ROUMANIA. 



621 



mcn-o, and Domains, 1,816,200 lei for the Ministry 

 of Foreign Affairs, and 1,573,900 lei for supple- 

 mentary credits. 



The public debt on Dec. 1, 1899, amounted to 

 1,280,719,683 lei, more than half of it borrowed 

 for railroads and other public works, and the re- 

 mainder for purchasing lands for the peasantry, 

 reducing unfunded debt, and covering deficiencies 

 of revenue. A loan of 175,000,000 lei was issued 

 at 5 per cent, in November, 1899, to construct 

 additional railroads and public works. 



The Army and Navy. The permanent army 

 has a peace strength of 3,280 officers and 60.000 

 men, with 1 1 .930 horses and 390 guns. The period 

 of service is three years in active service and seven 

 years in the reserve, and Roumanians who are 

 not drawn at the age of twenty to serve in it 

 are members of the territorial army for five years, 

 or four years in the cavalry, and then of the terri- 

 torial army reserve until they are thirty years old. 

 The strength of the territorial army is 72.000 men 

 on a peace footing, and its war strength 3,948 

 officers and 168.000 men, with 36,604 horses. After 

 the age of thirty all belong to the militia for five 

 years, and then for ten years to the gloata, or 

 general levy. The infantry weapon is the Mann- 

 licher rifle of the model of 1893. 



The naval force of Roumania consists now of 

 a protected cruiser, a training brig, 7 gunboats, 

 6 coast guards, a dispatch steamer, and 6 first-class 

 and 2 second-class torpedo boats. Additional gun- 

 boats will be built in a floating dock brought from 

 Scotland, and 2 armor-clad vessels are projected. 



Commerce and Production. The yield of 

 wheat in 1899 was only 9,184,930 hectolitres on 

 1,661,360 hectares, against 20,600,100 hectolitres 

 on 1.453,600 hectares in 1898. The production of 

 rye in 1899 was 700,700 hectolitres; of barley, 

 l',600.920 hectolitres; of oats, 2,204,410 hectolitres. 

 The production of maize in 1898 was 35,912,000 

 hectolitres, from 2,120,070 hectares; of plums, 929,- 

 320 hectolitres were produced in 1898; of wine,517,- 

 280 hectolitres; of tobacco, 25,500 quintals; of colza, 

 123,150 hectolitres; of flaxseed, 238,135 hectolitres; 

 of hemp, 62.130 hectolitres; of hay, 13,947,250 quin- 

 tals. The state lands sold from 1868 down to 1896 

 were 571,518 hectares in extent, valued at 210,- 

 130,000 lei. The state forests cover 931-J27 hec- 

 tares, and produce a gross income of 2,338,000 lei. 

 The general trade of Roumania in 1898 was 389,- 

 908,439 lei for imports and 283,181,567 lei for 

 exports. 



The European Commission of the Danube. 

 The Danubian Commission, created in 1856 and 

 composed of delegates of Germany, England, Aus- 

 tria-Hungary, France, Italy, Roumania, Russia, 

 and Turkey, has power to collect tolls from vessels 

 navigating the Danube below Braila, and to apply 

 them to improving the navigation of the river. 

 The dredging operations at the Sulina mouth 

 deepened the water over the bar from 20i feet 

 in 1890 to 24 feet in 1895, so that in 1899" only 

 2 vessels had to complete loading out in the road- 

 stead, against 142 in 1894. The cutting through 

 one of the loops of the great double bend of the 

 river near the. mouth was finished in 1894; in 

 1897 a channel was thrown open, straightening 

 the river farther up; in 1898 still another cutting 

 was completed, and the dredging of a channel 

 through Lake Obsetin was then begun, and will 

 be completed in 1902. This will make the river 

 from Sulina up to Tulcha almost as straight as a 

 canal. The depth of water in the channel has not 

 only been maintained, but improved by means of 

 groins, and the danger of the formation of banks 

 in the Sulina channel is thereby reduced to a 

 minimum. 



Exodus of Roumanian Jews. The education 

 law of 1893 barring Jews from the public schools 

 is the most serious of the disabilities that the Rou- 

 manian Government has imposed upon the Jewish 

 race, but it is only one of the political, social, and 

 economical wrongs that make life for the Rou- 

 manian Hebrew difficult and bitter in the best of 

 times, and almost impossible in a period of com- 

 mercial and industrial depression such as was 

 caused in 1900 by the failure of harvests in the 

 previous year. The Jews of Roumania must serve 

 in the army and bear all other civic burdens. They 

 are of Roumanian nationality before the law, and 

 yet are aliens, foreigners by law though born in 

 the land, capable of acquiring citizenship only by 

 naturalization, which is generally denied to them. 

 They have been driven out of all the honorable 

 professions, excluded from industries, and refused 

 the right of living in the rural districts and earn- 

 ing their support by agriculture. As a corollary 

 to their civic ostracism they have frequently been 

 assailed by riotous bands of students and work- 

 men, reviled with incendiary violence by the press, 

 and subjected to the insults and menaces of the 

 Anti-Semitic League, which has branches in all 

 towns and has organized an anti-Jewish crusade 

 all over the country. An article in the Berlin 

 Treaty expressly provided against the discrimina- 

 tions that have been laid upon the Jews by declar- 

 ing that " in Roumania the difference of religious 

 creeds and confessions shall not be alleged against 

 any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity 

 in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and 

 political rights, admission to public employments, 

 functions, and honors, or the exercise of the various 

 professions or industries in any locality whatso- 

 ever." The only step that has been taken toward 

 compliance with the treaty is a modification of 

 the article of the Roumanian Constitution that 

 made naturalization inaccessible to Jews. The 

 new naturalization law, instead of declaring the 

 general enfranchisement of native Jews, requires 

 an individual application from every Jew ; and 

 attaches onerous conditions and formalities to such 

 applications, and even when these have been ful- 

 filled the Legislature almost invariably rejects 

 them, only 100 Jews, members of wealthy fam- 

 ilies, having succeeded in obtaining the rights of 

 citizenship since 800 Jewish soldiers were natural- 

 ized after Plevna by a single act. Even then 

 the naturalization is only personal, so that the 

 children of the 900 Jewish citizens of Roumania 

 are aliens in the sight of the law. In the schools 

 3,000 Jewish children are admitted upon the pay- 

 ment of fees, from which all Roumanians are ex- 

 empt. This is only a tenth of the children of school 

 age among the Jews, and the Jewish private 

 schools that have been founded in many parts of 

 the country are hampered in every way. They 

 are supported mainly by the voluntary tax paid by 

 Jews on meat slaughtered according to the ritual, 

 the gabella, which the Roumanian Government 

 has attempted to suppress on the pretext that the 

 Jewish method of slaughtering animals is inhu- 

 mane. From the normal and the professional and 

 art schools the Jews are excluded, and in the uni- 

 versities, by a new law for aliens, which means 

 Jews, for Christian foreigners can obtain natural- 

 ization without hindrance, the fees, especially in 

 the medical faculty, have been fixed at prohibitive 

 rates. Though Jews must perform military service 

 in the ranks like other Roumanians, they can not 

 receive commissions nor serve as one-year volun- 

 teers. No Jew can hold a post in the hospitals, 

 nor an office on a Roumanian railroad, nor practice 

 as a lawyer, an architect, a veterinary surgeon, or 

 an apothecary, nor take part in the direction of 



