The Jews and Modern Capitalism by Werner Sombart

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The Jews and Modern Capitalism

Werner Sombart

Translated by M. Epstein

 

Contents

Translator's Introductory Note

Part I: The Contribution of the Jews to Modern Economic Life

Chapter 1:   Introductory

Chapter 2:   The Shifting of the Centre of Economic Life since the Sixteenth Century

Chapter 3:   The Quickening of International Trade

Chapter 4:   The Foundation of Modern Colonies

Chapter 5:   The Foundation of the Modern State

Chapter 6:   The Predominance of Commerce in Economic Life

Chapter 7:   The Growth of a Capitalistic Point of View in Economic Life

Part II: The Aptitude of the Jews of Modern Capitalism

Chapter 8:   The Problem

Chapter 9:   What is a Capitalist Undertaker?

Chapter 10: The Objective Circumstances in the Jewish Aptitude for Modern Capitalism

Chapter 11: The Significance of the Jewish Religion in Economic Life

Chapter 12: Jewish Characteristics

Part III: The Origin of the Jewish Genius

Chapter 13: The Race Problem

Chapter 14: The Vicissitudes of the Jewish People

Notes and References
Translator's Introductory Note

Werner Sombart is undoubtedly one of the most striking personalities in the Germany of to-day. Born in 1863, he has devoted himself to research in economics, and has contributed much that is valuable to economic thought. Though his work has not always been accepted without challenge, it has received universal recognition for its brilliance, and his reputation has drawn hosts of students to his lectures, both at Breslau, where he held the Chair of Economics at the University (1890–1906), and now in Berlin at the Handelshochschule, where he occupies a similar position.

But Sombart is an artist as well as a scholar; he combines reason with imagination in an eminent degree, and he has the gift, seldom enough associated with German professors, of writing in a lucid, flowing, almost eloquent style. That is one characteristic of all his books, which are worth noting. The rise and development of modern capitalism has been the theme that has attracted him most, and his masterly treatment of it may be found in his Der moderne Kapitalismus (2 vols., Leipzig, 1902). In 1896 he published Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung, which quickly went through numerous editions and may be described as one of the most widely read books in German-speaking countries.[1] Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im 19ten Jahrhundert appeared in 1903, and Das Proletariat in 1906.

For some years past Sombart has been considering the revision of his magnum opus on modern capitalism, and in the course of his studies came across the problem, quite accidentally, as he himself tells us, of the relation between the Jews and modern capitalism. The topic fascinated him, and he set about inquiring what that relationship precisely was. The results of his labours were published in the book[2] of which this is an English edition. The English version is slightly shorter than the German original. The portions that have been left out (with the author's concurrence) are not very long and relate to general technical questions, such as the modern race theory or the early history of credit instruments. Furthermore, everything found within square brackets has been added by the translator. My best thanks are due to my wife, who has been constantly helpful with suggestions and criticisms, and to my friend Leon Simon for the verse rendering on pp. 000–000.

M. E. London, April 21, 1913.

Part I — The Contribution of the Jews to Modern Economic Life
Chapter 1:  Introductory

Two possible methods may be used to discover to what extent any group of people participated in a particular form of economic organization. One is the statistical; the other may be termed the genetic.

By means of the first we endeavour to ascertain the actual number of persons taking part in some economic activity—say, those who establish trade with a particular country, or who found any given industry—and then we calculate what percentage is represented by the members of the group in which we happen to be interested. There is no doubt that the statistical method has many advantages. A pretty clear conception of the relative importance for any branch of commerce of, let us say, foreigners or Jews, is at once evolved if we are able to show by actual figures that 50 or 75 per cent of all the persons engaged in that branch belong to either the first or the second category named. More especially is this apparent when statistical information is forthcoming, not only as to the number of persons but also concerning other or more striking economic factors—e.g., the amount of paid-up capital, the quantity of the commodities produced, the size of the turnover, and so forth. It will be useful, therefore, to adopt the statistical method in questions such as the one we have set ourselves. But at the same time it will soon become evident that by its aid alone the complete solution cannot be found. In the first place, even the best statistics do not tell us everything; nay, often the most important aspect of what we are trying to discover is omitted. Statistics are silent as to the dynamic effects which strong individualities produce in economic, as indeed in all human life—effects which have consequences reaching far beyond the limits of their immediate surroundings. Their actual importance for the general tendency of any particular development is greater far than any set of figures can reveal. Therefore the statistical method must be supplemented by some other.

