Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910: Studies In History, Economics and Public Law, Vol. LIX, No. 4, 1914

In this survey of Jewish immigration to the United States for the past thirty years, my purpose has been to present the main features of a movement of population that is one of the most striking of modern times. The causes of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe, the course of Jewish immigration to the United States and the most important social qualities of the Jewish immigrants are studied, for the light they throw upon the character of this movement. The method employed in this investigation has been largely statistical and comparative, a fact which is partly due to the kind of material that was available and partly to the point of view that has been taken. Certain economic and social factors, having a close bearing upon the past and present situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe and frequently neglected in the discussion of the various phases of this movement, have been emphasized in the examination into the causes of the emigration of the Jews from Eastern Europe and have been found vital in determining the specific character of the Jewish immigration to this country.


I desire gratefully to acknowledge my deep indebtedness to Mr. A.S. Freidus, head of the Jewish department of the New York Public Library, for his ever-ready assistance in the preparation of this work. Thanks are due as well to Dr. C.C. Williamson, head of the Economics department of the library, and to his able and courteous staff; to Professor Robert E. Chaddock for his many valuable suggestions and aid in the making of the statistical tables and in the reading of the proof; and to Professor Edwin R.A. Seligman for his painstaking reading of the manuscript.


Thirty years have elapsed since the Jews began to enter the United States in numbers sufficiently large to make their immigration conspicuous in the general movement to this country. A study of Jewish immigration, in itself and in relation to the general movement, reveals an interesting phase of this historic and many-sided social phenomenon and throws light upon a number of important problems incident to it.


Especially does it become clear that the Jewish immigration, although in part the result of the same forces as have affected the general immigration and the separate groups composing it, differs, nevertheless, in certain marked respects, from the typical immigration. Some of these differences indeed are fundamental and far-reaching in their effects and practically stamp the Jewish immigration as a movement sui generis.


Generally speaking, in the forces which are behind the emigration of the Jews from the countries of the Old World, in the character of their immigration—its movement and its distinguishing qualities—the Jewish immigration strikes a distinctly individual note.


Three European countries—Russia, Austria-Hungary and Roumania—furnish the vast majority of the Jewish immigrants to the United States.[1] It is to these countries, therefore, that we must turn for light upon the causes of this movement.


Geographically, these countries are closely connected; they form practically the whole of the division of Eastern Europe. Here the Slavonic races so largely predominate that the term Slavonic Europe has been applied to this section of Europe.


Eastern or Slavonic Europe is a social as well as a geographical fact. In racial stratification, economic and social institutions, cultural position and, in part, religious traditions as well, these countries present strong similarities to one another and equally strong differences in most of these respects from the countries of Western Europe.