THE INTERNATIONAL JEW
The World's Foremost Problem
Being a Reprint of a Series of Articles Appearing in The Dearborn
Independent from May 22 to October 2, 1920
November, 1920
Preface
Why discuss the Jewish Question? Because it is here, and because its emergence into American thought should contribute to its solution, and not to a continuance of those bad conditions which surround the Question in other countries.
The Jewish Question has existed in the United States for a long time. Jews themselves have known this, even if Gentiles have not. There have been periods in our own country when it has broken forth with a sullen sort of strength which presaged darker things to come. Many signs portend that it is approaching an acute stage.
Not only does the Jewish Question touch those matters that are of common knowledge, such as financial and commercial control, usurpation of political power, monopoly of necessities, and autocratic direction of the very news that the American people read; but it reaches into cultural regions and so touches the very heart of American life.
This question reaches down into South America and threatens to become an important factor in Pan-American relations. It is interwoven with much of the menace of organized and calculated disorder which troubles the nations today. It is not of recent growth, but its roots go deep, and the long Past of this Problem is counterbalanced by prophetic hopes and programs which involve a very deliberate and creative view of the Future.
This little book is the partial record of an investigation of the Jewish Question. It is printed to enable interested readers to inform themselves on the data published in The Dearborn Independent prior to Oct. 1, 1920. The demand for back copies of the paper was so great that the supply was exhausted early, as was also a large edition of a booklet containing the first nine articles of the series. The investigation still proceeds, and the articles will continue to appear as heretofore until the work is done.
The motive of this work is simply a desire to make facts known to the people. Other motives have, of course, been ascribed to it. But the motive of prejudice or any form of antagonism is hardly strong enough to support such an investigation as this. Moreover, had an unworthy motive existed, some sign of it would inevitably appear in the work itself. We confidently call the reader to witness that the tone of these articles is all that it should be. The International Jew and his satellites, as the conscious enemies of all that Anglo-Saxons mean by civilization, are not spared, nor is that unthinking mass which defends anything that a Jew does, simply because it has been taught to believe that what Jewish leaders do is Jewish. Neither do these articles proceed upon a false emotion of brotherhood and apology, as if this stream of doubtful tendency in the world were only accidentally Jewish. We give the facts as we find them; that of itself is sufficient protection against prejudice or passion.
This volume does not complete the case by any means. But it brings the reader along one step. In future compilations of these and subsequent articles the entire scope of the inquiry will more clearly appear.
October, 1920.
Contents
I. The Jew in Character and Business
II. Germany's Reaction Against the Jew
III. Jewish History in the U. S.
IV. The Jewish Question—Fact or Fancy?
V. Anti-Semitism—Will It Appear In the U. S.
VI. Jewish Question Breaks Into the Magazines
VII. Arthur Brisbane to the Help of Jewry
VIII. Does a Definite Jewish World Program Exist?
IX. The Historic Basis of Jewish Imperialism
X. An Introduction to the "Jewish Protocols"
XI. "Jewish" Estimate of Gentile Human Nature
XII. "Jewish Protocols" Claim Partial Fulfillment
XIII. "Jewish" Plan to Split Society by "Ideas"
XIV. Did the Jews Foresee the World War?
XV. Is the Jewish "Kahal" the Modern "Soviet"?
XVI. How the "Jewish Question" Touches the Farm
XVII. Does Jewish Power Control the World Press?
XVIII. Does this Explain Jewish Political Power?
XIX. The All-Jewish Mark on "Red Russia"
XX. Jewish Testimony in Favor of Bolshevism
"Among the distinguishing mental and moral traits of the Jews may be mentioned: distaste for hard or violent physical labor; a strong family sense and philoprogenitiveness; a marked religious instinct; the courage of the prophet and martyr rather than of the pioneer and soldier; remarkable power to survive in adverse environments, combined with great ability to retain racial solidarity; capacity for exploitation, both individual and social; shrewdness and astuteness in speculation and money matters generally; an Oriental love of display and a full appreciation of the power and pleasure of social position; a very high average of intellectual ability."
—The New International Encyclopedia.
I.
The Jew in Character and Business
The Jew is again being singled out for critical attention throughout the world. His emergence in the financial, political and social spheres has been so complete and spectacular since the war, that his place, power and purpose in the world are being given a new scrutiny, much of it unfriendly. Persecution is not a new experience to the Jew, but intensive scrutiny of his nature and super-nationality is. He has suffered for more than 2,000 years from what may be called the instinctive anti-Semitism of the other races, but this antagonism has never been intelligent nor has it been able to make itself intelligible. Nowadays, however, the Jew is being placed, as it were, under the microscope of economic observation that the reasons for his power, the reasons for his separateness, the reasons for his suffering may be defined and understood.
In Russia he is charged with being the source of Bolshevism, an accusation which is serious or not according to the circle in which it is made; we in America, hearing the fervid eloquence and perceiving the prophetic ardor of young Jewish apostles of social and industrial reform, can calmly estimate how it may be. In Germany he is charged with being the cause of the Empire's collapse and a very considerable literature has sprung up, bearing with it a mass of circumstantial evidence that gives the thinker pause. In England he is charged with being the real world ruler, who rules as a super-nation over the nations, rules by the power of gold, and who plays nation against nation for his own purposes, remaining himself discreetly in the background. In America it is pointed out to what extent the elder Jews of wealth and the younger Jews of ambition swarmed through the war organizations—principally those departments which dealt with the commercial and industrial business of war, and also the extent to which they have clung to the advantage which their experience as agents of the government gave them.
In simple words, the question of the Jews has come to the fore, but like other questions which lend themselves to prejudice, efforts will be made to hush it up as impolitic for open discussion. If, however, experience has taught us anything it is that questions thus suppressed will sooner or later break out in undesirable and unprofitable forms.
The Jew is the world's enigma. Poor in his masses, he yet controls the world's finances. Scattered abroad without country or government, he yet presents a unity of race continuity which no other people has achieved. Living under legal disabilities in almost every land, he has become the power behind many a throne. There are ancient prophecies to the effect that the Jew will return to his own land and from that center rule the world, though not until he has undergone an assault by the united nations of mankind.
The single description which will include a larger percentage of Jews than members of any other race is this: he is in business. It may be only gathering rags and selling them, but he is in business. From the sale of old clothes to the control of international trade and finance, the Jew is supremely gifted for business. More than any other race he exhibits a decided aversion to industrial employment, which he balances by an equally decided adaptability to trade. The Gentile boy works his way up, taking employment in the productive or technical departments; but the Jewish boy prefers to begin as messenger, salesman or clerk—anything—so long as it is connected with the commercial side of the business. An early Prussian census illustrates this characteristic: of a total population of 269,400, the Jews comprised six per cent or 16,164. Of these, 12,000 were traders and 4,164 were workmen. Of the Gentile population, the other 94 per cent, or 153,236 people, there were only 17,000 traders.
