“Under these conditions it would be a great relief to the suffering population if measures were adopted which would make it easier for them to move about in search of work. In view of the size of our country and the unlimited economic resources of its regions, especially those of the interior, have hardly been touched by the miseries of war. There are regions in the interior of Russia where economic conditions have even improved somewhat, since they have assumed many of the industries abandoned in Poland, and since the commissary department placed large orders here. “At the same time the Jewish population is even at this exceptional time artificially confined to the cities of Poland and the western provinces by force of existing legal limitations which increases the hardships of war for them. =If in time of peace these restrictions,= which are economically harmful and morally degrading, =are recognized as a relic of barbarism that must be abolished, it is all the more difficult to reconcile ourselves with them at the present time, when hundreds and thousands of Jews serve under the Russian banners on the battlefield.= “In view of these facts the Commission has decided to request the Council of the Free Economic Society to communicate with the government and members of the society who are members of the legislative bodies:— =“To immediately stop the functioning of all restrictive laws relating to the Settlement rights of Jews,= and =“To abolish them immediately and permanently by legislative enactment.”=[51] Numerous commercial and technical associations have passed resolutions declaring that the main cause of Russia’s economic backwardness lay in the restrictions placed upon Jews, and that the sole means of combating German predominance over Russian industry and trade is through the abolition of these restrictions. Among these organizations are the national grain, lumber, fur and gold trades; the Chambers of Commerce of Moscow, Petrograd and the leading cities of Russia and Siberia, and the national Congress of Bourses; the Russo-American Chamber of Commerce, etc. Practically every national convention of every industry has petitioned the government to liberate the economic talents of the Jews by the removal of all legal restrictions. PROTESTS OF RUSSIAN WRITERS AND PUBLICISTS Just as the commercial and industrial elements of Russia demand equality for the Jews on economic grounds, so the intellectual elements of Russia demand it on broad human grounds. The great manifesto issued at the beginning of the war by 225 of the leading publicists and writers of Russia, declares: