In western Europe, where Jews have equal opportunities with their Gentile neighbours in the matter of education, they are far in advance of them in education. Statistics for Cracow show, for example, that while only a little more than 2 per cent. of the Jews who applied for marriage licenses were unable to read and write, between 15 and 20 per cent. of the Christians in the same category were illiterate. In Italy, where 42.6 per cent. of the men and 57 per cent. of the women of the Christian population over fifteen years of age are unable to read and write, only 3 per cent. of the men and 7.5 per cent. of the women among the Jews are illiterate. In Austria over 25 per cent. of the students of the universities are Jews, although they represent only 5 per cent. of the population. In Hungary, where Jews represent 4.9 per cent. of the population, they furnish 30.27 per cent. of the students in the universities and other schools of higher education. In Baden, Germany, Jews have proportionately three and a half times as many students as the Christians. Since 1851 the number of Jewish students in Austrian universities has increased more than sevenfold, while the number of Christian students has scarcely more than trebled in that time. One reason for this is that the Jews have almost invariably made their homes in the cities, where the opportunities for education existed. They have, at the same time, been almost wholly engaged in business, which not only requires a certain amount of education, but is in itself, more than other occupations, a source of education. The name rabbi, or teacher, has always been a title of respect and honour among the Jews from the earliest time. It was the name that his disciples bestowed upon Jesus. If there were no other reasons why the story of the Jew should be studied, it would be interesting and inspiring as showing what education can do and has done for a people who, in the face of prejudice and persecution, have patiently struggled up to a position of power and preëminence in the life and civilization in which all races are now beginning to share. FOOTNOTES: [3] M. Fishberg, "The Jews," p. 366. [4] M. Fishberg, "The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment," p. 361. CHAPTER XIV A POLISH VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS It was a Jewish trader who advised me to visit Jedlovka. He said that I would see the peasants living there now as they had lived for hundreds of years--in the simplest and most primitive fashion. Jedlovka, I found, is a little straggling village in the foothills of the Carpathians--the mountains which divide Galicia from Hungary. In order to reach the village it was necessary to take the train at Cracow and ride for an hour or more in the direction of Lemberg, which is the Ruthenian, just as Cracow is the Polish, metropolis of Galicia.