The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
The Jew is being legislated out of Russia. The reason is not concealed.
The movement was instituted because the Christian peasant and villager
stood no chance against his commercial abilities. He was always ready
to lend money on a crop, and sell vodka and other necessities of life on
credit while the crop was growing. When settlement day came he owned the
crop; and next year or year after he owned the farm, like Joseph.
In the dull and ignorant English of John's time everybody got into debt
to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands; he was
the king of commerce; he was ready to be helpful in all profitable ways;
he even financed crusades for the rescue of the Sepulchre. To wipe out
his account with the nation and restore business to its natural and
incompetent channels he had to be banished the realm.
For the like reasons Spain had to banish him four hundred years ago, and
Austria about a couple of centuries later.
In all the ages Christian Europe has been obliged to curtail his
activities. If he entered upon a mechanical trade, the Christian had to
retire from it. If he set up as a doctor, he was the best one, and he
took the business. If he exploited agriculture, the other farmers had
to get at something else. Since there was no way to successfully compete
with him in any vocation, the law had to step in and save the Christian
from the poor-house. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by
statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage
in agriculture; he was forbidden to practise law; he was forbidden to
practise medicine, except among Jews; he was forbidden the handicrafts.
Even the seats of learning and the schools of science had to be closed
against this tremendous antagonist. Still, almost bereft of employments,
he found ways to make money, even ways to get rich. Also ways to invest
his takings well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard conditions
suggested, the Jew without brains could not survive, and the Jew with
brains had to keep them in good training and well sharpened up, or
starve. Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able
to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent;
ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never
uses them now. This history has a very, very commercial look, a most
sordid and practical commercial look, the business aspect of a Chinese
cheap-labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of
it, but not for the other nine.
Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their
livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the
Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed
agriculture and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has the
candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-union boycott
in a religious dispute.
The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and Germany, and lately
in France; but England and America give them an open field and yet
survive. Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are
not many takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and one in Aberdeen;
but that is because they can't earn enough to get away. The Scotch pay
themselves that compliment, but it is authentic.
I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to do with the
world's attitude toward the Jew; that the reasons for it are older than
that event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret
for having persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under
the mistaken impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a
Jew--a skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that
in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew
comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully
with the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the
questionable sort.
In Berlin, a few years ago, I read a speech which frankly urged the
expulsion of the Jews from Germany; and the agitator's reason was as
frank as his proposition. It was this: that eighty-five percent of
the successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same
percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany
were in the hands of the Jewish race! Isn't it an amazing confession?
It was but another way of saying that in a population of 48,000,000, of
whom only 500,000 were registered as Jews, eighty-five per cent of the
brains and honesty of the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist
upon the honesty--it is an essential of successful business, taken by
and large. Of course it does not rule out rascals entirely, even among
Christians, but it is a good working rule, nevertheless. The speaker's
figures may have been inexact, but the motive of persecution stands out
as clear as day.
The man claimed that in Berlin the banks, the newspapers, the theatres,
the great mercantile, shipping, mining, and manufacturing interests,
the big army and city contracts, the tramways, and pretty much all other
properties of high value, and also the small businesses, were in the
hands of the Jews. He said the Jew was pushing the Christian to the
wall all along the line; that it was all a Christian could do to scrape
together a living; and that the Jew must be banished, and soon--there
was no other way of saving the Christian. Here in Vienna, last autumn,
an agitator said that all these disastrous details were true of
Austria-Hungary also; and in fierce language he demanded the expulsion
of the Jews. When politicians come out without a blush and read the baby
act in this frank way, unrebuked, it is a very good indication that they
have a market back of them, and know where to fish for votes.
You note the crucial point of the mentioned agitation; the argument is
that the Christian cannot compete with the Jew, and that hence his very
bread is in peril. To human beings this is a much more hate-inspiring
thing than is any detail connected with religion. With most people, of
a necessity, bread and meat take first rank, religion second. I am
convinced that the persecution of the Jew is not due in any large degree
to religious prejudice.
