The Ohinemuri Gazette AND UPPER THAMES WARDEN WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 1906. THE JEW IN RUSSIA.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XVI, Issue 2008, 2 May 1906, Page 2

The Ohinemuri Gazette AND UPPER THAMES WARDEN WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 1906. THE JEW IN RUSSIA.

An informing paper on "AntiSemitism in Russia " is contributed to the "Monthly Review " by "L. Vilfafi, who deals largely with the difficulties which the Liberals have to face in ameliorating the present sad position in Russia in connection with the race. The total number of Jews in the Russian Empire amounts to about 5,000,000. Were they evenly distributed throughout the country they would, form but an insignificant portion of a population of'nearly 140,000,000. But the enormous majority are concentrated in Poland and the Southwestern provinces. In Warsaw there'are 250,000 Jews out of a population of 450,000. Outside < these provinces of the Jewish pale, the Jew has no legal right to reside, and where he is present elsewhere it is either, because the authorities are unaware of them, or have received bribes. In these other places they are always liable to expulsion. In Poland and the West the great majority of the Jews are excessively poor, and dwell in most squalid conditions. They are, for the most part, miserable, undersized weaklings, dressed in rags—in every way wretched specimens of humanity. They are, as it were, suffocated in the pale; they exist only by the most sordid and* ruiuous; competition, so that they excite contempt as well as hatred. They are excluded by law from all the public services; they may neither own farm land nor obtain mortgages upon it ; and, consequently, they are all driven to commercial pursuits and to the liberal professions. The grain trade is largely in their hands, and is carried on in a highly speculative fashion. The .lews buy up the crops before they are above ground, and then gamble on the rise or fall in prices. In all businesses they undersell their rivals, showing also ten times the ability of the Russians Few of the Russians of West but owe them money. The Russian is naturally improvident, extravagnnt, and a lover of good living. The Jew is the contrary of all this, and the result is inevitable. So |# the liberal professions. At the schools they are treated with great severity, and practically only those who secure gold medals in the competitions are allowed to go on to the University. The consequence is that the Jewish graduates easily outdistance their competitors, so that here, as in most other cases, persecution recoils. i The best lawyers, doctors, brokers, and merchants are found among the Jews. These various circumstances, added to the objectionable appearance and unpleasant characteristics of the Russian and Polish Jews, aud the long inherited prejudices of the orthodox Christiaus, cause the race to be condemned and hated with a bitterness that few other races have experienced. Any anti Jewish enactment of the authorities, far from being regarded as cruel and shameful, is in accord with the feelings of the nation at large Under that persecution the Jews have largely become Socialists, and thus they arc denounced by the authorities a-* '' exploiters of the people, fhe enemies of Russia,of the (Jzar, and i»f Christianity." The position as described by the writer is, indeed, pitiable, for liberal as he is iv his ideas, and convinced as he. is that the only effectual reform is to treat the Jew a-* an ordinary citizen, he fears that the lir«t result of gram ing a full mia-ure of liberty to the race would be to iifcrea^e their speed and their power, and to make them still more detested. He sees before the Russian Jews a long period of emigration and of suffering. *" The one thing- to be thank i'ul for," said an Odessa JdW recently, " is that the outbreaks have not destroyed our entente with the Liberals." Count \ Witto's Government, it is believed, will have the will to do good; it remains questionable, how far even a constitutional Russia would give it the power.