A modern census would show a large professional and literary class added to the traders, but no diminution of the percentage of traders and not much if any increase in the number of wage toilers. In America alone most of the big business, the trusts and the banks, the natural resources and the chief agricultural products, especially tobacco, cotton and sugar, are in the control of Jewish financiers or their agents. Jewish journalists are a large and powerful group here. "Large numbers of department stores are held by Jewish firms," says the Jewish Encyclopedia, and many if not most of them are run under Gentile names. Jews are the largest and most numerous landlords of residence property in the country. They are supreme in the theatrical world. They absolutely control the circulation of publications throughout the country. Fewer than any race whose presence among us is noticeable, they receive daily an amount of favorable publicity which would be impossible did they not have the facilities for creating and distributing it themselves. Werner Sombart, in his "Jew and Modern Capitalism" says, "If the conditions in America continue to develop along the same lines as in the last generation, if the immigration statistics and the proportion of births among all the nationalities remain the same, our imagination may picture the United States of fifty or a hundred years hence as a land inhabited only by Slavs, Negroes and Jews, wherein the Jews will naturally occupy the position of economic leadership." Sombart is a pro-Jewish writer.
The question is, If the Jew is in control, how did it happen? This is a free country. The Jew comprises only about three per cent of the population; to every Jew there are 97 Gentiles; to the 3,000,000 Jews in the United States there are 97,000,000 Gentiles. If the Jew is in control, is it because of his superior ability, or is it because of the inferiority and don't-care attitude of the Gentiles?
It would be very simple to answer that the Jews came to America, took their chances like other people and proved more successful in the competitive struggle. But that would not include all the facts. And before a more adequate answer can be given, two points should be made clear. This first is this: all Jews are not rich controllers of wealth. There are poor Jews aplenty, though most of them even in their poverty are their own masters. While it may be true that the chief financial controllers of the country are Jews, it is not true that every Jew is one of the financial controllers of the country. The classes must be kept distinct for a reason which will appear when the methods of the rich Jews and the methods of the poor Jews to gain power are differentiated. Secondly, the fact of Jewish solidarity renders it difficult to measure Gentile and Jewish achievements by the same standard. When a great block of wealth in America was made possible by the lavish use of another block of wealth from across the seas; that is to say, when certain Jewish immigrants came to the United States with the financial backing of European Jewry behind them, it would be unfair to explain the rise of that class of immigration by the same rules which account for the rise of, say, the Germans or the Poles who came here with no resource but their ambition and strength. To be sure, many individual Jews come in that way, too, with no dependence but themselves, but it would not be true to say that the massive control of affairs which is exercised by Jewish wealth was won by individual initiative; it was rather the extension of financial control across the sea.
That, indeed, is where any explanation of Jewish control must begin. Here is a race whose entire period of national history saw them peasants on the land, whose ancient genius was spiritual rather than material, bucolic rather than commercial, yet today, when they have no country, no government, and are persecuted in one way or another everywhere they go, they are declared to be the principal though unofficial rulers of the earth. How does so strange a charge arise, and why do so many circumstances seem to justify it?
Begin at the beginning. During the formative period of their national character the Jews lived under a law which made plutocracy and pauperism equally impossible among them. Modern reformers who are constructing model social systems on paper would do well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized. The Law of Moses made a "money aristocracy," such as Jewish financiers form today, impossible because it forbade the taking of interest. It made impossible also the continuous enjoyment of profit wrung out of another's distress. Profiteering and sheer speculation were not favored under the Jewish system. There could be no land-hogging; the land was apportioned among the people, and though it might be lost by debt or sold under stress, it was returned every 50 years to its original family ownership, at which time, called "The Year of Jubilee," there was practically a new social beginning. The rise of great landlords and a moneyed class was impossible under such a system, although the interim of 50 years gave ample scope for individual initiative to assert itself under fair competitive conditions.
If, therefore, the Jews had retained their status as a nation, and had remained in Palestine under the Law of Moses, they would hardly have achieved the financial distinction which they have since won. Jews never got rich out of one another. Even in modern times they have not become rich out of each other but out of the nations among whom they dwelt. Jewish law permitted the Jew to do business with a Gentile on a different basis than that on which he did business with a brother Jew. What is called "the Law of the Stranger" was defined thus: "unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury."
Being dispersed among the nations, but never merging themselves with the nations and never losing a very distinctive identity, the Jew has had the opportunity to practice "the ethics of the stranger" for many centuries. Being strangers among strangers, and often among cruelly hostile strangers, they have found this law a compensating advantage. Still, this alone would not account for the Jew's preeminence in finance. The explanation of that must be sought in the Jew himself, his vigor, resourcefulness and special proclivities.
Very early in the Jewish story we discover the tendency of Israel to be a master nation, with other nations as its vassals. Notwithstanding the fact that the whole prophetic purpose with reference to Israel seems to have been the moral enlightenment of the world through its agency, Israel's "will to mastery" apparently hindered that purpose. At least such would seem to be the tone of the Old Testament. Divinely ordered to drive out the Canaanites that their corrupt ideas might not contaminate Israel, the Jews did not obey, according to the old record. They looked over the Canaanitish people and perceived what great amount of man-power would be wasted if they were expelled, and so Israel enslaved them—"And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out." It was this form of disobedience, this preference of material mastery over spiritual leadership, that marked the beginning of Israel's age-long disciplinary distress.
The Jews' dispersion among the nations temporarily (that is, for more than 25 centuries now) changed the program which their scriptures declare was divinely planned, and that dispersion continues until today. There are spiritual leaders in modern Judaism who still claim that Israel's mission to the nations is spiritual, but their assertions that Israel is today fulfilling that mission are not as convincing as they might be if accompanied by more evidence. Israel throughout the modern centuries is still looking at the Gentile world and estimating what its man-power can be made to yield. But the discipline upon Israel still holds; he is an exile from his own land, condemned to be discriminated against wherever he goes, until the time when exile and homelessness shall end in a re-established Palestine, and Jerusalem again the moral center of the earth, even as the elder prophets have declared.
Had the Jew become an employe, a worker for other men, his dispersion would not probably have been so wide. But becoming a trader, his instincts drew him round the habitable earth. There were Jews in China at an early date. They appeared as traders in England at the time of the Saxons. Jewish traders were in South America 100 years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock. Jews established the sugar industry in the Island of St. Thomas in 1492. They were well established in Brazil when only a few villages dotted the eastern coast of what is now the United States. And how far they penetrated when once they came here is indicated by the fact that the first white child born in Georgia was a Jew—Isaac Minis. The Jew's presence round the earth, his clannishness with his own people, made him a nation scattered among the nations, a corporation with agents everywhere.
