There was a sudden increase in immigration in the two years preceding the Russian influx. The country was recovering from the panic of 1873 and from the effect of the contraction of the currency which was incident to the resumption of specie payment by the government at the beginning of 1879. The number of immigrants who came here in 1876 was 169,986; in 1877 it fell to 141,857; in 1878 to 138,469. There was a slight rise in 1879 to 177,826; but in 1880 it jumped to 457,257 and in 1881 (in the fiscal year ending June 30, when there was as yet no increased immigration from Russia on account of the riots) to 669,431. The people who came were needed, as is the case with the million or more who had come here in the three years preceding the panic of 1907 and again in the last two or three years, which is proven by the fact that they are easily absorbed. Not only the general conditions, but even the times, were favorable for an increased Jewish immigration. There was neither economic nor national or racial cause for abstaining from giving those who fled from the _pogroms_ the best public and open-hearted welcome that Jewish refugees ever received when coming in masses from one country to another. The first of the anti-Jewish riots of that period took place in Yelisavetgrad, on April 27, 1881. Another outbreak in Kiev followed on May 8, and there were “over 160 towns and villages in which cases of riot, rapine, murder and spoliation have been known to occur during the last nine months of 1881” (Joseph Jacobs, “Persecution of the Jews in Russia, 1881,” p. 13). These riots, and the relief which was afforded to its victims, and especially to those who left Russia by way of Germany and Austria, have created a small literature of their own; but the subject in general belongs rather to the history of the Jews in Russia than to the present work, which can only be concerned with the emigrants after their arrival here. The first to arrive as a direct result of the riots, and among whom the new tendencies which were called forth by the calamities were prevalent to an appreciable degree, were included in a group of about 250 members of the “Am Olam” (“Eternal People”) Society which came to New York July 29, 1881.