CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW
Ever since I can remember I have had a special and peculiar interest in the history and the progress of the Jewish race. The first book that I knew, the Bible, was a history of the Jews, and to my childish mind the most fascinating portion of that book was the story of the manner in which Moses led the children of Israel out of the house of bondage, through the wilderness, into the promised land. I first heard that story from the lips of my mother, when both she and I were slaves on a plantation in Virginia. I have heard it repeated and referred to many times since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly a day or a week goes by that I do not meet among my people some reference to this same Bible story.
The Negro slaves were always looking forward to the time when a Moses should arise from somewhere who would lead them, as he led the ancient Hebrews, out of the house of bondage. And after freedom, the masses of
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 the Negro people have still continued to look to some great leader, some man inspired of God, who would lead them out of their difficulties into the promised land, which, somehow, they never seem able to reach.
As I learned in slavery to compare the condition of the Negro with that of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom, been compelled to compare the prejudice, even persecution, which the Jewish people have to face and overcome in different parts of the world with the disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and elsewhere.
I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of the Jews in New York City before going to Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, London, I had an opportunity to learn something of the condition of the Polish and Russian Jews who, driven from their native land, have found refuge in England. It was not until I reached Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or Galicia, however, that I really began to understand what life in the Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, was really like. It was not until then that I began to comprehend what the wear and tear of centuries of persecution, poverty, and suffering had meant in the life of the Jews.
One of the first things I observed in regard to the Jews abroad was the very different forms
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 which racial prejudice takes in the different countries that I visited. For example, in East London, which has long been the refuge for the poor and oppressed of other countries, the Jew is tolerated, although he is not liked. It is not clear just what is the source of the English prejudice. Complaint is sometimes made that the Jewish immigrant has driven out the native Briton from certain parts of East London, but it is admitted at the same time that in such cases it is because the Jew has proven a better tenant. He does not drink, he is law-abiding, and he pays his rent regularly. It seems to be true in London, also, as it is in New York, that as soon as the Jewish immigrant has made a little success he does not remain in the same quarter of the city. He soon moves out and his place is taken by some new and half-starved fugitive from Russia or Roumania, so that there is a constant stream of "greeners," as they are called, coming in, and another, perhaps somewhat smaller, stream of those who have been successful moving out. In spite of this fact, it is generally admitted that general conditions have improved under the influence of the Jews. English prejudice where it exists seems to be due, therefore, partly to economic causes and partly to the general distrust of the alien that seems to be gaining in England with
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 the influx of immigration from southern Europe. In Denmark, on the contrary, where the Jews seem to be very largely represented among the educated and well-to-do classes, I discovered a great deal of prejudice against the Germans but almost none against the Jews. In fact, one of the most distinguished men in Denmark, outside of the King, a man who has been a leader in the intellectual life of that country during the past thirty years, Prof. Georg Brandes, is a Jew.
In Germany I learned that, while the Jews are prominent not only in business but in the professions, it was still difficult for them to rise in the army or to advance to the position of professor in the universities, unless they have first been baptized.
In speaking about this matter to a German whom I met at one of the hotels in Vienna, I called to mind the name of a distinguished professor whose name I had heard as an instance of a Jew gaining a high position in a German university.
"Oh, well," he replied, "he has been baptized."
That recalls to my mind a conundrum which an acquaintance proposed while we were discussing some of the peculiarities of race prejudice in Europe.
"When is a Jew not a Jew?" he asked. The
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 answer is of course, "When he is a Christian." In other words, prejudice in Germany seems to be directed only against the Jew who clings to his religion.
When I reached Prague in Bohemia I learned that among the masses of the people there is little distinction made between Jews and Germans, since both speak the same language, and the Czechs, confusing the one with the other, hate both with a double hatred, first, for what they are, and then for what they seem to be.