Another talent, however, contributed greatly to his rise in financial power—his ability to invent new devices for doing business. Until the Jew was pitted against the world, business was very crudely done. And when we trace the origins of many of the business methods which simplify and facilitate trade today, more likely than not we find a Jewish name at the end of the clue. Many of the indispensable instruments of credit and exchange were thought out by Jewish merchants, not only for use between themselves, but to check and hold the Gentiles with whom they dealt. The oldest bill of exchange extant was drawn by a Jew—one Simon Rubens. The promissory note was a Jewish invention, as was also the check "payable to bearer."
An interesting bit of history attaches to the "payable to bearer" instrument. The Jews' enemies were always stripping them of their last ounce of wealth, yet strangely, the Jews recovered very quickly and were soon rich again. How this sudden recovery from looting and poverty? Their assets were concealed under "bearer" and so a goodly portion was always saved. In an age when it was lawful for any pirate to seize goods consigned to Jews, the Jews were able to protect themselves by consigning goods on policies that bore no names.
The influence of the Jew was to center business around goods instead of persons. Previously all claims had been against persons; the Jew knew that the goods were more reliable than the persons with whom he dealt, and so he contrived to have claims laid against goods. Besides, this device enabled him to keep himself out of sight as much as possible. This introduced an element of hardness into business, inasmuch as it was goods which were being dealt in rather than men being dealt with, and this hardness remains. Another tendency which survives and which is of advantage in veiling the very large control which Jews have attained, is of the same origin as "bearer" bills; it permits a business dominated by Jewish capital to appear under a name that gives no hint of Jewish control.
The Jew is the only and original international capitalist, but as a rule he prefers not to emblazon that fact upon the skies; he prefers to use Gentile banks and trust companies as his agents and instruments. The suggestive term "Gentile front" often appears in connection with this practice.
The invention of the stock exchange is also credited to Jewish financial talent. In Berlin, Paris, London, Frankfort and Hamburg, Jews were in control of the first stock exchanges, while Venice and Genoa were openly referred to in the talk of the day as "Jew cities" where great trading and banking facilities might be found. The Bank of England was established upon the counsel and assistance of Jewish emigrants from Holland. The Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of Hamburg both arose through Jewish influence.
There is a curious fact to be noted in connection with the persecution and consequent wanderings of the Jews about Europe and that is: wherever they wandered, the center of business seemed to go with them. When the Jews were free in Spain, there was the world's gold center. When Spain drove out the Jews, Spain lost financial leadership and has never regained it. Students of the economic history of Europe have always been puzzled to discover why the center of trade should have shifted from Spain, Portugal and Italy, up to the northern countries of Holland, Germany, and England. They have sought for the cause in many things, but none has proved completely explanatory. When, however, it is known that the change was coincident with the expulsion of the Jews from the South and their flight to the North, when it is known that upon the Jews' arrival the northern countries began a commercial life which has flourished until our day, the explanation does not seem difficult. Time and again it has proved to be the fact that when the Jews were forced to move, the center of the world's precious metals moved with them.
This distribution of the Jews over Europe and the world, each Jewish community linked in a fellowship of blood, faith and suffering with every other group, made it possible for the Jew to be international in the sense that no other race or group of merchants could be at that time. Not only were they everywhere (Americans and Russians are everywhere, too) but they were in touch. They were organized before the days of conscious international commercial organizations, they were bound together by the sinews of a common life. It was observed by many writers in the Middle Ages that the Jews knew more of what was transpiring in Europe than the governments did. They also had better knowledge of what was likely to occur. They knew more about conditions than the statesmen did. This information they imparted by letter from group to group, country to country. Indeed, they may be said thus to have originated unconsciously the financial news-letter. Certainly the information they were able to obtain and thus distribute was invaluable to them in their speculative enterprises. Advance knowledge was an immense advantage in the days when news was scarce, slow and unreliable.
This enabled Jewish financiers to become the agents of national loans, a form of business which they encouraged wherever possible. The Jew has always desired to have nations for his customers. National loans were facilitated by the presence of members of the same family of financiers in various countries, thus making an interlocking directorate by which king could be played against king, government against government, and the shrewdest use made of national prejudices and fears, all to the no small profit of the fiscal agent.
One of the charges most commonly made against Jewish financiers today is that they still favor this larger field of finance. Indeed, in all the criticism that is heard regarding the Jew as a business man, there is comparatively little said against him as an individual merchant serving individual customers. Thousands of small Jewish merchants are highly respected by their trade, just as tens of thousands of Jewish families are respected as our neighbors. The criticism, insofar as it respects the more important financiers, is not racial at all. Unfortunately the element of race, which so easily lends itself to misinterpretation as racial prejudice, is injected into the question by the mere fact that the chain of international finance as it is traced around the world discloses at every link a Jewish capitalist, financial family, or a Jewish-controlled banking system. Many have professed to see in this circumstance a conscious organization of Jewish power for Gentile control, while others have attributed the circumstance to Jewish racial sympathies, to the continuity of their family affairs down the line of descent, and to the increase of collateral branches. In the old Scriptural phrase, Israel grows as the vine grows, ever shooting out new branches and deepening old roots, but always part of the one vine.
The Jew's aptitude for dealing with governments may also be traced to the years of his persecution. He early learned the power of gold in dealing with mercenary enemies. Wherever he went there followed him like a curse the aroused antipathy of other peoples. The Jew was never popular as a race; even the most fervid Jew will not deny that, howsoever he may explain it. Individuals have been popular, of course; many phases of Jewish nature are found to be very lovable when known; but nevertheless one of the burdens the Jews have had to bear as a race is this burden of racial unpopularity. Even in modern times, in civilized countries, in conditions which render persecution absolutely impossible, this unpopularity exists. And what is more, the Jew has not seemed to care to cultivate the friendship of the Gentile masses, due perhaps to the failures of experience, but due more likely to his inborn persuasion that he belongs to a superior race. Whatever the true reason, he has always placed his main dependence on cultivating friendship with kings and nobles. What cared the Jew if the people gnashed their teeth against him, so long as the king and the court were his friends? Thus there was always, even through most of the severely trying times, "a court Jew," one who had bought by loans and held by the strangle-hold of debt an entrance to the king's chamber. The policy of the Jews has always been to "go to headquarters." They never tried to placate the Russian people, but they did endeavor to enlist the Russian court. They never tried to placate the German people, but they did succeed in permeating the German court. In England they shrug their shoulders at the outspoken anti-Jew reactions of the British populace—what care they? Have they not all of lorddom at their heels, do they not hold the strings of Britain's purse?
