burg, with branches in the
provinces. It further promised to issue to the emigrants free of charge
permits to leave the country and to relieve them from military duty on
condition that they never return to Russia.

In. May, 1893, the constitution of the Jewish Colonization Association
was ratified by the Tzar. At that time the emigration tide of the
previous year was gradually ebbing. The flight from Russia to North and
South America had reached its climax in the summer and autumn of 1891.
The expulsion from Moscow as well as alarming rumors of imminent
persecutions, on the one hand, and exaggerated news about the plans of
Baron Hirsch, on the other, had resulted in uprooting tens of thousands
of people. Huge masses of refugees had flocked to Berlin, Hamburg,
Antwerp, and London, imploring to be transferred to the United States or
to the Argentinian colonies. Everywhere relief committees were being
organized, but there was no way of forwarding the emigrants to their new
destination, particularly to Argentina, where the large territories
purchased by Hirsch were not yet ready for the reception of colonists.
Baron Hirsch was compelled to send out an appeal to all Jewish
communities, calling upon they to stem for the present this disorderly
human avalanche.

Ere long Baron Hirsch's dream of transplanting millions of people with
millions of money proved an utter failure. When, after long
preparations, the selected Jewish colonists were at last dispatched to
Argentina, it was found that the original figure of 25,000 emigrants
calculated for the first year had shrunk to about 2500. Altogether,
during the first three years, from 1892 to 1894, the Argentinian
emigration absorbed some six thousand people. Half of these remained in
the capital of the republic, in Buenos Ayres, while the other half
managed to settle in the colonies, after enduring all the hardships
connected with an agricultural colonization in a new land and under new
climatic conditions. A few years later it was commonly realized that the
mountain had given birth to a mouse. Instead of the million Jews, as
originally planned, the Jewish Colonization Association succeeded in
transplanting during the first decade only 10,000 Jews, who were
distributed over six Argentinian colonies.

The main current of Jewish emigration flowed as heretofore in the
direction of North America, towards the United States and Canada. In the
course of the year 1891, with its numerous