The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
either in America or abroad? Will it ever come to an end? Will a
Jew be permitted to live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the
rest of mankind? What has become of the Golden Rule?'
I will begin by saying that if I thought myself prejudiced against the
Jew, I should hold it fairest to leave this subject to a person not
crippled in that way. But I think I have no such prejudice. A few years
ago a Jew observed to me that there was no uncourteous reference to his
people in my books, and asked how it happened. It happened because the
disposition was lacking. I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race
prejudices, and I think I have no colour prejudices nor caste prejudices
nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All
that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for
me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can
at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that
I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All
religions issue Bibles against him, and say the most injurious things
about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for
the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this
is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without
this precedent Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Of course Satan
has some kind of a case, it goes without saying. It may be a poor one,
but that is nothing; that can be said about any of us. As soon as I can
get at the facts I will undertake his rehabilitation myself, if I can
find an unpolitic publisher. It is a thing which we ought to be willing
to do for any one who is under a cloud. We may not pay Satan reverence,
for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.
A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of
spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of
the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities
of the loftiest order. In his large presence the other popes and
politicians shrink to midges for the microscope. I would like to see
him. I would rather see him and shake him by the tail than any other
member of the European Concert. In the present paper I shall allow
myself to use the word Jew as if it stood for both religion and race.
It is handy; and, besides, that is what the term means to the general
world.
In the above letter one notes these points:
1. The Jew is a well-behaved citizen.
2. Can ignorance and fanaticism alone account for his unjust treatment?
3. Can Jews do anything to improve the situation?
4. The Jews have no party; they are non-participants.
5. Will the persecution ever come to an end?
6. What has become of the Golden Rule?
Point No. 1.--We must grant proposition No. 1, for several sufficient
reasons. The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even
his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he
is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome.
In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare--in all
countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little
to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long
roll of 'assaults' and 'drunk and disorderlies' his name seldom appears.
That the Jewish home is a home in the truest sense is a fact which
no one will dispute. The family is knitted together by the strongest
affections; its members show each other every due respect; and reverence
for the elders is an inviolate law of the house. The Jew is not a burden
on the charities of the state nor of the city; these could cease from
their functions without affecting him. When he is well enough, he works;
when he is incapacitated, his own people take care of him. And not in a
poor and stingy way, but with a fine and large benevolence. His race
is entitled to be called the most benevolent of all the races of men.
A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but
there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle. The Jew
has been staged in many uncomplimentary forms, but, so far as I know, no
dramatist has done him the injustice to stage him as a beggar. Whenever
a Jew has real need to beg, his people save him from the necessity
of doing it. The charitable institutions of the Jews are supported by
Jewish money, and amply. The Jews make no noise about it; it is done
quietly; they do not nag and pester and harass us for contributions;
they give us peace, and set us an example--an example which we have not
found ourselves able to follow; for by nature we are not free givers,
and have to be patiently and persistently hunted down in the interest of
the unfortunate.
These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew
is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is
quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal
dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not
a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in
benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very
quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add that he is as
honest as the average of his neighbours--But I think that question is
affirmatively answered by the fact that he is a successful business man.
The basis of successful business is honesty; a business cannot thrive
where the parties to it cannot trust each other. In the matter of
numbers the Jew counts for little in the overwhelming population of New
York; but that his honesty counts for much is guaranteed by the fact that
the immense wholesale business of Broadway, from the Battery to Union
Square, is substantially in his hands.
I suppose that the most picturesque example in history of a trader's
trust in his fellow-trader was one where it was not Christian trusting
Christian, but Christian trusting Jew. That Hessian Duke who used to
sell his subjects to George III. to fight George Washington with got
rich at it; and by-and-by, when the wars engendered by the French
Revolution made his throne too warm for him, he was obliged to fly
the country. He was in a hurry, and had to leave his earnings
behind--$9,000,000. He had to risk the money with some one without
security. He did not select a Christian, but a Jew--a Jew of only modest
means, but of high character; a character so high that it left him
lonesome--Rothschild of Frankfort. Thirty years later, when Europe had
become quiet and safe again, the Duke came back from overseas, and the
Jew returned the loan, with interest added.(2)
The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though
he has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid
of vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom
transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings
with courts are almost restricted to matters connected with commerce. He
has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising
oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and
for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the
other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable
just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know
very well that he has violated the spirit of it. He is a frequent and
faithful and capable officer in the civil service, but he is
charged with an unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a
soldier--like the Christian Quaker.
Now if you offset these discreditable features by the creditable ones
summarised in a preceding paragraph beginning with the words, 'These
facts are all on the credit side,' and strike a balance, what must the
verdict be? This, I think: that, the merits and demerits being
fairly weighed and measured on both sides, the Christian can claim no
superiority over the Jew in the matter of good citizenship.
Yet in all countries, from the dawn of history, the Jew has been
persistently and implacably hated, and with frequency persecuted.
Point No. 2.--'Can fanaticism alone account for this?'
Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for nearly all of it,
but latterly I have come to think that this was an error. Indeed, it is
now my conviction that it is responsible for hardly any of it.
In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii.
We have all thoughtfully--or unthoughtfully--read the pathetic story of
the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph,
with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of
the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money
all away, to the last penny; took a nation's live stock all away, to the
last hoof; took a nation's land away, to the last acre; then took the
nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child
by child, till all were slaves; a corner which took everything, left
nothing; a corner so stupendous that, by comparison with it, the most
gigantic corners in subsequent history are but baby things, for it dealt
in hundreds of millions of bushels, and its profits were reckonable by
hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was a disaster so crushing that
its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day, more than
three thousand years after the event.
Is it presumably that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph the foreign Jew
all this time? I think it likely. Was it friendly? We must doubt it. Was
Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long in
Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express
that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us
remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion?
I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark
made by one of the Latin historians. I read it in a translation many
years ago, and it comes back to me now with force. It was alluding to
a time when people were still living who could have seen the Saviour in
the flesh. Christianity was so new that the people of Rome had hardly
heard of it, and had but confused notions of what it was. The substance
of the remark was this: Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through
error, they being 'mistaken for Jews.'
The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians,
but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other
they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not
assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates
Christianity and was not born of Christianity? I think so. What was the
origin of the feeling?
When I was a boy, in the back settlements of the Mississippi Valley,
where a gracious and beautiful Sunday school simplicity and practicality
prevailed, the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was hated
with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing to do with it. In
a trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of the
Westerner. His shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge, his
enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in applying these forces were
frankly confessed, and most competently cursed.
In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and ignorant Negroes
made the crops for the white planter on shares. The Jew came down in
force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on
credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share
of the present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before
long, the whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved
him.