No, the Jew is a money-getter; and in getting his money he is a very
serious obstruction to less capable neighbours who are on the same
quest. I think that that is the trouble. In estimating worldly values
the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out
in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes,
some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they
dispute and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it
the end and aim of his life to get it. He was at it in Egypt thirty-six
centuries ago; he was at it in Rome when that Christian got persecuted
by mistake for him; he has been at it ever since. The cost to him has
been heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy--but it
has paid, for it has brought him envy, and that is the only thing which
men will sell both soul and body to get. He long ago observed that
a millionaire commands respect, a two-millionaire homage, a
multi-millionaire the deepest deeps of adoration. We all know that
feeling; we have seen it express itself. We have noticed that when the
average man mentions the name of a multi-millionaire he does it with
that mixture in his voice of awe and reverence and lust which burns in a
Frenchman's eye when it falls on another man's centime.
Point No. 4--'The Jews have no party; they are non-participants.'
Perhaps you have let the secret out and given yourself away. It seems
hardly a credit to the race that it is able to say that; or to you, sir,
that you can say it without remorse; more, that you should offer it as a
plea against maltreatment, injustice, and oppression. Who gives the Jew
the right, who gives any race the right, to sit still in a free country,
and let somebody else look after its safety? The oppressed Jew was
entitled to all pity in the former times under brutal autocracies, for
he was weak and friendless, and had no way to help his case. But he has
ways now, and he has had them for a century, but I do not see that he
has tried to make serious use of them. When the Revolution set him free
in France it was an act of grace--the grace of other people; he does not
appear in it as a helper. I do not know that he helped when England set
him free. Among the Twelve Sane Men of France who have stepped forward
with great Zola at their head to fight (and win, I hope and believe(3))
the battle for the most infamously misused Jew of modern times, do you
find a great or rich or illustrious Jew helping? In the United States he
was created free in the beginning--he did not need to help, of
course. In Austria and Germany and France he has a vote, but of what
considerable use is it to him? He doesn't seem to know how to apply it
to the best effect. With all his splendid capacities and all his
fat wealth he is to-day not politically important in any country. In
America, as early as 1854, the ignorant Irish hod-carrier, who had
a spirit of his own and a way of exposing it to the weather, made it
apparent to all that he must be politically reckoned with; yet fifteen
years before that we hardly knew what an Irishman looked like. As an
intelligent force and numerically, he has always been away down, but he
has governed the country just the same. It was because he was organised.
It made his vote valuable--in fact, essential.
You will say the Jew is everywhere numerically feeble. That is nothing
to the point--with the Irishman's history for an object-lesson. But I
am coming to your numerical feebleness presently. In all parliamentary
countries you could no doubt elect Jews to the legislatures--and even
one member in such a body is sometimes a force which counts. How
deeply have you concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France, and
Germany? Or even in America, for that matter? You remark that the Jews
were not to blame for the riots in this Reichsrath here, and you add
with satisfaction that there wasn't one in that body. That is not
strictly correct; if it were, would it not be in order for you to
explain it and apologise for it, not try to make a merit of it? But I
think that the Jew was by no means in as large force there as he ought
to have been, with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to him on
fairly liberal terms, and it must surely be his own fault that he is so
much in the background politically.
As to your numerical weakness. I mentioned some figures awhile
ago--500,00--as the Jewish population of Germany. I will add some
more--6,000,000 in Russia, 5,000,000 in Austria, 250,000 in the United
States. I take them from memory; I read them in the 'Encyclopaedia
Brittannica' ten or twelve years ago. Still, I am entirely sure of them.
If those statistics are correct, my argument is not as strong as it
ought to be as concerns America, but it still has strength. It is plenty
strong enough as concerns Austria, for ten years ago 5,000,000 was nine
per cent of the empire's population. The Irish would govern the Kingdom
of Heaven if they had a strength there like that.
I have some suspicions; I got them at second-hand, but they have
remained with me these ten or twelve years. When I read in the 'E.B.'
that the Jewish population of the United States was 250,000 I wrote the
editor, and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more
Jews than that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt
a misprint for 25,000,000. I also added that I was personally acquainted
with that many there; but that was only to raise his confidence in me,