XVII THE JEWISH QUESTION

A visit to Russia offers opportunity for an extremely interesting study. One may become acquainted with a rapid succession of towns where the population is almost entirely Jewish, or half Jewish, or to a large extent Jewish, and also with others in which residence is practically prohibited to Jews, which, therefore, to speak in anti-Semitic jargon, are almost "clean of Jews." In western Europe there is neither the one nor the other. It would be strange, indeed, if such ethnologically unique conditions offered to the observant spectator no disclosures which he seeks elsewhere in vain. In fact, I made in the cities free of Jews an observation which seems to me well worth imparting. The Jewish problem is nothing but a problem of relative overpopulation. The Jews are unendurable only where they are forced to compete with each other.

I made this observation in the following way: The Jewish proletarians of Poland impressed me as extremely repulsive. Their laziness, their filth, their craftiness, their perpetual readiness to cheat cannot help but fill the western European with very[Pg 168] painful feelings and unedifying thoughts, in spite of all the teachings of history and all desire to be just. The evil wish arises that in some painless way the world might be rid of these disagreeable objects, or the equally inhuman thought that it would really be no great pity if this part of the Polish population did not exist at all. One is ashamed of such thoughts; nevertheless, that does not rid one's mind of them. Either we must renounce our ideas of cleanliness and honesty or find a great part of the Eastern Hebrews altogether unpleasant. Since the former is impossible, the latter will always be the case. Comparison with the still dirtier, still more immoral, still more neglected Polish proletariat does not drive away these thoughts. The Jew has, besides his filth and his craftiness in business, something else which calls to mind a nobility of civilization, so that he cannot be confused with any chance "lazzarone" or vagabond. He is not himself, but the caricature of a man of culture, and as such he produces an irritating effect.

In the cities free of Jews all this suddenly disappears. The Jews whom one has opportunity to meet there, well educated merchants of the first guild, incorporated artisans, and descendants of the Jewish soldiers of Nicholas I., are of quite another caliber from their Polish brothers. They are in no way to be distinguished from the Russians. One is continually prone to take the bearded Russian driver or merchant for a Jew and the intelligently[Pg 169] keen Jew for a European. Then one learns that these Jewish lawyers, physicians, merchants, and artisans are treated by the Russians themselves as their equals in every respect; indeed, that the Jews enjoy a certain priority as being relatively more honest in their dealings. On the contrary, the Russians, when large numbers of them follow a single calling, as, say, in the great mercantile houses or the ranks of trade, show all the qualities which, to our Western minds, are stamped as specifically Jewish. They are outrageously obtrusive, and unreliable to the point of open deception. The German Hanse towns strictly forbade their merchants to give Russian Jews goods on credit, to lend them money, or to borrow from them, under penalty of immediate punishment.[1] In making the smallest purchase one finds that there is no question of a mercantile reality; that there is no fixed price, no keeping one's word, nothing that to us in the West has long seemed a matter of course. Just as in the Orient the Spanish Jews seem much more reliable and sterling than the rascally Greeks and Armenians, the Jews, when thinly scattered, gain by comparison with the native Russians. Now the Russian Jew is no Spaniard, with a proud Western past. He is altogether identical with[Pg 170] the Polish Jew. His higher development cannot be accounted for by any ethnological difference. It is simply that under quite different economic conditions of existence he has become a quite different person. Dr. Polyakoff, of Moscow, is, in fact, another man from, say, his grandfather, Pollak, of Poland.

With these facts we now approach the real problem. The overcrowding of a calling engenders a competition in squalor among Christians as well as Jews, Aryans as well as Semites. The Jews, however, live in overcrowded callings all over the world, obeying historic laws of adaptation even where other callings, not overcrowded, are not closed to them. Hence we have the disagreeable phenomenon of the handing over of certain vocations to the Jews, which means nothing else than the injury of these callings by the trickery of the competition of squalor. Where no fetters are placed on the economic life, the healthy organism, in time, overcomes these local inflammations, as we may designate, by an expression taken from pathology, the influx of an abnormal number of cells of a certain sort to a place not intended for them. The crowding of the callings until self-support is impossible, the sinking of endurance in the overcrowded vocation, lead to a flowing off of the superfluous elements, and finally the whole organism has overcome the crisis of assimilation by forcing each particle where it is economically most valuable. In[Pg 171] Germany the adjustment cannot be far away. The fact of the unheard-of economic growth during the past fifteen years, and the unusual increase of prosperity in all branches, show at least that Germany in its bare fifty years of Jewish emancipation has been in no way injured economically.

In Russia, also, the most expedient thing would evidently be simply to declare the removal of all restrictive laws, and to open to the Jews the interior of the country, as well as all occupations which they might wish to enter. The blessing to Russia would be immense, for the Jews, as thinking men and members of a race of ancient civilization, would bring to the Russian nation just what it lacks, an intelligent middle class capable of culture. The percentage of Jews would not be at all too high for Russia to carry without danger to the national character of society. To about one hundred and thirty million Russians there are about five million Jews—that is, barely four per cent. The "Jew-free" cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg show approximately this proportion, without the Jews being perceptible there. (It must be admitted that one of the comforts of these cities is that they are not, like Warsaw, for instance, overwhelmed with greasy, caftaned Jews.) If it could be brought about, therefore, that the Jews could be scattered throughout the whole kingdom in the ratio of four per cent., it would be an incalculable gain for all parties, and mankind would be rid of a problem which[Pg 172] threatens the condition of our ethics and humanity the more the longer it exists.

Nevertheless, this is not to be thought of as an immediate possibility. The Russian government is not in the least gifted with magnanimity and farsighted patience, though the contrary is true of the Russian people, who are entirely free from anti-Semitic prejudice. For this reason any enlargement of Jewish rights of residence and vocation is prevented by the pointing out of the infection which would then threaten all cities and all lucrative occupations. The Jewish question will long remain unsolved, for whom could the Russian officials bleed if not the tormented, worried, defenceless Jews?
FOOTNOTE:

[1] Book of Documents of Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland, Reval, 1852-64, Nos. 576-588, and Documentary Business of the Origin of the German Hanse, Hamburg, 1830, ii., No. ix., p. 27; both cited in Lanin Russian Characteristics, German edition, i., 142.