Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/110

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84
RUSSIAN ECONOMIC LIFE

pensity for financial speculation, which propensity is, however, easily forgiven and even encouraged in the "true-Russian" representatives of our commercial interests. On the other hand, the Jews lower "the standards of living" by offering their services often at a very low price. Thus a peculiar "social anti-Semitism" comes into being, in Russia as well as in the countries of Jewish immigration,—a phenomenon not unlike the movement against "yellow labour" in the United States and in the Australian Federation. There can be no doubt that the artificially restrained field of application of Jewish labour is alone responsible for the unspeakable condition in which it is forced to exist. In spite of the exodus of a large mass of Jews from Russia, which bears analogy to the emigration of the Irish people from their native country,—upward of one and a half million Jews left Russia between the years 1881 and 1908,—the remaining millions seem to be doomed to starvation and degeneration. The popular tales about Jewish wealth are most emphatically contradicted by impartial facts. Of the emigrants who reach the shores of America the