But more than this. The statistical method, owing to lack of information, cannot always be utilized. It is indeed a lucky accident that we possess figures recording the number of those engaged in any industry or trade, and showing their comparative relation to the rest of the population. But a statistical study of this kind, on a large scale, is really only a possibility for modern and future times. Even then the path of the investigator is beset by difficulties. Still, a careful examination of various sources, including the assessments made by Jewish communities on their members, may lead to fruitful results. I hope that this book will give an impetus to such studies, of which, at the present time, there is only one that is really useful—the enquiry of Sigmund Mayr, of Vienna.

When all is said, therefore, the other method (the genetic), to which I have already alluded, must be used to supplement the results of statistics. What is this method? We wish to discover to what extent a group of people (the Jews) influence or have influenced the form and development of modern economic life—to discover, that is, their qualitative or, as I have already called it, their dynamic importance. We can do this best of all by enquiring whether certain characteristics that mark our modern economic life were given their first form by Jews, i.e., either that some particular form of organization was first introduced by the Jews, or that some well-known business principles, now accepted on all hands as fundamental, are specific expressions of the Jewish spirit. This of necessity demands that the history of the factors in economic development should be traced to their earliest beginnings. In other words, we must study the childhood of the modern capitalistic system, or, at any rate, the age in which it received its modern form. But not the childhood only: its whole history must be considered. For throughout, down to these very days, new elements are constantly entering the fabric of capitalism and changes appear in its characteristics. Wherever such are noted our aim must be to discover to whose influence they are due. Often enough this will not be easy; sometimes it will even be impossible; and scientific imagination must come to the aid of the scholar.

Another point should not be overlooked. In many cases the people who are responsible for a fundamental idea or innovation in economic life are not always the inventors (using that word in its narrowest meaning). It has often been asserted that the Jews have no inventive powers; that not only technical but also economic discoveries were made by non-Jews alone, and that the Jews have always been able cleverly to utilize the ideas of others. I dissent from this general view in its entirety. We meet with Jewish inventors in the sphere of technical science, and certainly in that of economics, as I hope to show in this work. But even if the assertion which we have mentioned were true, it would prove nothing against the view that Jews have given certain aspects of economic life the specific features they bear. In the economic world it is not so much the inventors that matter as those who are able to apply the inventions: not those who conceive ideas (e.g., the hire-purchase system) as those who can utilize them in everyday life.

Before proceeding to the problem before us—the share of the Jews in the work of building up our modern capitalistic system—we must mention one other point of importance. In a specialized study of this kind Jewish influence may appear larger than it actually was. That is in the nature of our study, where the whole problem is looked at from only one point of view. If we were enquiring into the influence of mechanical inventions on modern economic life the same would apply: in a monograph that influence would tend to appear larger than it really was. I mention this point, obvious though it is, lest it be said that I have exaggerated the part played by the Jews. There were undoubtedly a thousand and one other causes that helped to make the economic system of our time what it is. Without the discovery of America and its silver treasures, without the mechanical inventions of technical science, without the ethnical peculiarities of modern European nations and their vicissitudes, capitalism would have been as impossible as without the Jews.

In the long story of capitalism, Jewish influence forms but one chapter. Its relative importance to the others I shall show in the new edition of my Modern Capitalism, which I hope to have ready before long.

This caveat will, I trust, help the general reader to a proper appreciation of the influence of Jews on modern economic life. But it must be taken in conjunction with another. If on the one hand we are to make some allowance, should our studies apparently tend to give Jews a preponderating weight in economic affairs, on the other hand, their contribution is very often even larger than we are led to believe. For our researches can deal only with one portion of the problem, seeing that all the material is not available. Who to-day knows anything definite about the individuals, or groups, who founded this or that industry, established this or that branch of commerce, first adopted this or that business principle? And even where we are able to name these pioneers with certainty, there comes the further question, were they Jews or not?

Jews—that is to say, members of the people who profess the Jewish faith. And I need hardly add that although in this definition I purposely leave out any reference to race characteristics, it yet includes those Jews who have withdrawn from their religious community, and even descendants of such, seeing that historically they remain Jews. This must be borne in mind, for when we are determining the influence of the Jew on modern economic life, again and again men appear on the scene as Christians, who in reality are Jews. They or their fathers were baptized, that is all. The assumption that many Jews in all ages changed their faith is not far fetched. We hear of cases from the earliest Middle Ages; in Italy, in the 7th and 8th centuries; at the same period in Spain and in the Merovingian kingdoms; and from that time to this we find them among all Christian nations. In the last third of the 19th century, indeed, wholesale baptisms constantly occurred. But we have reliable figures for the last two or three decades only, and I am therefore inclined to doubt the statement of Jacob Fromer that towards the end of the twenties in last century something like half the Jews of Berlin had gone over to Christianity.1 Equally improbable is the view of Dr. Wemer, Rabbi in Munich, who, in a paper which he recently read, stated that altogether 120,000 Jews have been baptized in Berlin. The most reliable figures we have are all against such a likelihood. According to these, it was in the nineties that apostasy on a large scale first showed itself, and even then the highest annual percentage never exceeded 1.28 (in 1905), while the average percentage per annum (since 1895) was 1. Nevertheless, the number of Jews in Berlin who from 1873 to 1906 went over to Christianity was not small; their total was 1869 precisely.2

