Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/347

Rh associated in the public mind, and still exhibiting a predilection for commercial life, they or their children are also to be found in nearly every trade and profession, and are coming into increasing prominence in connection with those positions in the public service which are open to competitive examinations.

This immigration has also another side. The fact that it has been stimulated by pressure from behind rather than a demand in the industrial market here has tended not only to make it possible for the movement to override or evade our immigration laws but also to get beyond the control of the philanthropic organizations which have the best interests of the immigrants at heart.

The tendency of Hebrews to prosper diminishes as they congregate together, and, quite apart from the matter of civil disabilities, there is a proportion above which they are unable to thrive in any given city or town. These conditions have already been realized in certain localities here, and philanthropic effort which was once concerned principally in inducing emigration from unfavorable surroundings in Europe is now attempting to prevent and relieve the equally serious evils of congestion in localities to which it is tending. With reference to the situation in New York city the 27th Annual Report of the United Hebrew Charities (October, 1901) makes the statement 'that a condition of chronic poverty is developing in the Jewish community of New York that is appalling in its immensity.' It goes on to state that, of the applicants to that society for assistance during the year, 45 per cent., 'representing between 20,000 and 25,000 human beings, have been in the United States over five years; have been given the opportunities for economic and industrial improvement which this country affords, yet notwithstanding all this, have not managed to reach a position of economic independence.' It, furthermore, makes the estimate that 'from 75,000 to 100,000 members of the New York Jewish community are unable to supply themselves with the immediate necessaries of life, and who for this reason are dependent, in some form or other, upon the public purse.'

To a degree wholly unlooked for among Jews, the above-mentioned phase of the present Hebrew immigration is accompanied by a moral degradation which has, to some extent, been made familiar through recent events in local municipal politics.

As the report of the society above referred to stated in 1898, 'those who are familiar with the crowded section on the lower east side know that vices are beginning to spring up which heretofore have been strangers to the Jewish people.' Referring to the same conditions, it is asserted in the report for 1901 that 'the vice and crime, the irreligiousness, lack of self-restraint, indifference to social conventions,