Ever since the Jewish people lost its national independence and sovereignty and began to live in dispersion among the nations of the earth, it has lost the opportunity and possibility of continuing the work of its national civilization and has had to be satisfied with producing cultural values only. Everything that individual Jews have achieved in the past two thousand years in the domain of civilization has been an enrichment of the civilization of the peoples among whom they have lived. Jews have always been prominent in commerce and industry, but there was no national Jewish commerce and no national Jewish industry, even when those who created and developed certain branches of commerce were all Jews. Their commercial and industrial activities and accomplishments strengthened the other nations among whom the Jews lived, but not themselves. In many cases they have endangered and imperiled the Jewish people, because they became the arsenal of anti-Semitic weapons. The individual has profited by Jewish industrial and commercial achievements, but not the Jewish collective body. In short, all our work and energy in the domain of practical civilization has reached not the Jewish people, but other nations, and only a few have given us credit for these achievements. Often enough have we been blamed for them. The Dutchman is full of envy of the Jew to the present day for having monopolized the diamond cutting industry; the Turks are still angry when they remember that Baron de Hirsch built their railroads. In Switzerland people are blaming the Jews for having monopolized the silk and watch industries; the Russians antagonize them because of their big share in the development of the petrol wells in the Caucasus and in the lumber business in western Russia. A famous German professor, Werner Sombart, has written a voluminous book of five hundred pages in which he indicts us for having developed capitalism, while others are accusing the Jews of having produced anti-capitalistic forces. In short, not only have the activities of individual Jews in the domain of civilization not been of profit to them as a people, but they have in too many cases served as a basis of attack.