Through this ability of theirs to "go to headquarters" it is possible to account for the stronghold they got upon various governments and nations. Added to this ability was, of course, the ability to produce what the governments wanted. If a government wanted a loan, the Jew at court could arrange it through Jews at other financial centers and political capitals. If one government wanted to pay another government a debt without risking the precious metal to a mule train through a robber-infested country, the Jew at court arranged that too. He transferred a piece of paper and the debt was paid by the banking house at the foreign capital. The first time an army was ever fed in the modern commissary way, it was done by a Jew—he had the capital and he had the system; moreover he had the delight of having a nation for his customer.
And this tendency, which served the race so well throughout the troublous centuries, shows no sign of abatement. Certainly, seeing to what an extent a race numerically so unimportant influences the various governments of the world today, the Jew who reflects upon the disparity between his people's numbers and their power may be pardoned if he sees in that fact a proof of their racial superiority.
It may be said also that Jewish inventiveness in business devices continues to the present time, as well as Jewish adaptability to changing conditions. The Jew is credited with being the first to establish branch houses in foreign countries in order that responsible representatives of the home office might be on the ground taking instant advantage of every opening. During the war a great deal was said about the "peaceful penetration" which the "German Government" had effected in the United States by establishing here branch offices and factories of German firms. The fact that there were many German branch houses here is unquestionable. It should be known, however, that they were not the evidence of German enterprise but of Jewish enterprise. The old German business houses were too conservative to "run after customers" even in the hustling United States, but the Jewish firms were not, and they came straight to America and hustled. In due time the competition forced the more conservative German firms to follow suit. But the idea was Jewish in its origin, not German.
Another modern business method whose origin is credited to Jewish financiers is that by which related industries are brought together, as for example, if an electrical power company is acquired, then the street railway company using the electricity would be acquired too, one purpose being in this way to conserve all the profit accruing along the line, from the origination of the power down to the delivery of the street car ride; but perhaps the main purpose being that, by the control of the power house the price of current could be increased to the car company, and by the control of the car company the cost of a ride could be increased to the public, the controllers thus receiving an additional profit all down the line. There is much of this going on in the world today, and in the United States particularly. The portion of the business immediately next to the ultimate consumer explains that its costs have risen, but it does not explain that the costs were increased by the owners and not by outsiders who were forced to do so by economic pressure.
There is apparently in the world today a central financial force which is playing a vast and closely organized game, with the world for its table and universal control for its stakes. The people of civilized countries have lost all confidence in the explanation that "economic conditions" are responsible for all the changes that occur. Under the camouflage of "economic law" a great many phenomena have been accounted for which were not due to any law whatever except the law of the selfish human will as operated by a few men who have the purpose and the power to work on a wide scale with nations as their vassals.
Whatever else may be national, no one today believes that finance is national. Finance is international. Nobody today believes that international finance is in any way competitive. There are some independent banking houses, but few strong independent ones. The great masters, the few whose minds see clearly the entire play of the plan, control numerous banking houses and trust companies, and one is used for this while another is used for that, but there is no disharmony between them, no correction of each other's methods, no competition in the interests of the business world. There is as much unity of policy between the principal banking houses of every country as there is between the various branches of the United States Post Office—and for the same reason, namely, they are all operated from the same source and for the same purpose.
Just before the war Germany bought very heavily in American cotton and had huge quantities of it tied up here for export. When war came, the ownership of that mountainous mass of cotton wealth changed in one night from Jewish names in Hamburg to Jewish names in London. At this writing cotton is selling in England for less than it is selling in the United States, and the effect of that is to lower the American price. When the price lowers sufficiently, the market is cleared of cotton by buyers previously prepared, and then the price soars to high figures again. In the meantime, the same powers that have engineered the apparently causeless strengthening and weakening of the cotton market, have seized upon stricken Germany to be the sweatshop of the world. Certain groups control the cotton, lend it to Germany to be manufactured, leave a pittance of it there in payment for the labor that was used, and then profiteer the length and breadth of the world on the lie that "cotton is scarce." And when, tracing all these anti-social and colossally unfair methods to their source, it is found that the responsible parties all have a common characteristic, is it any wonder that the warning which comes across the sea—"Wait until America becomes awake to the Jew!"—has a new meaning?
Certainly, economic reasons no longer explain the condition in which the world finds itself today. Neither does the ordinary explanation of "the heartlessness of capital." Capital has endeavored as never before to meet the demands of labor, and labor has gone to extremes in leading capital to new concessions—but what has it advantaged either of them? Labor has heretofore thought that capital was the sky over it, and it made the sky yield, but behold, there was yet an higher sky which neither capital nor labor had seen in their struggles one with another. That sky is so far unyielding.
That which we call capital here in America is usually money used in production, and we mistakenly refer to the manufacturer, the manager of work, the provider of tools and jobs—we refer to him as the "capitalist." Oh, no. He is not the capitalist in the real sense. Why, he himself must go to capitalists for the money with which to finance his plans. There is a power yet above him—a power which treats him far more callously and holds him in a more ruthless hand than he would ever dare display to labor. That, indeed, is one of the tragedies of these times, that "labor" and "capital" are fighting each other, when the conditions against which each one of them protests, and from which each one of them suffers, is not within their power to remedy at all, unless they find a way to wrest world control from that group of international financiers who create and control both these conditions.
There is a super-capitalism which is supported wholly by the fiction that gold is wealth. There is a super-government which is allied to no government, which is free from them all, and yet which has its hand in them all. There is a race, a part of humanity, which has never yet been received as a welcome part, and which has succeeded in raising itself to a power that the proudest Gentile race has never claimed—not even Rome in the days of her proudest power. It is becoming more and more the conviction of men all over the world that the labor question, the wage question, the land question cannot be settled until first of all this matter of an international super-capitalistic government is settled.
"To the victor belongs the spoils" is an old saying. And in a sense it is true that if all this power of control has been gained and held by a few men of a long-despised race, then either they are super-men whom it is powerless to resist, or they are ordinary men whom the rest of the world has permitted to obtain an undue and unsafe degree of power. Unless the Jews are super-men, the Gentiles will have themselves to blame for what has transpired, and they can look for rectification in a new scrutiny of the situation and a candid examination of the experiences of other countries.
[Issue of May 22, 1920.]
II.
Germany's Reaction Against the Jew
Humanity has become wise enough to discuss those forms of physical sickness over which it formerly drew the veil of shame and secrecy, but political hygiene is not so far advanced. The main source of the sickness of the German national body is charged to be the influence of the Jews, and although this was apparent to acute minds years ago, it is now said to have gone so far as to be apparent to the least observing. The eruption has broken out on the surface of the body politic, and no further concealment of this fact is possible. It is the belief of all classes of the German people that the collapse which has come since the armistice, and the revolution from which they are being prevented a recovery, are the result of Jewish intrigue and purpose. They declare it with assurance; they offer a mass of facts to confirm it; they believe that history will provide the fullest proof.