The tendency to apostasy is stronger among Austrian Jews, especially among those of Vienna. At the present time, between five and six hundred Jews in that city renounce their faith every year, and from 1868 to 1903 there have been no less than 9085. The process grows apace; in the years 1868 to 1879 there was on an average one baptism annually for every 1200 Jews; in the period 1880 to 1889 it was one for 420–430 Jews; while between 1890 and 1903 it had reached one for every 260– 270.3

But the renegade Jews are not the only group whose influence on the economic development of our time it is difficult to estimate. There are others to which the same applies. I am not thinking of the Jewesses who married into Christian families, and who, though they thus ceased to be Jewish, at any rate in name, must nevertheless have retained their Jewish characteristics. The people I have in mind are the crypto-Jews, who played so important a part in history, and whom we encounter in every century. In some periods they formed a very large section of Jewry. But their non-Jewish pose was so admirably sustained that among their contemporaries they passed as Christians or Mohammedans. We are told, for example, of the Jews of the South of France in the 15th and 16th centuries, who came originally from Spain and Portugal (and the description applies to the Marannos everywhere): "They practised all the outward forms of Catholicism; their births, marriages and deaths were entered on the registers of the church, and they received the sacraments of baptism, marriage and extreme unction. Some even took orders and became priests."4 No wonder then that they do not appear as Jews in the reports of commercial enterprises, industrial undertakings and so forth. Some historians even to-day speak in admiring phrase of the beneficial influence of Spanish or Portuguese "immigrants." So skillfully did the crypto-Jews hide their racial origin that specialists in the field of Jewish history are still in doubt as to whether a certain family was Jewish or not.5 In those cases where they adopted Christian names, the uncertainty is even greater. There must have been a large number of Jews among the Protestant refugees in the 17th century. General reasons would warrant this assumption, but when we take into consideration the numerous Jewish names found among the Huguenots the probability is strong indeed.6

Finally, our enquiries will not be able to take any account of all those Jews who, prior to 1848, took an active part in the economic life of their time, but who were unknown to the authorities. The laws forbade Jews to exercise their callings. They were therefore compelled to do so, either under cover of some fictitious Christian person or under the protection of a "privileged" Jew, or they were forced to resort to some other trick in order to circumvent the law. Reliable authorities are of opinion that the number of Jews who in many a town lived secretly in this way must have been exceedingly large. In the forties of last century, for example, it is said that no less than 12,000 Jews, at a moderate estimate, were to be found in Vienna. The wholesale textile trade was at that time already in their hands, and entire districts in the centre of the city were full of Jewish shops. But the official list of traders of 1845 contained in an appendix the names of only sixty-three Jews, who were described as "tolerated Jewish traders," and these were allowed to deal only in a limited number of articles.7

But enough. My point was to show that, for many and various reasons, the number of Jews of whom we hear is less than those who actually existed. The reader should therefore bear in mind that the contribution of the Jews to the fabric of modern economic life will, of necessity, appear smaller than it was in reality.

What that contribution was we shall now proceed to show.
Chapter 2:  The Shifting of the Centre of Economic Life since the Sixteenth Century

One of the most important facts in the growth of modern economic life is the removal of the centre of economic activity from the nations of Southern Europe — the Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese, with whom must also be reckoned some South German lands — to those of the North-West — the Dutch, the French, the English and the North Germans. The epoch-making event in the process was Holland's sudden rise to prosperity, and this was the impetus for the development of the economic possibilities of France and England. All through the 17th century the philosophic speculators and the practical politicians among the nations of North-Western Europe had but one aim: to imitate Holland in commerce, in industry, in shipping and in colonization.

