In general the Jewish merchants are quite strongly distinguished from the Russian merchants in their employment of the competitive principles and methods common to the commercial operations of Western Europe and the United States. Their principle of a quick turnover with a small profit, and their use of credit, are not in vogue among the Russian merchants who operate on the basis of customary prices and long credits. In their social characteristics as well, the Jews are strongly set off from the rest of the population. The Jews are essentially urban, the non-Jews are overwhelmingly rural. In all Russia, 51 per cent of the Jews lived in incorporated towns, as against only 12 per cent of the non-Jews. Though the Jews constituted 4 per cent of the total population, they constituted 16 per cent of the town population.[21] In the Pale, where they constituted 12 per cent of the total population, they comprised 38 per cent of the urban population.[22] Their concentration in the cities of the Pale is striking. In nine out of the fifteen provinces of the Pale, they constituted a majority of the urban population. In twenty-four towns, they were from two-fifths to seven-tenths of the population. In the important cities of Warsaw and Odessa they were one-third of the population.[23] The urban and occupational distribution of the Jews places them higher than the great majority of the non-Jews among the social classes into which the Russian people are legally divided. Townsmen are of a higher rank than peasants. Nearly 95 per cent of the Jews belong to this category and only 7 per cent of the Russians. The vast majority of the Russians--86 per cent--are peasants. Only 4 per cent of the Jews are of this class. Again, 2 per cent of the Jews are merchants, as against only .2 per cent of the Russians. Thus in these two classes of townsmen and merchants there were twelve times as many Jews, relatively, as Russians.[24] The higher cultural standing of the Jews may be partly measured by the relative literacy of the Jews and of the total population. According to the census of 1897, in the Jewish population ten years of age or over there were relatively one and a half times as many literates as in the total population of the corresponding group. In each of the age-groups there were relatively more literates among the Jews than among the total population. In the highest age-group, that of sixty years of age and over, the Jews had relatively more literates than any of the age-groups of the total population, indicating that the educational standing of the Jews half a century ago was higher than that of the Russian population of to-day.[25]