2i 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



them to loan out their money without interest. On account of the 

 general lack of ready money in a time when the supply of gold and 

 silver metal was continually decreasing, and a currency to take their 

 place had not been devised, everybody from the highest to the lowest 

 came very frequently to a pass where they must borrow money ; and 

 since trade in money was strictly forbidden to the Christians, and 

 could only be carried on by them when veiled under other forms of 

 business or in roundabout ways, the Jews, who were excluded from 

 other branches of industry and positions in life, entered upon it. An 

 industrious people the Jews have ever been. As long as they formed 

 a state of their own, their principal occupations were agriculture, 

 horticulture, and the trades. In their hands Palestine had become 

 one of the best cultivated and most fruitful lands of the earth. The 

 Mosaic legislation was intended to encourage the improvement of the 

 soil, and to further the cultivation of grain, wine, and oil. Further, 

 in the first centuries after Christ, and after the destruction of the 

 Jewish state, the people remained faithful to their old customs. 

 Josephus, in the beginning of the second century, still praises the 

 industry of his countrymen in their trades and in agriculture. 



There is no evidence to be found in the Roman literature and the 

 laws of the emperors that the Jews had given themselves up to shrewd 

 bargaining and small trading, or in general had become a commercial 

 people. The numerous Jews that lived in Rome appear to have been 

 poor. Further, the violent and extremely bloody risings of the Jews 

 in Egypt and Cyrene, and on the islands (of the Mediterranean) in- 

 dicate that they did not form a commercial population or one dealing 

 in small wares, for such a class of people do not often take up arms. 

 Even as late as the tenth century, they formed a stationary population 

 in Spain, Southern France, and even in Germany. This condition, 

 however, they could not maintain in face of the hostility of the Church 

 and of the people, and moreover, after the rise of the Italian maritime 

 and commercial cities with their merchant-fleets, they lost their hold 

 upon the commerce between the West and the Orient. The concen- 

 tration of trade in the guilds and the exclusion of the Jews from ordi- 

 nary intercourse with Christians made it impossible for them to be- 

 come artisans. Just as little could they live on agriculture, since they 

 were almost everywhere forbidden to own land. Cardinal James, of 

 Vitry, who knew the Orient well, observes in the year 1244, "Among 

 the Mohammedans the Jews ply handicrafts, although it is only the 

 lower and despised branches that they occupy themselves with, but 

 among the Christians they live on the business of loaning money." 

 The thought forces itself upon us, how great a benefit would have 

 been conferred upon the world, Christian and Jewish alike, if a cardi- 

 nal or a Pope at that time had reflected upon this contrast between 

 the Jews under the Crescent and the Jews under the Cross, and had 

 drawn from it the practical inferences that lie so near at hand. 



