Page:The Rise of the Russian Jew.djvu/6

. On Friday or Saturday afternoon he is likely, for instance, to take a long walk to the park, where he is seen keenly inspecting the animals and perhaps boasting of his knowledge about them. He is an acquisitive little fellow, and seldom enjoys himself unless he feels that he is adding to his figurative or literal stock.

The cloak and umbrella business in New York is rapidly being almost monopolized by the Jews who began in the Ghetto; and they are also very large clothing merchants. Higher, however, than a considerable merchant in the world of business the little Ghetto boy, born in a patriarchal Jewish home, has not yet attained. The Jews who as bankers, brokers, and speculators on Wall Street control millions never have been Ghetto Jews. They came from Germany, where conditions very different from what they are in Russia, Galicia, and Roumania, and where, through the comparatively liberal education of a secular character which they were able to obtain, they were already beginning to have a national life outside of the Jewish traditions. Then, too, these Jews who are now prominent in Wall Street, have been in this country much longer than their Russian brethren. They are frequently are the sons of Germans who in the last generation attained commercial rank. If they were born abroad, they came many years before the Russian immigration began and