this Department will merely add to their disgrace. In the
name of their human dignity, they have no right to remain there
where they are held in abhorrence.

Under these circumstances it seemed quite natural that the tendency
toward emigration, which had called forth a number of emigration
societies as far back as the beginning of 1882 [1], took an ever
stronger hold upon the Jewish population of Russia. The disastrous
consequences of the resolution adopted by the conference of notables in
St. Petersburg [2] were now manifest. By rejecting the formation of a
central agency for regulating the emigration, the conference had
abandoned the movement to the blind elemental forces, and a catastrophe
was bound to follow. The pogrom at Balta called forth a new outburst of
the emigration panic, and in the summer of 1882 some twenty thousand
Jewish refugees were again huddled together in the Galician border-town
of Brody. They were without means for continuing their journey to
America, having come to Brody in the hope of receiving help from the
Jewish societies of Western Europe. The relief committees established in
the principal cities of Europe were busily engaged in "evacuating" Brody
of this destitute mass of fugitives. In the course of the summer and
autumn this task was successfully accomplished. A large number of
emigrants were dispatched to the United States, and the rest were
dispersed over the various centers of Western Europe.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 297 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 307.]

Aside from the highway of American emigration went, along a tiny
parallel path, the Jewish emigration to Palestine. The Palestinian
movement which had shortly before come into being [1] attracted many
enthusiasts from among the Jewish youth. In the spring of 1882, a
society of Jewish young men, consisting mostly of university students,
was formed in Kharkov under the name _Bilu_, from the initial letters of
their Hebrew motto, _Bet Ya'akob leku we-nelka_"O house of Jacob, come
ye, and let us go." [2] The aim of the society was to establish a model
agricultural settlement in Palestine and to carry on a wide-spread
propaganda for the idea of colonizing the ancient homeland of the Jews.
As a result of this propaganda, several hundred Jews in various parts of
Russia joined the _Bilu_ society. Of these only a few dozen pioneers
left for Palestine --between June and July of 1882.

[Footnote 1: See later, p. 268.]

[Fo