The riots of the early part of the eighties affected the whole mental attitude of the Jews of Russia by rousing them to a greater consciousness of themselves and by rallying them around distinctly Jewish standards. For hundreds of thousands life had become impossible at home, and they emigrated to various countries, but mostly to America, where, under the influence of entirely new conditions, Judeo-German literature, and with it poetry, developed in new channels. VIII. POETRY SINCE THE EIGHTIES IN AMERICA Judeo-German poetry has developed in two directions in America,--downwards and upwards. Many of the poets left Russia in the beginning of the eighties, together with the involuntary emigration of the Russian Jews, to escape the political oppression at home; but once in America they came in contact with conditions not less undesirable than those they had just left; for, instead of the religious persecution to which they had been subjected there, they now began to experience the industrial oppression of the sweat-shops into which they were driven in order to earn a livelihood. At the same time, the greater political liberty which they enjoy makes it possible for them to give free utterance to their feelings and thoughts, without veiling them in the garb of a far-fetched allegory. However, they have not all suffered who have come here. Many have found on the hospitable shores of the United States opportunities to earn what to their humble demands appears as a comfortable income. With the increased well-being, there has come a stronger desire to be entertained. The wedding day, Purim, and the Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law no longer suffice as days of amusements, and Goldfaden's theatre, which had been proscribed in Russia, has found an asylum in New York. Soon one theatre was not large enough to hold the crowd that asked for admission; and three companies, playing every evening, were doing a good business. But qualitatively the theatres rapidly deteriorated to the level of dime shows. The theatre, as established by Goldfaden, has never been of an elevated character even in Europe, except as it treated the Biblical and the historical drama. Still, it reflected in a certain respect the inner life of the Ghetto. In the New World, the Jewish life of the Russian Ghetto is rapidly losing all interest, and that part of New York which in common parlance is known as the Ghetto, deserves its name only in so far as it is inhabited by former denizens of other Ghettos. There is taking place a dulling of Jewish sensibilities which will ultimately result in the absorption of the Russian Jews by the American people. This lowered Jewish consciousness finds its expression in poetry in the development of the theatre couplet in imitation of the American song of the day. As in Russia, the plays are written by a host of incompetent men, not so much for the purpose of carrying out a plot as in order to weave into