autumn of that year
some ten thousand destitute Jewish wanderers found themselves huddled
together at the first halting-place, the city of Brody, which is
situated on the Russo-Austrian frontier. They had been attracted hither
by the rumor that the agents of the French _Alliance Israelite
Universette_ would supply them with the necessary means for continuing
their journey across the Atlantic. The central committee of the
_Alliance_, caught unprepared for such a huge emigration, was at its
wit's end. It sent out appeals, warning the Jews against wholesale
emigration to America by way of Brody, but it was powerless to stem the
tide. When the representatives of the French _Alliance_, the well-known
Charles Netter and others, arrived in Brody, they beheld a terrible
spectacle. The streets of the city were filled with thousands of Jews
and Jewesses, who were exhausted from material want, with hungry
children in their arms. "From early morning until late at night, the
French delegates were surrounded by a crowd clamoring for help. Their
way was obstructed by mothers who threw their little ones under their
feet, begging to rescue them from starvation."

The delegates did all they could, but the number of fugitives was
constantly swelling, while the process of dispatching them to America
went on at a snail's pace. The exodus of the Jews from Russia was due
not only to the pogroms and the panic resulting from them, but also to
the new blows which were falling upon them from all sides, dealt out by
the liberal hand of Ignatyev.

3. THE GUBERNATORIAL COMMISSIONS

After wavering for some time, the anti-Semitic Government of Ignatyev
finally made up its mind as to the attitude it was henceforth to adopt
towards the Jewish problem. Taken aback at the beginning of the pogrom
movement, the leading spheres of Russia were first inclined to ascribe
it to the effects of the revolutionary propaganda, but they afterwards
came to the conclusion that, in the interest of the reactionary policies
pursued by them and as a means of justifying the disgraceful anti-Jewish
excesses before the eyes of Europe, it was more convenient to throw the
blame upon the Jews themselves. With this end in view, a new theory was
put forward by the Russian Government, the quasi-economic doctrine of
"the exploitation of the original population by the Jews." This doctrine
consisted of two parts, which, properly speaking, were mutually
exclusive:

_First_, the