A similar policy was pursued with reference to the cultural activities of the Jews. A circular of the minister of public instruction, issued in 1887, ordered that preference should be given to Roumanian children, in cases where there was not enough room in the elementary schools for all. This began the gradual exclusion of Jewish children from the Roumanian elementary schools. The formal treatment of the Jews as aliens in the educational system was introduced in 1893, when all aliens were required to pay fees for entrance into the public schools, and were admitted only in case there was enough room for them. The effect of these laws was seen in the diminished proportion of Jewish children in the elementary schools. Similar provisions for the secondary and high schools and universities largely closed the doors of these institutions to the Jews. From schools of agriculture and forestry, and of commerce they were completely excluded. To the educational restrictions were added restrictions to professional service. As aliens, they were forbidden to be employed in the public sanitary service and health department as physicians, pharmacists, _etc._, from owning as well as working in private pharmacies, and from entering other professional fields. The almost complete agreement of the two principal parties--liberal and conservative--explains the thoroughness and uninterrupted progress of this process of piling up disability upon disability. The explanation is partly to be found in the constitution of Roumania, the electoral law of which places the political powers in the hands of two classes--the landed aristocracy and the urban, or middle class. The vast majority of the peasants are excluded by educational and property qualifications, obtaining only indirect representation. Had the Jews been granted political rights, they would have shared political power with the other two classes. It is through the second electoral college, of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, that the middle class is represented politically. As manufacturers and merchants, as urban dwellers, as members of the liberal professions and as graduates of the elementary schools, the Jews would have become the most important part of this electoral college. Again, the creation of an industry and commerce along national lines was largely a course of action in the interests of this middle class of Roumanian merchants, artisans and laborers. It was in favor of this class that the laws were passed debarring Jews from various occupations and seeking essentially to wrest the industrial and commercial monopoly from their hands.