The Jew in Germany is regarded as only a guest of the people; he has offended by trying to turn himself into the host. There are no stronger contrasts in the world than the pure Germanic and pure Semitic races; therefore, there has been no harmony between the two in Germany; the German has regarded the Jew strictly as a guest, while the Jew, indignant at not being given the privileges of the nation-family, has cherished animosity against his host. In other countries the Jew is permitted to mix more readily with the people, he can amass his control unchallenged; but in Germany the case was different. Therefore, the Jew hated the German people; therefore, the countries of the world which were most dominated by the Jews showed the greatest hatred of Germany during the recent regrettable war. Jewish hands were in almost exclusive control of the engines of publicity by which public opinion concerning the German people was molded. The sole winners of the war were Jews.
But assertion is not enough; proof is wanted; therefore, consider the evidence. What occurred immediately upon the change from the old regime to the new? The cabinet composed of six men, which substituted the Minister of State, was dominated by the Jews Haase and Landsberg. Haase had control of foreign affairs; his assistant was the Jew Kautsky, a Czech, who in 1918 was not even a German citizen. Also associated with Haase were the Jews Cohn and Herzfeld. The Jew Schiffer was Financial Minister of State, assisted by the Jew Bernstein. The Secretary of the Interior was the Jew Preuss, with the Jew Dr. Freund for his assistant. The Jew Fritz Max Cohen, who was correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung in Copenhagen, was made government publicity agent.
The kingdom of Prussia duplicated this condition of affairs. The Jews
Hirsch and Rosenfeld dominated the cabinet, with Rosenfeld controlling
the Department of Justice, and Hirsch in the Department of the Interior.
The Jew Simon was in charge of the Treasury Department. The Prussian
Department of Justice was wholly manned and operated by Jews. The
Director of Education was the Jew Furtran with the assistance of the Jew
Arndt. The Director of the Colonial Office was the Jew Meyer-Gerhard.
The Jew Kastenberg was the director of the Department of Art. The War
Food Supply Department was directed by the Jew Wurm, while in the State
Food Department were the Jews Prof. Dr. Hirsch and the Geheimrat Dr.
Stadthagen. The Soldiers' and Workmen's Committee was directed by the
Jew Cohen, with the Jews Stern, Herz, Lowenberg, Frankel, Israelowicz,
Laubenheim, Seligsohn, Katzenstein, Laufenberg, Heimann, Schlesinger,
Merz and Weyl having control of various activities of that committee.
The Jew Ernst is chief of police at Berlin; in the same office at
Frankfurt is the Jew Sinzheimer; in Munich the Jew Steiner; in Essen the
Jew Levy. It will be remembered that the Jew Eisner was President of
Bavaria, his financial minister being the Jew Jaffe. Bavaria's trade,
commerce and industry were in control of the half-Jew Brentano. The Jews
Lipsinsky and Schwarz were active in the government of Saxony; the Jews
Thalheimer and Heiman in Wurtemberg; the Jew Fulda in Hessen.
Two delegates sent to the Peace Conference were Jews and a third was notoriously the tool of Jewish purposes. In addition Jews swarmed through the German delegation as experts and advisors—Max Warburg, Dr. Von Strauss, Merton, Oskar Oppenheimer, Dr. Jaffe, Deutsch, Brentano, Bernstein, Struck, Rathenau, Wassermann, and Mendelsohn-Bartholdi.
As to the part which Jews from other countries had in the Peace Conference, German observers declare that any candid student may discover by reading the accounts of impartial non-Jewish recorders of that event. Only the non-Jewish historians seem to have been struck by the fact; the multitude of Jewish writers apparently judged it wise to conceal it.
Jewish influence in German affairs came strongly to the front during the war. It came with all the directness and attack of a flying wedge, as if previously prepared. The Jews of Germany were not German patriots during the war, and although this will not appear a crime in the eyes of the nations who were opposed to Germany, it may throw some light on the Jew's assertion of patriotic loyalty to the land where he lives. Thoughtful Germans hold that it is impossible for the Jew to be a patriot, for reasons which will presently be given.
The point to be considered is the general claim that the persons already named would not have obtained the positions in which they were found had it not been for the Revolution, and the Revolution would not have come had not they brought it. It is true that there were unsatisfactory conditions in Germany, but they could and would have been adjusted by the people themselves; the conditions which destroyed the people's morale and were made impossible of reform were in control of the Jews.
The principal Jewish influences which are charged with bringing about the downfall of German order may be named under three heads: (a) the spirit of Bolshevism which masqueraded under the name of German Socialism; (b) Jewish ownership and control of the Press; (c) Jewish control of the food supply and the industrial machinery of the country. There was a fourth, "higher up," but these worked upon the German people directly.
As it is possible that German conclusions upon this matter may be received doubtfully by peoples whose public opinion has been shaped by Jewish influence, it may help to quote George Pitter-Wilson, of the London Globe, who wrote early in April, 1919, "Bolshevism is the dispossession of the Christian nations of the world to such an extent that no capital will remain in the hands of the Christians, that all Jews may jointly hold the world in their hands and reign wherever they choose." As early as the second year of the war, German Jews were preaching that Germany's defeat was necessary to the rise of the proletariat, at which time Strobel declared, "I openly admit that a full victory of the country would not be in the interest of the Social Democrats." Everywhere it was preached that "the exaltation of the proletariat after a won victory is an impossibility." These instances, out of many, are cited not to reopen the military question but to show how the so-called German Jew forgot loyalty to the country in which he lived and joined the outside Jews in accomplishing the collapse of Germany, and not merely, as we shall see, to rid Germany of militarism, which every thoughtful German desired, but to throw the country into such confusion as to permit them to seize control.
The press of Germany echoed this plan of the Jewish spokesmen, at first faintly, then boldly. The Berliner Tageblatt and the Munchner Neuester Nachrichten were during the whole war official and semi-official organs of the government. They were owned and controlled by Jews, as was also the Frankfurter Zeitung and a host of smaller papers that were their spiritual dependents. These papers, it is charged, were really German editions of the Jew-controlled press of the Allied countries, and their purpose was the same. One of the great pieces of research that ought to be undertaken for the purpose of showing the world how its thought is manufactured for it every day, and for what ulterior purposes, is this union of the Jewish press, which passes for the Public Press, throughout the world.
