sufficient number of Jews to warrant such an undertaking. As there was no longer any struggle between the Jews, as such, and the surrounding non-Jewish world, the history of the Jews of a locality is mainly the history of its communal institutions and of its individual members, who reflect credit on it by their distinction in various fields of activity. We shall now follow the formation of these new communities in various parts of the country, with an effort to understand the spirit which moved the early settlers in their Jewish activities, which helped them to rise to an eminent position in their new home and to be useful to their fellow citizens, as well as to their co-religionists who arrived at a later period. * * * * * There are no statistical figures for the number of immigrants who arrived in the second decade of the nineteenth century; but what may be considered as an official declaration (in the voluminous report of the Immigration Commission, issued in 1910) states that after the year 1816 “an unprecedented emigration from Europe to the United States occurred. It is estimated that no less than 20,000 persons arrived in 1817.” The sudden demand for passage caused overcrowding, disease and death in the steerage of the sailing vessels, which resulted in the first “legislative interference” by a law which “became effective March 2, 1819, containing provisions intending to regulate the number of passengers on each vessel and proper victualing of each vessel.” A provision of this law also marked the beginning of statistics relative to immigration into the United States. And as there was now a certain percentage of Jews among the arrivals of each year, it may be presumed that the Jews of that time were as much interested in these earliest provisions relating to immigration, as we are to-day in that perennial question.