Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/48

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Similar conditions are observed in Bavaria, where the natural increase was larger among the Jews than among the christians in 1876, when a decline began to be noted among both groups, but with a much greater severity among the Jews than among the christians.

The excess of births over deaths among the Jews has thus dwindled to less than one third in Prussia since 1822, and in Bavaria to a little over one third since 1876. This decline in the natural increase of the Jews is not only characteristic of western European Jews, but is also beginning to be noted in eastern Europe. In Hungary, where the rate was among the non-Jewish population only 9.69 during 1891-95, and with slight fluctuations rose to 10.68 in 1903, the tendency among the Jews was decidedly in the opposite direction. It was 17.79 during 1891-1895, and sank to 16.07 in 1901 and even to 14.90 in 1903. The same conditions are observed among Jews in other European countries.

The demographic facts presented in the preceding studies lead to but one generalization: The birth, marriage and death rates of the Jews may be taken as an index of their social, economic and intellectual conditions. Wherever they are isolated by hostile legislation, compelled to live apart from the general population, confined in Ghettos, thus deprived of every opportunity to enter into intimate social intercourse with christians; wherever, largely as a result of this isolation, they are on a low economic and intellectual standard, their birth and marriage rates are high, their death rates, particularly the infant mortality, correspondingly high, and practically no intermarriage with christians takes place. Hostile legislation against the Jews is shown, by the evidence presented above, to utterly fail in its aims. Repression of the Jews in countries like Russia has mainly one object in view: To make their life so miserable and unbearable as to induce them to adopt Christianity, which removes all disabilities. How far this policy fails in its aims can be seen from the fact that conversions