reason that "at the present time all our Government
departments are weighed down with problems of first-rate national
importance which brook no delay, [1] and they could scarcely find time
to busy themselves with such matters as the Jewish question, which
requires mature consideration and slow progress in action."

[Footnote 1: The paper had in mind the crop failures of that year and
the famine which prevailed in consequence in the larger part of Russia.]

The subdued tone adopted by Count Meshcherski, the court journalist, was
only partially in accord with the facts. He was right in stating that
the terrible country-wide distress had compelled the deadly enemies of
Judaism to pause in the execution of their entire program. But he forgot
to add that the one clause of that program, the realization of which had
already begun--the expulsion from Moscow--was being carried into effect
with merciless cruelty. The huge emigration wave resulting from this
expulsion threw upon the shores of Europe and America the victims of
persecution who re-echoed the cries of distress from the land of the
Tzars.

Soon afterwards a new surprise, without parallel in history, was sprung
upon a baffled world: the Russian Government was negotiating with the
Jewish philanthropist Baron Hirsch concerning the gradual removal of the
three millions of its Jewish subjects from Russia to Argentina.

CHAPTER XXX

BARON HIRSCH'S EMIGRATION SCHEME AND
UNRELIEVED SUFFERING

1. NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT

Towards the end of the eighties the plan of promoting Jewish emigration
from Russia, which had been abandoned with the retirement of Count
Ignatyev, was again looked upon favorably by the leading Government
circles. The sentiments of the Tzar were expressed in a marginal note
which he attached to the report of the governor of Podolia for the year
1888. The passage of the report in which it was pointed out that "the
removal of the Jewish proletariat from the monarchy would be very
desirable" was supplemented in the Tzar's handwriting by the words "and
even very useful." In reply to the proposal of the governor of Odessa to
deprive Jewish emigrants of the right to return to Russia, the Tzar
answered with a decided "yes." The official Russian chronicler goes even
so far as to confess "that it was part of the plan to stimulate the
emigration of the Jews (as well as that of the German colonists) by a
more rigorous enforcement of the