The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and FlowSteiner, Edward Alfred
History
The Immigrant Tide, Its Ebb and Flow
Steiner, Edward Alfred
United States -- Emigration and immigration
The Jew has nearly always been an immigrant and a problem. Nowhere is he
accepted as indigenous; neither in Russia, where he has lived for
centuries, nor in New York, where he will soon represent the bulk of
population. He is as much a stranger on his home soil in Palestine as
upon the rawest bit of ground staked into a city, in Wyoming or the
Dakotas. His going is nowhere regretted at the time and his coming is
not welcomed; while his remaining in a place leads to the development of
prejudice, which has its root in various causes, already discussed. In a
peculiar sense, his coming in large numbers is felt by the toiler and
the trader; by the most antagonistic Gentile groups and by those Jews
who came earlier, from some more favoured spot in the culture centres of
Europe.
The religious development of the Anglo-Saxon people, influenced more
often by the Old Testament than by the New, as well as their familiarity
with the Bible, has kept the Jew who lives among them immune from the
grosser consequences of Anti-Semitism.
[Illustration: A JEW OF THE POORER TYPE
A product of persecution and orthodoxy.]
[Illustration: A JEW OF THE FINER TYPE
A Russian Jew; cultured, artistic and cosmopolitan.]
Jehovah's chosen people have often been regarded with peculiar interest
by the Anglo-Saxons, if not always treated with marked favour; yet even
among them, this feeling has gradually undergone a change, until, their
coming has become a cause for special inquiry by the English Parliament
and one of the chief difficulties of the whole immigrant problem, as it
affects our cities.
I have had peculiar opportunities to note the development of these
changes, and believe that the Jew has been too optimistic regarding his
future in the United States; while the Gentile is too pessimistic as to
the gravity of the Jewish problem.
A clergyman in the city of New York whose fame is international, who is
in constant contact with the best type of Jews, startled me not long ago
by saying that the Jewish problem in the city of New York was in a most
acute stage. In analysing his own feelings, he said: "No matter what you
do, you're up against it; no matter how you prepare yourself to act the
brother towards them, they won't let you succeed. You can't love them
and you don't dare hate them."
Mr. Robert Watchorn, the ex-commissioner of immigration, told me that
after an address in which he minimized the problem of immigration, a
well-known citizen of New York came to him and said that in twenty years
Kisheneff will have its counterpart on the East Side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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