The food and supplies of the people quickly passed into Jewish hands as soon as the war emergency came, and then began a period of dishonesty which destroyed the confidence of the bravest. Like all other patriotic people, the German people knew that war meant sacrifice and suffering, and like other people they were willing to share the common lot. But they found themselves preyed upon by a class of Jews who had prepared everything to make profit out of the common distress. Immediately Jews appeared in banks, war companies, distribution societies, and the ministries of supplies—wherever the life of the people could be speculated in or taxed. Articles that were plentiful disappeared, only to reappear again at high prices. The war companies were exclusively Jewish, and although the government attempted to regulate the outgo of food in the interests of all the people, it became notorious that those with money could get all of anything they wanted, regardless of the food cards. The Jews simply trebled the price of the goods they let go without the cards, and so kept a stream of the nation's gold flowing into their private treasuries. None of the government's estimates of the food stocks could be depended on, because of the hidden hoards on which these speculators drew. This began to disturb the morale of the people, and complaints were made and prosecutions started; but as soon as the cases came up it was discovered that the prosecutor appointed to charge and the commissioner appointed to judge were also Jews, and so the cases usually wore themselves out without results. When, however, a German merchant was caught, great noise was made about it, and the penalty placed upon him was equal to what all the others should have had. Go the length and breadth of Germany today, say the reports, study the temper of the people, and you will discover that the abuse of power by the Jews has burned across Germany's memory like a hot iron.
While these influences were undermining the mass of the people, higher influences of Jewish origin were operating upon the government. The advisors of the Bethmann-Hollweg government were the great ship magnate Ballin, a Jew; Theodor Wolff, of the Berliner Tageblatt and member of the Pan-Jewish press; Von Gwinner, director of the German Bank who is connected by marriage with the great Jew bankers, the Speyers; and Rathenau, the leader of Jewish industrial-financial activities. These men were at the source of things and were bending the government as the other influences were bending the people.
The rich German Jew could buy the recognition he desired by acquiring financial power over those interests which most directly affected the ruling class of Germany, but how was the poor Jew to gain the recognition he desired?—for all Jews are actuated by the same desire; it is in them; they feel the spur to mastery. Having explored the conquest of the higher circles by Jewish money-power, there is yet to explore the conquest of the body of the nation by Jews who had no money except what they could seize in the disorder which they caused. The analysis that is given, follows:
The Jew is not an anarchist. He is not a destructionist. All this is true, notwithstanding he is the world's Bolshevist and preeminently Germany's revolutionist. His anarchy is not ingrain, it is a device which he uses for a purpose. The rich Jew is not an anarchist, because he can achieve what he desires by more subtle methods. The poor Jew has no other recourse. But rich and poor go jointly for a long stretch; the bond of sympathy between them never breaks; for, if the anarchy is successful, then the poor Jew shall take his place with the rich Jew; and if the anarchy is not successful, it has nevertheless served to break up new fields in which the rich Jew may operate.
In Germany it was possible for the poor Jew to thrust himself up through the wall of Germanism above him only by breaking it up. In Russia the same was true. The social system had encrusted around the Jew, keeping him in a position where, as the nations knew by experience, he would be less harmful. As nature encysts the harmful foreign element in the flesh, building a wall around it, so nations have found it expedient to do with the Jew. In modern times, however, the Jew has found a means of knocking down the walls and throwing the whole national house into confusion, and in the darkness and riot that follows, seize the place he has long coveted. When Russia broke, who came first to light? Kerensky, who is a Jew. But his plans were not radical enough, and then came Trotsky, another Jew. Trotsky found the system too strong for him to break in America—he broke through the weak spot in Russia and would extend that weakness round the world. Every commissar in Russia today is a Jew. Publicists are accustomed to speak of Russia as if it were in disorder. It may be that Russia is, but the Jewish government of Russia is not. From a mass of underlings, the Jews of Russia came up a perfect phalanx, a flying wedge through the superinduced disorder, as if every man's place had been previously prepared for him.
That also is the way it was in Germany. The German ceiling had to be broken, as it were, before the poor Jews could realize their ambition. When the break was made they swarmed through and settled in places of control above the nation.
This may explain why Jews the world over supply the energy of disruptive movements. It is understood that the young Jews of the United States are propagandists of an ideal that would practically abolish the United States. The attack is aimed, of course, against "capitalism," which means the present government of the world by the Gentile. The true capitalists of the world are Jews, who are capitalists for capital's sake. It is hard to believe that they wish to destroy capital; they wish to obtain sole control of it, and their wish has long been in fair way to fulfillment.
In Germany, therefore, as in Russia, distinction is made between the methods of the rich and of the poor Jews, because one method affects the government and the other the morale of the people, but both converge on the same objective. It is not only desire to escape oppression that actuates the lower classes of Jews, but desire to gain control—for the spirit of mastery pulses strong within them. German convictions on this question have reached the place where they may be expressed thus: Revolution is the expression of the Jews' will to power. Parties such as the socialists, democrats and freethinkers are but tools for the Jewish plan to power. The so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" is really and practically the dictatorship of Jews.
So suddenly have German eyes been opened, so stormfully wrathful has been the reaction, that the word has gone out through German Judaism to retire to the second trench. There has been a sudden and concerted abandonment of office wherever the office made direct contact with the public; there has, however, been no abandonment of power. What will happen in Germany is not now known. Some regrettable things have already happened. But the Germans will doubtless prove themselves equal to the situation by devising methods of control at once unobjectionable and effective. But as to Russia, it is hardly doubtful any longer what will happen there. When Russia turns, a shudder will run through the earth.
How Gentile Germany and Russia look at the entire question may be summarized as follows:
Judaism is the most closely organized power on earth, even more than the British Empire. It forms a State whose citizens are unconditionally loyal wherever they may be and whether rich or poor.
The name which is given in Germany to this State which circulates among all the states is "All-Judaan."
The means of power of the State of All-Judaan are capital and journalism, or money and propaganda.
All-Judaan is the only State that exercises world government; all the other States can and may exercise national government only.
The principal culture of All-Judaan is journalistic; the technical, scientific, literary performances of the modern Jew are throughout journalistic performances. They are due to the marvelous talent of the Jews for receptivity of others' ideas. Capital and Journalism are joined in the Press to create a political and spiritual medium of Jewish power.
The government of this state of All-Judaan is wonderfully organized. Paris was its first seat, but has now been moved to third place. Before the war London was its first, and New York its second capital. It remains to be seen whether New York will now supplant London—the drift is toward America.
As All-Judaan is not in a position to have a standing army and navy, other states supply these for it. Its fleet is the British fleet, which guards from hindrance the progress of all-Jewish world economy, or that part of it which depends on the sea. In return, All-Judaan assures Britain an undisturbed political and territorial world rule. All-Judaan has added Palestine to British control. Wherever there was an All-Judaan land force (whatever national uniform it might wear), it worked with the British navy.
All-Judaan is willing to entrust the government of various strips of the world to the nationalistic governments; it only asks to control the governments. Judaism is passionately in favor of perpetuating nationalistic divisions for the Gentile world. For themselves, Jews never become assimilated with any nation. They are a separate people, always were and always will be.
