JEWS IN AMERICA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7974, 27 February 1906, Page 3

JEWS IN AMERICA.

According to Mr Herbert N. Casson, who discusses the matter in "Munsey'a Magazine," America is steadily drawing the Jewish population of the Old World, and at the present rate of immigration another century will see more than half the Jewish race settled in the United States. Of course, it is not at all certain that emigration lroai Europe will continue at any thing approaohing the present rate. A settlement of Russia's domestic affairs, with some promise of security for the Jews, would cause a very material reduction, and the success of the movement, it is believed, would mean almost the complete cessation of Jewish emigration. At present, however, there is a steady stream to the United States. New York already- contains about thirty times as many Jews as there are in Jerusalem; and the newcomers who land every six months would make a larger city than that historic site of a departed splendour. The total number of Jews in all countries is estimated at eleven millions. ' About one million fftur hundred thousand are now in America. Half of these are in New York, and onetenth in Chicago. Mr Oasson declares that the Jews have the best of rights to be in America, They were there first. The epoch-making voyage of Ooiumbus, he says, would not have been possible | without the aid of a Jew, Luis de Santagel, who advanced the necessary money for the expedition, £30,000, as a personal loan to the King and Queen. The pretty story about Queen Isabella pawning her jewels feiwas invented years afterwards. The great navigator's map was drawn by Hibea, called the Map Jew; his astronomical tables were compiled hy the Jew Abraham Zacuto; his iship's doctor was Bernal the Jew; the first sailor who saw land was Eodrigo de Triana the Jew; and the first European to set foot on Ameri- ' can soil was the interpreter, Luis de Torres the Jew. Jews, it is said, make excellent colonists and citizens wherever go, because they alone have no dag and no fatherland.