In Vienna and Budapest the Jews, through the newspapers which they control, seem to exercise a powerful influence on politics. I remember hearing repeated references while I was there to the "Jewish press." In Prague it is said that every German paper but one is controlled by Jews. Jews are represented, however, not only in the press in Austria-Hungary, but in the army and in all the other professions. They are not only financiers and business men, but doctors, lawyers, artists, and actors, as elsewhere in Europe where they have gained their freedom. Nevertheless it is still against the law for Jews and Christians to intermarry in Austria-Hungary.
I have referred at some length to the condition of the Jews in other parts of Europe where they have profited by the social and political
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 freedom which was granted them in the course of the nineteenth century, because their progress there is in such striking contrast with their condition as I saw it in and around Cracow, in Galicia; as it is, also, just across the borders of Austria-Hungary, in Russian Poland and Roumania, and as it seems to have been in other parts of Europe seventy-five or a hundred years ago, before the gates of the Ghetto were opened and the inhabitants emancipated.
Some notion of the conditions under which the Jews lived, in almost every part of Europe, a hundred years ago, may be gathered from the restrictions which are imposed upon them to-day in Russia and Roumania. In Roumania a Jew can neither vote nor hold office in the civil service. He is excluded from the professions; he is not permitted, for example, to become a physician or even open a pharmacy; he is not permitted to live in the rural districts; he may neither own land outside of the town nor work as an agricultural labourer. In the mills and factories not more than 25 per cent. of the employees may be Jews. Although they are practically restricted to business enterprises, Jews may not become members of chambers of commerce. Jews are bound to serve in the army, they pay heavier taxes, proportionately, than other portions of the community, but they
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 are classed under the laws as "aliens not subject to alien protection."
In Russia, Jews are not allowed to live outside of what is called the "Pale of Settlement," which includes twelve provinces on the western and southwestern borders which Russia has annexed during the past two hundred years. Only merchants who pay a special license of 1,000 rubles, or about $500, university graduates, and a few others may live outside the pale. A Jew is not even permitted to live in Siberia unless he has been sent there in punishment for crime.
Inside the pale, Jews are not allowed to live outside the cities and incorporated towns. Although Jews are allowed to vote in Russia and send representatives to the Duma, they are not permitted to hold office or to be employed in the public service. They are compelled to pay in addition to the ordinary taxes, which are heavy enough, taxes on the rents they receive from property owned by them, or inheritances, on the meat killed according to the Jewish law, on candles used in some of their religious observances, and on the skull caps they wear during religious services. In spite of this they are excluded from hospitals, schools, and public functions, which, in the pale, are mainly paid for out of the extra taxes imposed upon them.
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The most singular thing about it all is that the disabilities under which the Russian Jew now labours are at once removed by baptism. Not only that, but every Jew who allows himself to be sprinkled with holy water, in sign of the renunciation of his religion and his people, receives thirty rubles, "thirty pieces of silver," as a reward.
The Jews whom I saw in Galicia are not subject to any of the medieval restrictions which are imposed upon members of their race in Russia and Roumania. They enjoy, in fact, all the political rights of other races. Nevertheless, Jews in Galicia are said to be poorer than they are in some parts of Russian Poland, although very much better off than in some parts of southern Russia.
Elsewhere in Europe, where they have had their freedom, Jews are as a rule more prosperous than the people by whom they are surrounded. In Berlin, Germany, for instance, where Jews represent 4.88 per cent. of the total population, 15 per cent. of those who had an income of 1,500 marks, or more, were Jews. Statistics show that similar conditions exist in other parts of Europe.[3]
When I asked an acquaintance, who had lived a number of years in Austria, why this was so,
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 he replied that there were so many Jews in Galicia that there were not enough other people to support them. He then went on to explain that between the two classes, the nobility who owned the land and the peasant who cultivated it, the Jew represented the trader, or middleman. It was, therefore, literally true that there were not enough other people in the country to support the Jew, who represents, however, not more than 11 per cent. of the total population.
