nomic life that nearly
seventy-three and eight hundredths per cent. of them are forced to
seek employment in the country's commerce and industry. Of the entire
Jewish population throughout the Empire, only two and four tenths per
cent. are engaged in agriculture, four and seven tenths per cent. in
liberal professions, eleven and five tenths per cent. in personal
service (domestic service etc.); the rest, minus the persons without
any definite employment are forced to seek for means of livelihood in
the field of commerce (thirty-one per cent.), industry (thirty-six and
three tenths per cent.), and transport (three per cent.) In the same
way works the artificial congestion of the Jews in the cities: only
eighteen per cent. live in the villages of the Pale of Settlement,
while the rest--more than four-fifths--toil in the towns and townlets.
Such a one-sided distribution of Jewish labour would not be a negative
phenomenon if it were possible to spread it uniformly over the entire
country. For, backward as Russia is industrially and commercially, the
Jews would easily find a place in the fields of endeavour which suit
them best and would greatly benefit the country by furthering the
process of its industrialisation. Under present circumstances they are
crowded in one place and overburden the commerce and the industry of
the Pale of Settlement. As a result, the struggle for existence among
them is so keen and desperate that in some sections they are
undoubtedly on the way to degeneration. In the West, Galicia and
Roumania excluded, the Jews are well represented in the wealthy
classes; in Russia an overwhelming portion of them are proletaries,
"free like birds," poverty-stricken people who literally do not know
to-day by what they are going to live to-morrow. Heart-rending
pictures are painted by impartial observers of the life of the Jewish
poorer classes, of all these tradesmen, factory workers, petty
merchants and peddlers. They literally starve and cripple both mind
and body in the slums of cities and towns. The natural result is that
in their eager search for means of livelihood they are forced to have
recourse to all sorts of expedients. Hence, all this talk about the
"criminal features" of the Jewish character and their propensity for
financial speculation, which propensity is, however, easily forgiven
and even encouraged in the "true-Russian" representatives of our
commercial interests. On the other hand, the Jews lower