But while Germans formed a large part of those who arrived in the two or three decades after the war, the number of Jews who left that country was now very small, and sank to almost nothing about 1880. What was described by a Jewish traveler[41] as the second German-Jewish migration to America, which began about 1836, and to which “Bavaria contributed the largest quota of (Jewish) immigrants, because of her peculiarly harsh (anti-Jewish) marriage laws and commercial restrictions,” practically ended in the decade of the Civil War, when the Jews were emancipated in most of the German states. The progress made by these immigrants in less than one generation can be best illustrated by quoting two passages from the same article by Mr. Kohler: “The early German settlers commonly arrived here without means, frequently without any education other than of the most rudimentary character.” Subsequently (p. 102) he quotes a German-American politician, who wrote in 1869: “The German Jews in America gain in influence daily, being rich, intelligent and educated, or at least seeking education. They read better books than the rest of the Germans....” This progress was largely accelerated by the great business activity which followed the war. A large number of the German-Jewish immigrants amassed wealth, and the stoppage of the arrival of new poor immigrants, or rather of poor relatives, reduced the number of the needy and helpless among them to an insignificant fraction. It may be said that it was during these fifteen years (1865–80), between the preceding large German-Jewish immigration and the following incomparably larger Russian-Jewish influx, that the Jews of the United States succeeded in bringing their communal house to order, and in preparing for their historic mission of receiving the great masses which were soon to be driven thither from the Slavic countries by the iron hand of persecution. Most of the large charitable institutions, which are the pride of American Judaism, and have served to relieve want and pain in various forms, actually date from that period. The date of organization or original foundation is in most cases much earlier. But at the beginning these institutions were more like the small charities which are now founded by poor immigrants. There were very few great Jewish institutions in the United States prior to the Civil War, although most of the magnificent organizations in the older communities justly claim a continued existence from ante-bellum days. The largest number and the most important of them grew to their imposing size and vast usefulness in “the seventies,” i. e., in that breathing spell which the Jews of America had between two periods of immigration.