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No. 10. | Vienna, 6 March 1903 — 7 Adar 5663. | 7th Year

The Commercial Position of the Jews.

Extract from an interview with Israel Zangwill. (From the "Magazine of Commerce," March 1903.)

After Zangwill had explained to the interviewer that he wished to speak of the commercial situation of the Jews in general, and not specifically of that of English Jewry, he replied to the interviewer's objection that high finance was strongly Jewish: "This popular notion, as usual, has nothing to do with the truth. There are, it is true, very wealthy Jewish financiers whose position and skill give them weight in public affairs, but they do everything on their own account and never represent a Jewish policy; the Jews as a people must not be measured by the standard of a fortunate minority. It would be much the same as asserting that all Americans were millionaires because Pierpont Morgan, Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie are American citizens. For long years the Jews supplied the world with its leading financiers; at the present day, however, the richest are found precisely among the non-Jews, although the poorest, now as ever, are the Jews."

"What, in your opinion, is the commercial situation of the Jews? How has it developed, and in what direction?"

"The Jew lives on," said Mr. Zangwill, "by virtue of the endless persecution that has been his portion since the destruction of Jerusalem. Forced by ceaseless restrictions into the narrowest bounds of social and commercial life, he sought consolation in that strong inner life which has kept him from sinking to the level of the lowest social strata of his persecutors, and naturally he worked his way upward in the few branches that remained open to him. He could not enter the trade guilds of the Middle Ages — their confession of faith forbade it. He had to purchase the right to live, and pay a heavy ransom for it. Church and State used him to oppress the people and turned the whole hatred of the people upon him; the advantages drawn from this fell to the Jews in only very small measure. The Jew drew upon himself the hatred of the masses in order to do the will of these his masters, and it did not suit these powers that the Jew should also appease the ill-will of the masses. Nowadays the Jews in Great Britain enjoy freedom; they are free to follow their inclinations towards art and commerce, and race and religion are no longer stumbling-blocks. They are naturally only reaping the fruits of the discipline, the oppression and the endurance of past generations; the powers their forefathers cultivated are now at work, and they lead to a certain success. There is nothing abnormal in it. I believe it would scarcely excite any notice at all, were not the Jews themselves interesting as a survival, a tragic inheritance from times gone by."

"This is surely not a discouraging situation," said the interviewer. "There is no reason to rejoice over it," said Mr. Zangwill; "for every well-placed Jew in London there are now ten who are able to maintain themselves only through the long apprenticeship of suffering that has taught them to live where others can only stand. In the East End of London there is more poverty than all the Jewish wealth of the West End could outweigh; yet even in the districts of Mile End, Stepney and Whitechapel the life of the Jews is uncommonly favourably ordered in comparison with the conditions of life in other countries."

"The commercial situation of the Jews!" he continued. "But truly, there is none at all. The Jews have no commercial position. The proper point of view from which the question should be considered is to start from the great mass of the Jews, who, to the number of ten to twelve millions, are scattered over the whole world. In Great Britain alone, and only for the moment, is there no antisemitism, but the Aliens Immigration Bill will soon pave the way for it. In most countries, however, the Jew is still persecuted, shut up in a ghetto, social or actual, prevented from developing his gifts, which might bring the world happiness and wealth; he is a pariah and an outcast all his life long. We must not pass over the treatment of the Jews in the countries where they live and suffer in great masses on the ground that they enjoy freedom in Great Britain, Italy and in part in Germany, France and America,