In America, on the contrary, each race and nationality is encouraged to cultivate and take pride in everything that is distinctive or peculiar, either in its traditions, racial traits, or disposition. I think I am safe in saying that there is no country in the world where so many different races of such different colours, habits, and traditions live together in such peace and harmony as is true in the United States. One reason for this is that there is no other country where "the man farthest down" has more opportunity or greater freedom than in the United States. FOOTNOTES: [1] Charities Publication Committee, 1910. [2] Quoted by Miss Balch in "Our Slavic Fellow Citizens," p. 116. CHAPTER XIII CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW Ever since I can remember I have had a special and peculiar interest in the history and the progress of the Jewish race. The first book that I knew, the Bible, was a history of the Jews, and to my childish mind the most fascinating portion of that book was the story of the manner in which Moses led the children of Israel out of the house of bondage, through the wilderness, into the promised land. I first heard that story from the lips of my mother, when both she and I were slaves on a plantation in Virginia. I have heard it repeated and referred to many times since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly a day or a week goes by that I do not meet among my people some reference to this same Bible story. The Negro slaves were always looking forward to the time when a Moses should arise from somewhere who would lead them, as he led the ancient Hebrews, out of the house of bondage. And after freedom, the masses of the Negro people have still continued to look to some great leader, some man inspired of God, who would lead them out of their difficulties into the promised land, which, somehow, they never seem able to reach. As I learned in slavery to compare the condition of the Negro with that of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom, been compelled to compare the prejudice, even persecution, which the Jewish people have to face and overcome in different parts of the world with the disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and elsewhere. I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of the Jews in New York City before going to Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, London, I had an opportunity to learn something of the condition of the Polish and Russian Jews who, driven from their native land, have found refuge in England. It was not until I reached Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or Galicia, however, that I really began to understand what life in the Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, was really like. It was not until then that I began to comprehend what the wear and tear of centuries of persecution, poverty, and suffering had meant in the life of the Jews.