IMMIGRATION. 435 



point in transit, but it can be stated definitely tbat Jews in America 

 neither individually nor collectively assist or encourage immigration 

 to this country. They have sent representative men to Europe to 

 confer with leading Jews of London, Berlin, Frankfort, Vienna, Paris 

 and other centers in an effort to prevent wholesale emigration and to 

 divert the stream from the United States. On the other hand, Euro- 

 pean Jews and Jewish societies, especially in England, have assisted 

 thousands of destitute co-religionists and passed them on to America. 

 Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the Eothschilds and other Jewish philan- 

 thropists have assisted the Jews to found colonies in Palestine and 

 Argentina. In spite of these attempts to divert the stream from 

 America, the bulk of the exiled European Hebrews land eventually in 

 America. The American Hebrews realize that the chances for indi- 

 vidual prosperity in the Hebrew immigrants depend upon their wide 

 distribution. The more they congregate together, the greater the 

 tendency to chronic poverty and pauperization. The success of the 

 German Jews and Jews of other nationalities who came here years ago 

 was due to their wide distribution, and competition with Americans 

 in general, rather than the competition with each other for existence 

 which is a necessary adjunct of life in the Ghetto. For these reasons 

 American Jews, individually and collectively, are doing everything in 

 their power to distribute their kindred over a wider area. In their 

 work of caring for their poor they have encountered two obstacles 

 which can be put down as the chief causes of the poverty of the Ghetto 

 — one is the physique of the Hebrew immigrants and the other is their 

 occupations. In physique they rank below all other immigrants, and 

 few seem capable of hard physical labor. They seem to have no mus- 

 cular development, and are prematurely old at an age when a German 

 or Scandinavian is still in his prime. This poor physique is due to 

 their living in the crowded quarters of cities and towns and to the 

 occupations in which they have been engaged. These were conditions 

 in Europe over which they had no control, as they were not only re- 

 stricted as to residence, but were prevented by law from engaging in 

 agricultural pursuits. Yet now when they are no longer subject to 

 restrictive laws they cling tenaciously to the life in the slums, and 

 their sweat-shop occupations. 



Their occupation here is always some light one, requiring the least 

 possible expenditure of physical labor. They are necessarily tailors, 

 tinners, workers in fur and leather and other light occupations. They 

 are physically incapable of any but the lightest kind of agricultural 

 labor and have a distaste for that, as evidenced by the almost general 

 failure of their attempts at rural colonization. One of the few suc- 

 cesses recorded in the history of Jewish rural colonization was only 

 made possible by the establishment of a clothing factory, to which 



