In less than five years after the emancipation of the Russian serfs there came a crisis, occasioned by the hard times which followed the crop failure of 1867, which caused “a state of distress in East Prussia and a famine on the other side of the border.”[43] The Jews of Germany did much to alleviate the distress of the large number of Russian Jews who lived at that time in East Prussia, and also to send relief to the needy co-religionists of Western Russia. But then, as now, the suffering was too widespread and the general condition too hopeless to be relieved by almsgiving, and the result was an exodus of considerable magnitude. This new exodus was treated in a series of articles in the _Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums_ of 1869 entitled “Auswanderung der Juden aus den Westrussischen Prowinzen” (Emigration of Jews from the provinces of Western Russia). M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (in his _Les Immigrants juifs et le Judaisme aux Etats-Unis_, Paris, 1905, p. 5) tells of 500 Jewish emigrants from Russian-♦Poland which the Alliance Israelite Universelle sent to the United States in 1869 from the famine stricken districts. The great anti-Jewish riot in Odessa on Passover, 1871, which shattered the hope of the Jews for emancipation in the then near future, and marked the beginning of the reaction which culminated in the reign of the following Czar, was also followed by ♦considerable emigration of Jews. Many remained in Prussia, which was yet open for Russian subjects; but a large number proceeded to the United States, or went there after remaining for some time in England. The Jewish population of the United States, and especially of the City of New York, was therefore constantly increasing, though neither the number of Jews nor the relative proportion as to country of origin is possible to ascertain for that time. Judge Daly (p. 56) quotes Joseph A. Scovil, author of “Old Merchants of New York” as saying (in 1868), “There are now 80,000 Israelites in this city, and it is the high standard of excellence of the old Israelite merchant of 1800 that has made the race occupy the proud position it now holds in this city and in the nation.” Daly himself thought the number to be somewhat smaller. He says (p. 58), “The Jews have now (1872) in New York twenty-nine synagogues, and as a proportional part of the population they are now estimated at about 70,000.”