THE JEW'S FABLED WEALTH

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVIII, Issue 12070, 25 October 1913, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE JEW'S FABLED WEALTH

"Rich as'a Jew" is a byword from I time immemorial,- and the belief that the race areKthe possessors of enormous wealth appears in ' "ahti-semitic creeds and, som'etiiheSj in olir own unguarded boasts," says Max. Heler iri The American Israelite (Philadelphia). Publicists and! writer's of the past and present ' hare".'-' fostered'■. the idea, explains the writer; while, at the. present moment the claim is reiterated in the English translation of Warner Sombert's work "Die Juden mid das Wirtschaftsleben" (The Jew and' Agricultural Life), published in 1911. that "the Jews have been the world's capitalists from immemorial times and that their wealth has been bandied down continuously, from generation to ,generation, down to our own day." The present writer dissents entirely from tlie view, citing in support Dr Ignaz Zollschan, author of "The Race Problem," to the effect that- the

descendants of the Spanish-Portuguese Croesuses have either long ago disappeared; in, Christianity, or else are leadihg_ a /wretched- existence in '■ Oriental mellah or Polish ghetto." Mr Heller, in addition to pointing out the imposl sibility of the -claim, asserts that Jewish ambitions have taken other directions : ''•■.■..

"Zollsc'han might .have added that things- 'are more sharply eliaracteristic and; therefore, more easily, proved or ■ disproved' than the' cori'timirt-y of wealth. If such an absurd possibility were, lindeed, conceivable as, the continuity of wealth, unsupported by landed estates, among a "people of haunted existence and unprotected rights, if one family could be imagined that had retained a large fortune from Solomonic times or for even so much as, lot u.s say, two or three centuries, there would have to be evidence";" 'in the possession of family jewels, family portraits, family plate, family library, of that settled and mature prosperity which never fails to leave these visible heirlooms of ancestral comfort and culture. Hon- is it that iiist.'one familjr of Jewish millionaires, the Rothschilds,' has attained to its centennial, that4ioti one. other wealthy family in all: Jewdorn can point to as many as four or five generations of real wealth ? Howdoes it come that while hundreds of our Polish and Crerman ' families trace their descent centuries back, to famous scholars, -like Mali ram. Schiff, Moses Iseeries, .and others, while among the Spanish Jews there are' those whose genealogies go back unbrokenly 'for centuries to the Abrnbamels,' the Mendcs, the Teiseir'as, and so forth, there is not, outside the -Rothschilds, one wealthy Jewish family that can boast wealthy ancestors for so much as one century?

"Nor can this fa.ct.be explained from the constant shifting and wandering of tli.? Jew. There are ghetti, like those of Amsterdam, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Prague. Venice, especially Rome, in which Jews have lived continuously for many centuries. In these, ghetti there are numei-oiis families which trace their descent to scholars and within which traditions scholarship and piety have continued through many generations. How is that the powers of accumulation, the talent for acquiring and retaining wealth, have not, in a single instance (except the one unbroken century of the Rothschilds), .shown a sihii■lar persistence? There is' only one possible answer: Because the disposition toward spiritual culture is rooted far more deeply in the Jewish soul than is the love of possession or of material comfort.

"Zollschan, however, animadverting upon, the real significance of Jewish wealth, wills attention to other important facts. As to the indescribable poverty of the Jewish Orient, that has, by this time, become a thrice-told tale. Two facts, however, are not so frequently adduced!: thle 'one that, -as Zollsc'han put it: 'The Jewish" people, like every other people, is comparable, in its socia'l stratification, to a pyramid; but, contrary to conditions elsewhere (excepting, wo "might reserve, similar evils in our own 'Country), the diminishing top with us is continually breaking off through baptism and intermarriage, such apostasy and union of our upper classes bejng tantamount to a. revindication of Jewish capital so extensive that recently a statistician (Rachfahl) has'put'forth the; after all, exaggerated estimate that much as 70 per cent, of the capital acquired by the Jews becomes dejudaized again.' " In the Middle Ages there were means other than these natural ones for transferring to their hands the Jews' wealth. The Church and State, says this writer, did not keep him waiting long, "before they had spied him as a ready-made victim for taxation, oppressive, legislation, and' exploitation of every sort." Coming down to modern days, those whose "clamor, in books and. magazines,, about Jewish conquests and-nn-vasions," continues Mr Heller, overlook another (economic fact:—

