se are said to do; nor are they quarrelsome and law-breaking, like
the low-class Italians who swarm into America. Their habits, so far as
cleanliness is concerned, are perhaps not desirable, but the standard of
the native population of Whitechapel is not sensitively high. For the
most part, and this is true especially of the Jews, they are steady,
industrious, quiet, sober, thrifty, quick to learn, and tolerably
honest. From the point of view of the old Political Economy, they are
the very people to be encouraged, for they turn out the largest quantity
of wealth at the lowest cost of production. If it is the chief end for a
nation to accumulate the largest possible stock of material wealth, it
is evident that these are the very people we require to enable us to
achieve our object.

But if we consider it is sound national policy to pay regard to the
welfare of all classes engaged in producing this wealth, we may regard
this foreign immigration in quite another light. The very virtues just
enumerated are the chief faults we have to find with the foreign Jew.
Just because he is willing and able to work so hard for so little pay,
willing to undertake any kind of work out of which he can make a living,
because he can surpass in skill, industry, and adaptability the native
Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the
nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to
survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic morality, and an
orderly citizen, he is almost void of social morality. No compunction or
consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and
overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the
dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law;
the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, is
used unsparingly to enable him to take advantage of every weakness,
folly, and vice of the society in which he lives.

Sec. 9. Effect of Foreign Competition.--One other quality he has in common
with the mass of poor foreigners who compete in the London labour
market--he can live on less than the Englishman. What Mrs Webb says of
the Polish Jew, is in large measure true of all cheap foreign
labour--"As industrial competitor, the Polish Jew is fettered by no
definite standard of life; it rises and falls with his opportunities; he
is not depressed by penury, and he is not demoralized by gain." The
fatal significance of