Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910: Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LIX, No. 4, 1914Joseph, Samuel
History
Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910: Studies in History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LIX, No. 4, 1914
Joseph, Samuel
Jews -- Europe; Jews -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration
The facts of governmental pressure amounting to an expulsive force,
and reflected in an extraordinary rate of immigration, in a movement
of families unsurpassed in the American immigration, the largest part
economically dependent, in an occupational grouping of skilled
artisans, able to earn their livelihood under normal conditions, and
in a permanence of settlement in this country incomparable in degree
and indicating that practically all who come stay--all these facts
lead irresistibly to the conclusion that in the Jewish movement we are
dealing, not with an immigration, but with a migration. What we are
witnessing to-day and for these thirty years, is a Jewish migration of
a kind and degree almost without a parallel in the history of the
Jewish people. When speaking of the beginnings of Russian Jewish
immigration to Philadelphia, David Sulzberger said: "In thirty years
the movement of Jews from Russia to the United States has almost
reached the dignity of the migration of a people," he used no literary
phrase. In view of the facts that have developed, this statement is
true without any qualification.
This migration-process explains the remarkable growth of the Jewish
population in the United States, within a relatively short period of
time. In this transplantation, the spirit of social solidarity and
communal responsibility prevalent among the Jews has played a vital
part.
The family rather than the individual thus becomes the unit for the
social life of the Jewish immigrant population in the United States.
In this respect the latter approaches more nearly the native American
population than does the foreign white or immigrant population. One of
the greatest evils incident to and characteristic of the general
immigration to this country is thereby minimized.
Again, the concentration of the Jewish immigrants in certain trades
explains in great measure the peculiarities of the occupational and
the urban distribution of the Jews in the United States. The
development of the garment trades through Jewish agencies is largely
explained by the recruiting of the material for this development
through these laborers.
These primary characteristics of the Jewish immigration of the last
thirty years will serve to explain some of the most important phases
of the economic and social life of the Jews in the United States,
three-fourths of whom are immigrants of this period.
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