It is proposed--the report declares--to remove the Jews from the rural liquor traffic, because the latter is considered harmful to the population. But it is obvious that the root of the drinking evil is not to be found with the saloon-keepers, but in the right of distilling, or "propination," which constitutes the prerogative of the squires and their main source of income. Let us suppose the sixty thousand Jewish saloon-keepers to be turned out from the villages. The result will be that sixty thousand Russian peasants will take their place, tens of thousands of efficient farm-hands will be lost to the soil, while the Jews cannot be expected to be transformed into capable agriculturists at a moment's notice, the less so as the Government has no resources to effect this sudden transformation of saloon-keepers into corn-growers. It is not true that the village Jew enriches himself at the expense of the peasant. On the contrary, he is generally poor, and ekes out a scanty existence from the sale of liquor and by supplying the peasants with the goods they need. Moreover, by buying the corn on the spot, the Jew saves the peasant from wasting his time in traveling to the city. Altogether in rural economic life the Jew plays the rôle of a go-between, who can be spared neither by the squire nor by the peasant. To transfer all village Jews to the cities and convert them into manufacturers, merchants, and artisans, is a matter of impossibility, for even the Jewish population already settled in the cities is scarcely able to make a living, and to create factories and mills artificially would be throwing money into the water, especially as the exchequer has no free millions at its disposal to enable it to grant subsidies to manufacturers. The recent experiments of the Government have had no effect. On the contrary, the Jewish people "has not only remained in the same state of poverty, but has even been reduced to greater destitution, as a result of having been forced out of a pursuit which had provided it with a livelihood for several centuries." Hence, "the Committee, realizing this situation of a whole people, and being afraid that the continuation of compulsory measures, _in the present political circumstances_, may only exasperate this people, already restricted to the utmost, deems it necessary ... to put a resolute stop to the now prevailing methods of interference by allowing the Jews to remain in their former abodes and by setting free the pursuits suspended by Clause 34."