The situation of the Jews in Roumania had been growing worse since the financial crisis of 1899, and in the last year of the century there was a stampede of Jews from that country, some of them walking hundreds of miles before they could find a place to rest or until they reached a port from which they could embark for England or America. Still, neither the Jewish immigration in general nor the immigration from Roumania could give the slightest cause for uneasiness to the government of the United States, the tide of immigration was now again rising from the lowest ebb it had reached since 1879――229,295 in 1898――and neither the 5,613 Roumanian Jews who arrived at the port of New York in 1901 nor the 6,395 who came in 1902, when the general immigration was 487,918 and 648,743, respectively, could be taken seriously as a cause for interference or protest. There would have been much more cause for protests of that nature after the great massacres in Russia several years later, when the number of Jews who arrived in one year (1906) exceeded 150,000. The interest that the Government of the United States took in the Roumanian situation is therefore believed to have been due principally to the friendly attitude of President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay towards Jews in general. It was, however, nothing new for the American Government to use its good offices in behalf of the persecuted Jews of Roumania. As early as 1867, Secretary of State Seward corresponded with Mr. Morris, the American Minister to Constantinople, about the persecutions of that year; and the latter reported having told Mr. Golesco, the agent of the Danubian principalities, that the sufferings of the Jews there “has all the appearance of religious persecution, and that the confidence of the Government of the United States would be impaired in the Government of Bucharest, unless the proscriptive measures against the Jews discontinued.”[53]