rejudices. The Hirsch millions, originally intended for Russia, went
partly towards the establishment of Jewish schools in Galicia, a work
which met with every possible encouragement from the Austrian
Government.

The generous Jewish philanthropist now realized that the assistance he
was anxious to render to his Russian coreligionists could not take the
form of improving their condition in their own country but rather that
of settling them outside of it--by organizing the emigration movement.
Hirsch's attention was called to the fact that, beginning with 1889,
several groups of Russian Jews had settled in Argentina and, after
incredible hardships, had succeeded in establishing there several
agricultural colonies. The baron sent an expedition to Argentina, under
the direction of Professor Loewenthal, an authority on hygiene, for the
purpose of investigating the country and finding out the places fit for
colonization. The expedition returned in March, 1891, and Hirsch decided
to begin with the purchase of land in Argentina, in accordance with the
recommendations of the expedition.

This happened at the very moment when the Moscow catastrophe had broken
out, resulting in a panicky flight from "Russia to North and South
America, and partly to Palestine. Baron Hirsch decided that it was his
first duty to regulate the emigration movement from Russia, and he made
another attempt to enter into negotiations with the Russian Government.
With this end in view he sent his representative to St. Petersburg, the
Englishman Arnold White, a Member of Parliament, belonging to the
parliamentary anti-alien group, who was opposed to foreign immigration
into England, on the ground of its harmful effect upon the interests of
the native workingmen. Simultaneously White was commissioned to travel
through the Pale of Settlement and find out whether it would be possible
to obtain there an element fit for agricultural colonization in
Argentina.

White arrived in St. Petersburg in May and was received by
Pobyedonostzev and several Ministers. The martyrdom of the Moscow Jews
was then at its height. Shouts of indignation were ringing through the
air of Europe and America, protesting against the barbarism of the
Russian Government, and the latter was infuriated both by these protests
protests and the recent refusal of Rothschild to participate in the
Russian loan. The high dignitaries of St. Petersburg who had been
disturbed in their work of Jew-ba