All-Judaan's only quarrel with any nation occurs when that nation makes it impossible for All-Judaan to control that nation's industrial and financial profits. It can make war, it can make peace; it can command anarchy in stubborn cases, it can restore order. It holds the sinews of world power in its hand and it apportions them among the nations in such ways as will best support All-Judaan's plan.
Controlling the world's sources of news, All-Judaan can always prepare the minds of the people for its next move. The greatest exposure yet to be made is the way that news is manufactured and the way in which the mind of whole nations is molded for a purpose. When the powerful Jew is at last traced and his hand revealed, then comes the ready cry of persecution and it echoes through the world press. The real causes of the persecution (which is the oppression of the people by the financial practices of the Jews) are never given publicity.
All-Judaan has its vice-governments in London and New York. Having wreaked its revenge on Germany it will now go forth to conquer other nations. Britain it already has. Russia it is struggling for, but the chances are against it. The United States, with its good-natured tolerance of all races, offers a promising field. The scene of operations changes, but the Jew is the same throughout the centuries.
[Issue of May 29, 1920.]
"At first sight it would seem as if the economic system of North America was the very one that developed independently of the Jews . . . . Nevertheless I uphold my assertion that the United States (perhaps more than any other land) are filled to the brim with the Jewish spirit. This is recognized in many quarters, above all in those best capable of forming a judgment on the subject . . . .
"In the face of this fact, is there not some justification for the opinion that the United States owe their very existence to the Jews? And if this be so, how much more can it be asserted that Jewish influence made the United States just what they are—that is, American? For what we call Americanism is nothing else, if we may say so, than the Jewish spirit distilled."
—Werner Sombart, "The Jews and Modern Capital," pp. 38, 43.
III.
Jewish History in the United States
The story of the Jews in America begins with Christopher Columbus. On August 2, 1492, more than 300,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, with which event Spain's prestige began its long decline, and on August 3, the next day, Columbus set sail for the West, taking a group of Jews with him. They were not, however, refugees, for the prophetic navigator's plans had aroused the sympathy of influential Jews for a long period previously. Columbus himself tells us that he consorted much with Jews. The first letter he wrote detailing his discoveries was to a Jew. Indeed, the eventful voyage itself which added to men's knowledge and wealth "the other half of the earth" was made possible by Jews.
The pleasant story that it was Queen Isabella's jewels which financed the voyage has disappeared under cool research. There were three Maranos or "secret Jews" who wielded great influence at the Spanish court: Luis de Santagel, who was an important merchant of Valencia and who was "farmer" of the royal taxes; his relative, Gabriel Sanchez, who was the royal treasurer; and their friend, the royal chamberlain, Juan Cabrero. These worked unceasingly on Queen Isabella's imagination, picturing to her the depletion of the royal treasury and the likelihood of Columbus discovering the fabulous gold of the Indies, until the Queen was ready to offer her jewels in pawn for the funds. But Santagel craved permission to advance the money himself, which he did, 17,000 ducats in all, about $20,000, perhaps equal to $160,000 today. It is probable that the loan exceeded the expedition's cost.
Associated with Columbus in the voyage were at least five Jews: Luis de Torres, interpreter; Marco, the surgeon; Bernal, the physician; Alonzo de la Calle, and Gabriel Sanchez. The astronomical instruments and maps which the navigators used were of Jewish origin. Luis de Torres was the first man ashore, the first to discover the use of tobacco; he settled in Cuba and may be said to be the father of Jewish control of the tobacco business as it exists today.
Columbus' old patrons, Luis de Santagel and Gabriel Sanchez, received many privileges for the part they played in the work, but Columbus himself became the victim of a conspiracy fostered by Bernal, the ship's doctor, and suffered injustice and imprisonment as his reward.
From that beginning, Jews looked more and more to America as a fruitful field, and immigration set in strongly toward South America, principally Brazil. But because of military participation in a disagreement between the Brazilians and the Dutch, the Jews of Brazil found it necessary to emigrate, which they did in the direction of the Dutch colony of what is now New York. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor, did not entirely approve of their settling among his people and ordered them to leave, but the Jews had evidently taken the precaution to assure their being received even if not welcomed, because upon revoking the order of Stuyvesant, the Directors gave as one of the reasons for the Jews being received, "the large amount of capital which they have invested in the shares of the Company." Nevertheless they were forbidden to enter public service and to open retail shops, which had the effect of driving them into foreign trade in which they were soon exercising all but a monopoly because of their European connections.
This is only one of the thousand illustrations which can be given of the resourcefulness of the Jew. Forbid him in one direction, he will excel in another. When he was forbidden to deal in new clothes, he sold old clothes—that was the beginning of the organized traffic in secondhand clothing. When he was forbidden to deal in merchandise, he dealt in waste—the Jew is the originator of the waste product business of the world; he was the originator of the salvage system; he found wealth in the debris of civilization. He taught people how to use old rags, how to clean old feathers, how to use gall nuts and rabbit skins. He has always had a taste for the furrier trade, which he now controls, and to him is due the multitude of common skins which now pass under various alluring trade names as furs of high origin. The idea of renovation gained commercial value through the Jew. In the "rag men" who blow tin horns through our cities and save the old iron, old bottles, old paper and old fabrics, we have the commercial descendants of those earlier Jews who turned adversity into success by converting the rubbish of the earth into material of value.
Unwittingly, old Peter Stuyvesant compelled the Jew to make New York the principal port of America, and though a majority of New York Jews had fled to Philadelphia at the time of the American Revolution, most of them returned to New York at the earliest opportunity, instinct seeming to make them aware that in New York was to be their principal paradise of gain. And so it has proved. New York is the greatest center of Jewish population in the world. It is the gateway where the bulk of American imports and exports are taxed, and where practically all the business done in America pays tribute to the masters of money. The very land of the city is practically the holdings of the Jews. A list of the property owners of the metropolis reveals only at rare intervals a Gentile name. No wonder that Jewish writers, viewing this unprecedented prosperity, this unchecked growth in wealth and power, exclaim enthusiastically that the United States is the Promised Land foretold by the prophets, and New York the New Jerusalem. Some have gone even further and described the peaks of the Rockies as "the mountains of Zion," and with reason, too, if the mining and coastal wealth of the Jews is considered.
The new waterways proposal, which will make an ocean port of practically every great city on the Great Lakes and take from New York the prestige she has maintained by being the gateway toward which the principal railways narrowed, is being strongly protested at this time. And the strongest motive in opposing this most obvious betterment is that so much wealth counted in New York is not wealth at all, but fictitious values depending solely on New York remaining New York. When anything comes which will make New York merely a city on the coast, and not the city where the great taxers sit to levy their tribute, much Jewish wealth will decrease. It was fabulous before the war. What it is now the statisticians will hardly undertake to say.
