was doing any mischief toward anybody whatsoever. In
fact, the Jews were the only ones of the nineteen different
races in Austria which did not have a party they are ab
solutely non-participants. Yet in your article you say that
in the rioting which followed, all classes of people were
1 See Stirring Times in Austria, in this volume.
204 CONCERNING THE JEWS
unanimous only on one thing, viz., in being against the
Jews. Now, will you kindly tell me why, in your judgment,
the Jews have thus ever been, and are even now, in these
days of supposed intelligence, the butt of baseless, vicious
animosities ? I dare say that for centuries there has been
no more quiet, undisturbing, and well-behaving citizen, as
a class, than that same Jew. It seems to me that ignorance
and fanaticism cannot alone account for these horrible and
unjust persecutions.
Tell me, therefore, from your vantage point of cold
view, what in your mind is the cause. Can American Jews
do anything to correct it 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 man
kind ? 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 ;
CONCERNING THE JEWS 205
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 o-et at the facts I will undertake
O
his rehabilitation myself, if I can find an impolitic publisher.
It is a thino- which we ou<rht to be willing;; to do for any
O o o *
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. I. We must grant proposition No. I, 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
206 CONCERNING THE JEWS
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,
CONCERNING THE JEWS 207
they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, un-
addicted 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 benevo
lence he is above the reach of competition. These are the
very quint-essentials 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
or 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. 1
1 Here is another piece of picturesque history ; and it reminds us that
208 CONCERNING THE JEWS
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.
shabbiness and dishonesty are not the monopoly of any race or creed, but
are merely human :
Congress has passed a bill to pay $379-56 to Moses Pendergrass, of
Libertyville, Missouri. The story of the reason of this liberality is
pathetically interesting, and shows the sort of pickle that an honest man
may get into who undertakes to do an honest job of work for Uncle Sam.
In 1886 Moses Pendergrass put in a bid for the contract to carry the mail
on the route from Knob Lick to Libertyville and Coffman, thirty miles a
day, from July I, 1887, for one year. He got the postmaster at Knob
Lick to write the letter for him, and while Moses intended that his bid
should be $400, his scribe carelessly made it $4. Moses got the contract,
and did not find out about the mistake until the end of the first quarter,
when he got his first pay. When he found at what rate he was working
he was sorely cast down, and opened communication with the Post Office
Department. The department informed him that he must either carry
out his contract or throw it up, and that if he threw it up his bondsman
would have to pay the Government $1,459.85 damages. So Moses carried
out his contract, walked thirty miles every week-day for a year, and
carried the mail, and received for his labour $4 or, to be accurate, $6.84 ;
for, the route being extended after his bid was accepted, the pay was
proportionately increased. Now, after ten years, a bill was finally passed
to pay to Moses the difference between what he earned in that unlucky
year and what he received.
The Sun, which tells the above story, says that bills were introduced
in three or four Congresses for Moses relief, and that committees
repeatedly investigated his claim.
It took six Congresses, containing in their persons the compressed
virtues of 7> ooo > oo of people, and cautiously and carefully giving
expression to those virtues in the fear of God and the next election, eleven
years to find out some way to cheat a fellow Christian out of about $13
on his honestly executed contract, and out of nearly $300 due him on
its enlarged terms. And they succeeded. During the same time they
paid out $1,000,000,000 in pensions a third of it unearned and un
deserved. This indicates a splendid all-around competency in theft, for it
starts with farthings, and works its industries all the way up to ship-loads.
It may be possible that the Jews can beat this, but the man that bets on it
is taking chances.
CONCERNING THE JEWS 209
We have seen that he seldom transgresses the laws against
o O
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 begin
ning 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
p
2io CONCERNING THE JEWS
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 presumable 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. 1
The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing
against Christians, but they were quite ready to persecute
CONCERNING THE JEWS 211
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 Mis
sissippi Valley, where a gracious and beautiful Sunday-school
simplicity and unpractically 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 com
petently 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.
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 necessaries 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 England of John s time every
body got into debt to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative
212 CONCERNING THE JEWS
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 restric
tion 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
CONCERNING THE JEWS 213
has a very, very commercial look, a most sordid and prac
tical 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 handi
crafts against them. Why was that ? That has the
candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-
union boycott in a religious disguise.
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 towards 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 perse
cuted 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 question
able sort.
In Berlin, a rew years ago, I read a speech which frankly
urged the expulsion of the Jews from Germany ; and the
214 CONCERNING THE JEWS
agitator s reason was as frank as his proposition. It was
this : that eighty-five per cent, 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 news
papers, the theatres, the great mercantile, shipping, mining,
and manufacturing interests, the big army and city con
tracts, 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
CONCERNING THE JEWS 215
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 neigh
bours 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
216 CONCERNING THE JEWS
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 friend
less, 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 or 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 ) 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