A visit to Russia offers opportunity for an extremely interesting study. One may become acquainted with a rapid succession of towns where the population is almost entirely Jewish, or half Jewish, or to a large extent Jewish, and also with others in which residence is practically prohibited to Jews, which, therefore, to speak in anti-Semitic jargon, are almost "clean of Jews." In western Europe there is neither the one nor the other. It would be strange, indeed, if such ethnologically unique conditions offered to the observant spectator no disclosures which he seeks elsewhere in vain. In fact, I made in the cities free of Jews an observation which seems to me well worth imparting. The Jewish problem is nothing but a problem of relative overpopulation. The Jews are unendurable only where they are forced to compete with each other.

I made this observation in the following way: The Jewish proletarians of Poland impressed me as extremely repulsive. Their laziness, their filth, their craftiness, their perpetual readiness to cheat cannot help but fill the western European with very[Pg 168] painful feelings and unedifying thoughts, in spite of all the teachings of history and all desire to be just. The evil wish arises that in some painless way the world might be rid of these disagreeable objects, or the equally inhuman thought that it would really be no great pity if this part of the Polish population did not exist at all. One is ashamed of such thoughts; nevertheless, that does not rid one\'s mind of them. Either we must renounce our ideas of cleanliness and honesty or find a great part of the Eastern Hebrews altogether unpleasant. Since the former is impossible, the latter will always be the case. Comparison with the still dirtier, still more immoral, still more neglected Polish proletariat does not drive away these thoughts. The Jew has, besides his filth and his craftiness in business, something else which calls to mind a nobility of civilization, so that he cannot be confused with any chance "lazzarone" or vagabond. He is not himself, but the caricature of a man of culture, and as such he produces an irritating effect.

In the cities free of Jews all this suddenly disappears. The Jews whom one has opportunity to meet there, well educated merchants of the first guild, incorporated artisans, and descendants of the Jewish soldiers of Nicholas I., are of quite another caliber from their Polish brothers. They are in no way to be distinguished from the Russians. One is continually prone to take the bearded Russian driver or merchant for a Jew and the intelligently[Pg 169] keen Jew for a European. Then one learns that these Jewish lawyers, physicians, merchants, and artisans are treated by the Russians themselves as their equals in every respect; indeed, that the Jews enjoy a certain priority as being relatively more honest in their dealings. On the contrary, the Russians, when large numbers of them follow a single calling, as, say, in the great mercantile houses or the ranks of trade, show all the qualities which, to our Western minds, are stamped as specifically Jewish. They are outrageously obtrusive, and unreliable to the point of open deception. The German Hanse towns strictly forbade their merchants to give Russian Jews goods on credit, to lend them money, or to borrow from them, under penalty of immediate punishment.[1] In making the smallest purchase one finds that there is no question of a mercantile reality; that there is no fixed price, no keeping one\'s word, nothing that to us in the West has long seemed a matter of course. Just as in the Orient the Spanish Jews seem much more reliable and sterling than the rascally Greeks and Armenians, the Jews, when thinly scattered, gain by comparison with the native Russians. Now the Russian Jew is no Spaniard, with a proud Western past. He is altogether identical with[Pg 170] the Polish Jew. His hi............