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No. 39. Vienna, 23rd September 1904. — 14th Tishri 5665. 8th Year.

On the Jewish Migration.

It is not the first time, nor, unhappily, will it be the last, that we must speak in this place of the Jewish migration. We have often endeavoured to point out with all earnestness that the planless and aimless wandering of the Jews not only inflicts irreparable damage upon our national wealth in men and in material goods, but that by this unregulated, arbitrary emigration and immigration we might easily provoke hostile measures on the part of the states affected by it.

All who follow this question with even a little attention know that our fears are by no means too pessimistic. One need only think of the Aliens Bill in England, whose dangers are far from being removed, of the repressive measures of the United States of North America, of the occurrences in South Africa, of the harsh, if perhaps not wholly unjustified, precautions of the Continental states, which permit passage through but no longer stay, in order at least to divine, if not to know, the magnitude of the misery of the Jewish emigrants.

What might be done in this matter to remove the greatest hardships of this state of things and the worst obstacles to its improvement, we have repeatedly set forth in this place. Our proposal is to create an organisation for emigration, which would have to possess a number of offices both in the countries of emigration and in those of immigration, where the emigrants might learn everything worth knowing, and where a regulation and ordering of the emigration would have to be begun. In all the seaports from which the stream of emigrants has to disperse, and in all the larger cities in which emigrants must halt during their transit, there would have to be bureaus of this organisation, charged with providing, systematically and according to a precisely fixed method, for the speedy and proper conduct of the onward transport, the furnishing of the emigrants with bare necessities, medical supervision, and the gathering of statistics.

Hitherto there has been in this respect only isolated effort. The societies or persons concerned work according to their own discretion, without sufficient means, indeed mostly without certain notice of the arrival of the larger bands of emigrants. As a rule they learn only by chance, through newspaper paragraphs or through word from one of the cities through which the emigrants have passed, that once again a great number of emigrants, very often destitute of the barest necessities, are to be expected. Then the relief must be carried out as well or as ill as may be, and often, only too often, the helpers stand simply powerless before the magnitude of the misery.

There has been no want of efforts to put an end to this state of things, so unworthy of our people. Now in Germany, now in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, in England and America, projects are brought to light for dealing with the problem of emigration. Nor can it be denied that a number of noteworthy proposals have been put forward for discussion, and that here and there even a promising beginning has been made. But there the matter has rested. A co-operation of the interested factors has not so far come about even in the most modest measure. And yet, one would think, there is surely no great Jewish corporation, nay, not a single Jewish community, that does not feel the present state of things to be one in need of improvement, indeed downright dangerous.

Dangerous above all because the Jews of the countries towards which the main stream of emigration flows are growing anxious for their own position. It is no accident that in America the cry is heard ever more loudly, and that from the Jewish side as well, that an end be put to the disorderly, precipitate immigration now so common. Already one hears it discussed in all seriousness in Jewish circles whether the capacity of America to receive Jewish immigrants is not already exhausted, and whether for the next few years — one speaks provisionally of