579 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
SOME EUROPEAN CONDITIONS AFFECTING EMIGRATION 
By ARTHUR CLINTON BOGGESS 
REID CHRISTIAN COLLEGH, LUCKNOW, INDIA 
ROM what economic and social conditions do our immigrants from 
Europe come? ‘This was the question that came to me after 
reading book after book concerning the immigrant after he has reached 
America. A diligent gathering from many sources, chiefly official 
documents, has brought to light many facts of much interest to one who 
really cares to know the character of the surroundings of those who are 
thronging our shores. It is the purpose of this article to present some 
leading conditions in various countries of Europe. 
RUssIA 
One eighth of our immigrants are Russian Jews. Peculiar and 
pathetic is the lot of the Jew in Russia. A law of 1769, modified in 
1804 and in 1835, requires that all Jews, except certain specified classes, 
shall reside within the Jewish pale. The pale is a district beginning 
immediately south of the Baltic provinces, stretching throughout the 
west and extending over the south as far east as the Don Army Terri- 
tory. It has an area of about 362,000 square miles, or less than #0 per 
cent. of European Russia, and only a little over 4 per cent. of the entire 
Russian empire. Outside the pale may reside, under certain restric- 
tions, merchants of the first guild—. e., merchants paying a very high 
business license—professional persons and master artisans. As a mat- 
ter of fact 93.9 per cent. of all Jews in the empire live in the pale, 4 per 
cent. live in the remaining part of European Russia and 2.1 per cent. 
live in Asiatic Russia. Even the place of residence within the pale is 
limited by a provision of the notorious May laws of 1882, which pro- 
hibits the Jews from buying or renting lands outside the limits of 
cities and incorporated towns. Jews who owned farm lands in 1882 
were not dispossessed, but the law operates to preclude any increase in 
such holdings. 
Restriction upon his place of residence is not the only limitation 
placed upon the Jew in Russia. In the summer of 1887 the minister 
of instruction was empowered to limit the number of Jewish students 
to be admitted into the secondary institutions of learning. This limit 
was defined as 10 per cent. for the institutions located within the pale, 
5 per cent. in the remaining cities and only 3 per cent. in the two cap- 
‘tal cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The measure was justified as 
necessary to maintain a more “normal proportion between the number 
