A minor problem which had also become more acute under the changed conditions was the Sunday Laws of the various states. While the laws themselves date further back, some of them from the eighteenth century, and they were not enforced with any more severity than before, the opportunities for conflict with them were now much more frequent. The Jewish immigrants of the former periods, who were mostly traders doing business with their Gentile neighbors, and were also inclined toward Reform Judaism, usually rested Sunday, for economic reasons as well as on account of their religious views. But now there were in many large cities, and especially in New York, large Jewish neighborhoods where brisk trading was done among Jews themselves. There were Jewish shops and factories in which the owners, the managers and foremen, as well as the workers, were Jews. And not only was the proportion of Orthodox Jews among them very large, but even the unbelievers and the radicals among them thought the Sunday laws oppressive and incongruous. It was certainly not what most of them expected to find in the Land of Liberty: to be hampered and interfered with for practices which were then practically permissible in countries like Russia and Austria, where the Churches rule supreme and where Jews are harassed on every imaginable pretext. Two incidents in the relations with Russia aroused the interest of the Russian Jews in America at that time. The first related to the Treaty of Extradition which was negotiated between the two governments during the first administration of President Cleveland, but was not pressed for ratification, owing to protests which were made against it by Russian Jews and which were seconded by many liberal Americans and by a considerable portion of the press. But the document itself, signed by the representatives of the two governments seven or eight years before, remained in the State Department, and was again presented to the Senate by John W. Foster, a former American Minister to Russia, who held the office of Secretary of State in the last months of the administration of President Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901). It was ratified by the Senate in February, 1893, and the report of its ratification and exchange with Russia was a painful surprise for the Jews of the country, especially for the natives of Russia. Happily the fears about the possible effects of the treaty proved absolutely groundless. Every extradition case under this treaty which was fought in the United States courts was won, and, as far as it is known, not one Russian refugee who made the plea against extradition, claiming that he was wanted for political offences, was ever delivered to Russia.