just said, is the 

 relic of a mediaeval center of gravity? The question is a crucial one 

 for the alleged purity of the Russian Jew; for the longer his migra- 

 tions over the face of the map, the greater his chance of ethnic in- 

 termixture. A moot point among Jewish scholars is, as to the extent 

 of this exodus from Germany into Poland. Bershadski has done 

 much to show its real proportions in history. Talko-Hryncewicz f 

 and Weissenberg, % among anthropologists, seem to be inclined 

 to derive this great body of Polish Jews from Palestine by way 



* .1. C. Majer (1862) ascribes the sho:tness of stature in Furth to this Jewish influence, 

 f 1892. \ 1895, p. 577. 