In fifty years the increase in the Jewish population of the United States has been from 50,000 to more than 3,300,000. In the British Isles there are only 300,000, in Palestine only 100,000. It is fortunate for the Jew himself that in Great Britain his numbers are not greater, for the large and evident control he exercises in great matters would sometimes make it inconvenient for the poorer Jew, if he were abroad in England in large numbers. An unusually well-informed Briton says that anti-Semitism is always ready to break out in England upon sufficient cause, but it cannot break out against the inaccessible rich Jews who control in politics and international finance. It us probably true that the commonest real cause of anti-Semitism is the action of the international Jew who is often unknown and always secure, but the innocent victim of it is the poor Jew. Anti-Semitism, however, will be considered in the next article.
The figures representing Jewish population in Great Britain and the United States indicate that the colossal power wielded by international Jewish financiers is neither consequent nor dependent upon their number. The arresting fact about the Jew is his world-wide unchallenged power, coupled with comparative numerical inferiority. There are only about 14,000,000 Jews in the world; they are about as numerous as the Koreans. This comparison of their numbers with the Koreans will illustrate still more vividly the phenomenon of their power.
In the time of George Washington there were about 4,000 Jews in the country, most of them well-to-do traders. For the most part they favored the American side. Haym Salomon helped the Colonies out with the loan of his entire fortune at a critical moment. But they never assimilated, they did not take up the usual employments nor farming, they never seemed to care for the worry of manufacturing things, but only for the selling of them after they were made.
It is only of recent years the Jew has shown any capacity for manufacturing, and most of what he now engages in has grown up as an adjunct to his merchandising plans. By manufacturing, he saves a profit. The result has not been a decrease in cost to the public, but an increase. It is characteristic of Jewish business methods that economies are for the sake of the business, not for the sake of the public. The commodities in which there have been the most inexcusable and exorbitant increases in prices to the public, and the lines of business which have been most quickly frightened into lower prices without any explanatory change in the general situation, have been those lines in which Jews exercise the widest control.
Business to the Jewish mind is money; what the successful Jew may do with the money after he gets it is another matter, but in the getting of it he never permits "idealistic slush" to interfere with the dollar. His dollar of profit is never "clipped" by any of the voluntary reforms by which a few men are trying to ameliorate the condition of the workers.
This is not by any means due to the hardness of the Jewish heart, but to the hardness of the Jewish view of business. Business is to it a matter of goods and money, not of people. If you are in distress and suffering, the Jewish heart would have sympathy for you; but if your house were involved in the matter, you and your house would be two separate entities; the Jew would naturally find it difficult, in his theory of business, to humanize the house; he would deal with it after a manner which other people would call "hard," but he would not feel the charge to be just; he would say that it was only "business."
It is probably this way that the Jewish "sweatshops" of New York may be explained. When the susceptible people of the nation commiserated the poor Jews of the New York sweatshops, they for the most part did not know that the inventors and operators of the "sweatshop" method were themselves Jews. Indeed, while it is the boast of our country that no race or color or creed is persecuted here, but liberty is insured to all, still it is a fact which every special investigator has noted that the only heartless treatment ever accorded the Jew in the United States came from his own people, his overseers and masters. And yet there is no evidence that either the "sweater" or the "sweated" ever thought of it as inhumanity or as "heartless." It was "business." The "sweated" lived in the hope of having a roomful of people sewing for him or her some day. Their endlessly vital interest in "business" and their unflagging ambition to get further up the ladder and become masters in their own sweatshop, enabled them to work without the slightest sense of oppression or injustice which, after all, is the sorest thing about poverty. The Jews never regard work as a calamity, but neither do they regard subordinate positions as permanently theirs. Thus, they spend their energies in getting up and out rather than in lamenting the inconveniences of the place where they are and trying to improve it.
All this is individually excellent but socially harmful. The result is that, until recently, the lower ranges of employment were wholly unsupervised, and the higher circles never felt the necessity of devising industrial reforms and benefits. The record of the great Jews in charity is very noble; their record in industrial reforms is nil. With commendable sympathy toward their own people, they will donate a part of their profits to rectify some of the human need resulting from the method by which they made their profits, but as for reforming the method by which they get their profits in order that the resulting need might be diminished or prevented, apparently it has never occurred to them. At least, while there are many charitable names among the wealthier Jews, there are no names that stand for an actual, practical humanizing of industry, its methods and its returns.
This, of course, is unfortunate; but it is intelligible; more than that, it is explanatory of many things for which the Jew is blamed by those who do not understand his nature. The Jew will go part way in sharing the results of his prosperity; he has not gone any length, save upon outer compulsion, in sharing the processes, or sharing wealth in the making. And while the social effect is the same as if this were done out of cruel insensibility and inhumanity, still it must be said that mostly it is done not out of such feelings, but out of the Jew's ingrain conception of the game of business. Some proposals of industrial reform appear as crazy to him as would a proposal to credit one baseball batter's hit to his opponent's score, just as a matter of humanity.
The American Jew does not assimilate. This is stated, not to blame him, but merely as a fact. The Jew could merge with the people of America if he desired, but he doesn't. If there is any prejudice existing against him in America, aside from the sense of inquiry which his colossal success engenders, it is because of his aloofness. The Jew is not objectionable in his person, creed, or race. His spiritual ideals are shared by the world. But still he does not assimilate; he cultivates by his exclusiveness the feeling that he does not "belong." This is his privilege, and from one point of view it may indicate excellent judgement, but he must not make it one of the grounds of his complaint against Gentiles in general, as he has a tendency to do. It is better that he should make it clear to Gentiles once and for all where true Jews stand in the matter, as when a young Jew said—"There is all the difference in the world between an American Jew and a Jewish American. A Jewish American is a mere amateur Gentile, doomed to be a parasite forever."
The ghetto is not an American product but the Jews' own importation. They have separated themselves into a distinct community. Speaking of this matter the Jewish Encyclopedia says: "The social organization of the Jews resident in America has differed little from that in other countries * * * in the main, and without any compulsion, Jews preferred to live in close proximity to one another, a peculiarity which still prevails."
To make a list of the lines of business controlled by the Jews of the United States would be to touch most of the vital industries of the country—those which are really vital, and those which cultivated habit has made to seem vital. The theatrical business, of course, as everyone knows, is exclusively Jewish. Play-producing, booking, theater operation are all in the hands of Jews. This perhaps accounts for the fact that in almost every production today can be detected propaganda, sometimes glaringly commercial advertisement, which does not originate with playwrights, but with producers.
The motion picture industry.
The sugar industry.
The tobacco industry.
Fifty per cent or more of the meat packing industry.
Upward of 60 per cent of the shoemaking industry.
Men's and women's ready-made clothing.
Most of the musical purveying done in the country.
Jewelry.
Grain.
More recently, cotton.
The Colorado smelting industry.
Magazine authorship.
News distribution.
The liquor business.