"It ' 'happens very frequently in Russia. Galicia. Bohemia, Germany that, when the Jews have succeeded in .thoroughly sy'stemat-ising some line of. manufacture or trade, they are crowded/ out in tlie end by the non-Jew who 'has learned the-tr methods and' who displaces them with 'ease.. In: Bohemia ;tha't seems to he the story in many .instances, so that, to-day, the Czech is, :by many, regarded', to' be/ the 1 Jew-'s r su-peijior (in■''oomniierpial acumen; in ■■: G<&rtmiiy, according to Zollschan, ■ who designates this symptom as .' the law-1 .of dispossession,' the- Jews have b-den -i totally crowded! out from the chemical industries. That tlie house of Rothschild _does not to-day ocoupytho para' mount position it once 'held in the world of ■'finance is matter of.common knowledge. "Nor must it finally b.e forgotten that of all the baseless slalide-rs that lvav« ever been hatched out against the Jew, the: most pitifully falste is that which represents Jewish capital as a solid' national asset,-lined "'up in : serried, .array' for the progressive domination "of tlie world..' The /beer-hall. ttnti-Sfeiniite, jdrawing upon a. riotous J irhaghiatidn, may picture mankind'as. -the shackled- shtve of Jewish gold; a,' Professor Starr Jordan',' vociferous champion of disarmament, .arbitration, * peace, may relish, in convention and ■from lecture, platform, .-ill the stupid, lies about a set of. thirteen Jewish ' ■banker families dictating - war and' •peace, stimulating armament, piling tip national debts; a pseiiclo-sciehtific economist, like Sombart, may paint the Jew as the inventor and. masterspirit of capitalism," which threatens to" dry up the very sou) of mankind ; the patent and obvious fact, as'evidienced. bevond all dispute, in innuemarble instances, is: that the Jewish bankinghouses, both the ' baptised' and -unbap.tisecl, .oiit only do ' not -operate'as a solid, whole, but have not the shadowof a mutual understanding, even when a .''Russian or Roumanian loan is to bo •obstructed: that the Jewish'banker in Germany; France, England is forced, from"' patriotic consideration, to ' net, ■even to the detriment of his hi-otljers, in the interest of th'e. country to which he owes alliegience; that', therefore, the •vast capital-in' the hands of individual Jews is onlv to a,n insignificant extent available, for the righting of tlie -wrongs, for the mitigation-of the miseries which : are being- inflicted upon us. The pos--session'-of some; 'in some- senses', is a source of weakness, as 'the ownership -of land lis a, mark of solidity 'and' distinction; capital is constitutionally timiid; the landowner is the genuine possessor tlie Permanence of whoso wealth partakes of the inalienable char'acter of its substance.

■ "Wo may look forward to much deepTooted : mischief, fronr the' brilliant 'volumes of Houston .Stewart, Chamberlain which, in their English dress, have ■ hiul at the-hands of the British, and American public an even's friendlier reception than' what they met with, m the cradile-land of. the anti-Semitism they preach. The subtle and sustained . appeal- the.v make to -Teutonic pride and Anglo-Saxon conceit will: contribute powerfully toward commending .their' skilful misrepresentations and specious arguments: The Sombart .book,: as .not likely to' make many converts to aiiti-Semitir- views :• that-the-Jew lis the arch-capitalist, tire world's organiser. the monev-uower of all history, tif -.ail this it will not lie easv to persuade the countrv of Rockefeller and •■ \\ever•haenser, of Carnegie, the Va.riderbilts, and the Goulds. Still there is, a sin is-, ter meaniing to the fact that;;: decades ago. the invectives. ■ of ' Duehring, Treitschke, and Stoeckcr could never find admiring 'translators or an eager ptiblic in ■'■ the-English tongue and; (ffirased but feeble echoes, even when they had "a' mouthpiece as eminentvand. able as Goldwin "Smith. : Perhaps tTie

Chestertons and Bellocs, the vaudeville stage and the magazine sensation may have been preparing the soil for a. friendlier reception of the fanciful tale."