One of the first persons I met in Galicia was a representative of this poorer class of Jews. I reached Cracow late one afternoon in the latter part of September. There was a cold wind blowing and, for the first time since I had left Scotland, I noticed an uncomfortable keenness in the evening air, which was an indication, I suppose, that I was on the northern and eastern or the Russian side of the Carpathian Mountains. One of the first persons I encountered as I was standing shivering at the entrance of the hotel was a pale-faced, brown-eyed little boy, who spoke to me in English and seemed to want to establish some sort of friendship with me on the basis of our common acquaintance with the English language. He was unmistakably a Jew and, as we walked down the street together, he told me something of his life in London and then in Cracow. I gathered from what
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 he was able to tell me that his father, who was a cabinetmaker and, as he said, "very poor," had found it harder to live in the fierce competition of the London sweatshops, where he had been employed, than in the Ghetto at Cracow, and so had grown discouraged and returned.
I learned from him, as I did later from others of his race, that not all the Jews who came to England and America succeed and get rich in a few years, as seems to be commonly supposed. Some of them fail, and some get into unexpected troubles, and frequently families who immigrate are broken up and some of them sent back as a consequence of the enforcement of the immigration regulations, so that there is not so much eagerness to go to America as there was a few years ago.
In spite of this fact the Jews of Galicia, nearly every one of whom probably has friends or relatives either in England or America, seem to look with peculiar interest upon every one who speaks the English language, because they regard them as representatives of a people who, more than any other in the world, have tried to be just to the Jews.
A few days later I met in a little village a few miles from Cracow a Jewish trader who, like most of the Jews in this part of the country,
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 spoke German as well as Polish, so that with the assistance of Doctor Park I was able to speak with him. He said that his business was to buy grain and fodder from the large landowners in different parts of Galicia and sell it again to the peasants, who used it to feed their stock. When he learned that I was from America and that I wanted to see something of the life of the peasant people he volunteered to be my guide. It was a very fortunate meeting for me, for I found that this man not only knew about the condition of nearly every family in the village, but he understood, also, exactly how to deal with them so that, at his touch, every door flew open, as if by magic, and I was able to see and learn all that I wanted to know.
In the meantime I noticed that our guide and interpreter seemed to be quite as interested in learning about America as I was interested in getting acquainted with Galicia. He interlarded all his information about the condition of the peasants in different parts of the country with questions about conditions in America. As it turned out, he not only had relatives in America, but he had a cousin in New York who had got into trouble and been sent to prison for three years on account of some business irregularity. It was a small matter, according to my Jewish friend, that would not have cost
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 more than eight days' imprisonment in Galicia. He could not understand, therefore, how a poor man should be treated more harshly in a free country like America, where all are equal, than he was at home, where he was the underdog and did not expect consideration. What seemed to trouble him most, however, was the fact that he had not heard from his cousin for a year and no one knew what had become of him.
When the matter was explained to me, I told the man that if he would give me the name and last address of his cousin, when I returned to New York I would look the matter up and, if possible, learn what had become of the missing cousin.
This seemed to me a very natural proposal, under the circumstances, but it evidently took the poor man by surprise, for he stopped, stared at me an instant, and then in the most humble manner knelt down and kissed my hand. I confess that at first I was a little shocked and rather disgusted. Afterward I learned that it is a common habit, more especially in Russia, for peasants to kiss the hands and even the feet of their superiors. The thought that occurred to me, however, was that it must have taken many centuries of subjection and oppression to make this attitude of humility a familiar and
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 natural way, as it seemed to be in this case, of expressing gratitude.
The singular thing about it all was that this Jew who had shown himself so humble toward me looked down upon and despised the Polish peasants among whom he trades. He referred to them as "ignorant and dirty creatures." For all that, he seemed to have learned their ways of expressing himself to those to whose power or influence he looked for help or protection.
Unde............