horities were set at ease, and were only too glad
to take the word of the satraps of the Pale who reported that the
anti-Jewish movement had started as "a crude protest of the masses
against the failure to solve the Jewish question"--_viz_., to solve it
in a reactionary spirit--and as a manifestation, of the popular
resentment against Jewish exploitation.

The old charge of separatism against the Jews thus found a companion in
a new accusation: their economic "exploitation" of the Christian
population of the Pale. The Committee appointed at the recommendation of
the Council of State was enjoined to conduct a strict inquiry into both
these "charges." Concretely the work of the Committee reduced itself to
a consideration of two questions, one relating to the Kahal, or "the
amelioration of the spiritual life of the Jews," and the other referring
to the feasibility of thinning out the Pale of Settlement with the end
in view of weakening the economic competition of the Jews.

The material bearing on these questions included, apart from Brafman's
"standard work," a "Memorandum concerning the more important
Administrative Problems in the South-west," which had been submitted in
1871 by the governor-general of Kiev, Dondukov-Korsakov, to the Tzar.
The author of the memorandum voices his conviction that "the principal
endeavors of the Government must be concentrated upon the Jewish
question." The Jews are becoming a great economic power in the
South-western provinces. They purchase or mortgage estates, and obtain
control of the factories and mills as well as of the grain, timber, and
liquor trade, thereby arousing the bitter resentment of the Christian
population, particularly in the rural districts. [1] Moreover, the Jewish
masses, refusing to follow the lead of the handful of Russified Jewish
intellectuals, live entirely apart and remain in the throes of talmudic
fanaticism and hasidie obscurantism. They "possess complete
self-government in their Kahals, their own system of finance in the
basket tax, their separate charitable institutions," their own
traditional school in the heders, of which there are in the South-west
no less than six thousand. In addition, the Jews possess an
international organization, the "World Kahal," represented by the
_Alliance Israelite "Universelle_ in Paris, whose president, Adolph
Cremieux, had had the audacity to protest to the Russian Government
against acts of violence perpetrated upon the Jew