It was different in regard to the religious liberalism or radicalism which was then occupying the minds of the Jews of Germany. The conditions in that country made religious reform one of the burning questions of the day among them; some saw in its adoption a sure means of obtaining the much coveted political emancipation, while others thought it the only protection against the frightfully increasing number of conversions which were then occurring. Orthodox Judaism was certainly losing ground in Germany at that time, and it was difficult to foresee where it would stop or how much of it would remain. Wherever there was a struggle between the old order of things in religious matters and the new, the latter was certain to prevail. Within a few decades the real old style Orthodoxy almost totally disappeared from most parts of Germany, retaining a foothold only in the province of Posen and in isolated localities like Mayence and Frankfort-on-the-Main. Elsewhere even those who did not join the extreme reformers adopted a conservatism which was far from the old Orthodoxy. The bulwark of Orthodoxy――the poor Jewish masses――was itself disappearing: the old style rabbis who survived were in despair, and when they died modern German preachers were chosen to fill their places. It seemed as if the temple was swallowing the synagogue, and the religious radical was victorious decades before the political radical obtained even a part of what he desired. The conditions in this country were entirely different. Emancipation had been achieved, and there was practically no Jewish question as far as the outside world was concerned. There were no wholesale desertions from the camp of Judaism, but that slow drifting away of a part of the wealthier class, which is not an unusual phenomenon wherever and whenever there is no legal restriction or stubborn prejudice to prevent gradual assimilation. There was also a steady replenishment, or rather an augmentation, of the poorer Orthodox classes, among whom the Polish and Russian element was steadily increasing, a prejudice which is almost national keeping them apart from the Germans, who were rapidly advancing in wealth, social and political position, as well as in religious radicalism. The old American element which remained true to traditional Judaism, the considerable part of the Germans who would not accept reform, and the masses of later arrivals, gave to Orthodox Judaism in America a strength which it never possessed in Germany after the close of the eighteenth century. The steady increase in immigration from the Slavic countries easily filled up the places of those whose improved material and social condition caused them to drop out of the ranks of the Orthodox; just as those who rose to wealth and joined the reformers filled up the places left vacant by those who advanced beyond Reform Judaism into that complete assimilation into which it must lead