This outburst of Jew-hatred was not confined to Bessarabia. Soon after the Kishineff massacre reports reached this country of further outrages being apprehended owing to the symptoms of anti-Semitism manifested by the inhabitants of the western provinces of the Empire. Nor were these forebodings falsified by events. In the middle of September, 1903, Jew-baiting was once more indulged in at Gomel, a town of Mohileff within the Jewish “pale.” A petty squabble between a Jew and a Christian in the bazaar afforded an excuse to the co-religionists of the latter to wreck the Jewish quarter. Several persons were killed on both sides; but the only details available are official, which in Russia is not a synonym for authentic.[192] The charge most frequently brought against the Jews by the Russian people is, as has been shown, their aversion from productive labour, and their exclusive attachment to traffic in goods and money. The Russian Government some years ago attempted to remove the grievance by affording to the Jews facilities for the pursuit of agriculture. In seven out of the fifteen provinces open to the Jews, efforts were made to form Jewish agricultural settlements. But they do not seem to have been attended by conspicuous success. Towards the end of 1903 an inquiry instituted into the matter elicited conflicting answers. Three of the seven reports, drawn up by provincial Governors, are altogether discouraging. It is pointed out that the Jewish peasant shirks the hard work of tilling the soil and only helps to reap the produce. In one province, the official document asserts, sixty per cent. of the Jews have already abandoned the settlement and turned to the more congenial pursuits of commerce and industry. Another report draws an unfavourable comparison between the Jewish and the Christian farmer, and repeats the opinion that the former takes little interest in the culture of the soil, preferring less laborious occupations. All three reports agree in showing that the experiment of making a husbandman of the Hebrew is a complete failure. On the other hand, we find a fourth Governor maintaining that in his province the only difference between a Christian and a Jewish agriculturist consists in their respective religions. A fifth, while admitting the Jew’s practical ill-success, attributes it to the smallness of his farm, which forces him to give up agriculture as profitless, and he adds that under favourable conditions the results have been not disappointing. The Governor of Kherson states that, though at first the Jews evinced little inclination to turn to the land, upon the revision and improvement of the original conditions, the settlements became more popular; so that in 1898 seventy-three per cent. of the Jewish population were exclusively devoted to agriculture, nineteen per cent. varied the monotony of farming by the combination of trade, while only eight per cent. were engaged entirely in commerce or industry.