The most ludicrous explanations of this well-known fact have been suggested by historians. It has been said, for example, that the cause which led to the economic decline of Spain and Portugal and of the Italian and South German city states was the discovery of America and of the new route to the East Indies; that the same cause lessened the volume of the commerce of the Levant, and therefore undermined the position of the Italian commercial cities which depended upon it. But this explanation is not in any way satisfactory. In the first place, Levantine commerce maintained its pre-eminence throughout the whole of the 17th and 18th centuries, and during this period the prosperity of the maritime cities in the South of France, as well as that of Hamburg, was very closely bound up with it. In the second place, a number of Italian towns, Venice among them, which in the 17th century lost all their importance, participated to a large extent in the trade of the Levant in the 16th century, and that despite the neglect of the trade route. It is a little difficult to understand why the nations which had played a leading part until the 15th century — the Italians, the Spaniards, the Portuguese — should have suffered in the least because of the new commercial relations with America and the East Indies, or why they should have been placed at any disadvantage by their geographical position as compared with that of the French, the English or the Dutch. As though the way from Genoa to America or the West Indies were not the same as from Amsterdam or London or Hamburg! As though the Spanish and Portuguese ports were not the nearest to the new lands — lands which had been discovered by Italians and Portuguese, and had been taken possession of by the Portuguese and the Spaniards!

Equally unconvincing is another reason which is often given. It is asserted that the countries of North-Western Europe were strong consolidated states, while Germany and Italy were disunited, and accordingly the former were able to take up a stronger position than the latter. Here, too, we ask in wonder whether the powerful Queen of the Adriatic was a weaker state in the 16th century than the Seven Provinces in the 17th? And did not the empire of Philip II excel all the kingdoms of his time in power and renown? Why was it, moreover, that, although Germany was in a state of political disruption, certain of its cities, like Hamburg or Frankfort-on-the-Main, reached a high degree of development in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as few French or English cities could rival?

This is not the place to go into the question in all its many-sidedness. A number of causes contributed to bring about the results we have mentioned. But from the point of view of our problem one possibility should not be passed over which, in my opinion, deserves most serious consideration, and which, so far as I know, has not yet been thought of. Cannot we bring into connexion the shifting of the economic centre from Southern to Northern Europe with the wanderings of the Jews? The mere suggestion at once throws a flood of light on the events of those days, hitherto shrouded in semi-darkness. It is indeed surprising that the parallelism has not before been observed between Jewish wanderings and settlement on the one hand, and the economic vicissitudes of the different peoples and states on the other. Israel passes over Europe like the sun: at its coming new life bursts forth; at its going all falls into decay. A short résumé of the changing fortunes of the Jewish people since the 15th century will lend support to this contention.

The first event to be recalled, an event of world-wide import, is the expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492) and from Portugal (1495 and 1497). It should never be forgotten that on the day before Columbus set sail from Palos to discover America (August 3, 1492) 300,000 Jews are said to have emigrated from Spain to Navarre, France, Portugal and the East; nor that, in the years during which Vasco da Gama searched for and found the sea-passage to the East Indies, the Jews were driven from other parts of the Pyrenean Peninsula.1

It was by a remarkable stroke of fate that these two occurrences, equally portentous in their significance — the opening-up of new continents and the mightiest upheavals in the distribution of the Jewish people—should have coincided. But the expulsion of the Jews from the Pyrenean Peninsula did not altogether put an end to their history there. Numerous Jews remained behind as pseudo-Christians (Marannos), and it was only as the Inquisition, from the days of Philip II onwards, became more and more relentless that these Jews were forced to leave the land of their birth.2 During the centuries that followed, and especially towards the end of the 16th, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled in other countries. It was during this period that the doom of the economic prosperity of the Pyrenean Peninsula was sealed.

With the 15th century came the expulsion of the Jews from the German commercial cities — from Cologne (1424–5), from Augsburg (1439–40), from Strassburg (1438), from Erfurt (1458), from Nuremberg (1498–9), from Ulm (1499), and from Ratisbon (1519).

The same fate overtook them in the 16th century in a number of Italian cities. They were driven from Sicily (1492), from Naples (1540– 1), from Genoa and from Venice (1550). Here also economic decline and Jewish emigration coincided in point of time.

On the other hand, the rise to economic importance, in some cases quite unexpectedly, of the countries and towns whither the refugees fled, must be dated from the first appearance of the Spanish Jews. A good example is that of Leghorn,3 one of the few Italian cities which enjoyed economic prosperity in the 16th century. Now Leghorn was the goal of most of the exiles who made for Italy. In Germany it was Hamburg and Frankfort4 that admitted the Jewish settlers. And remarkable to relate, a keen-eyed traveller in the 18th century wandering all over Germany found everywhere that the old commercial cities of the Empire, Ulm, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Mayence and Cologne, had fallen into decay, and that the only two that were able to maintain their former splendour, and indeed to add to it from day to day, were Frankfort and Hamburg.5

In France in the 17th and 18th centuries the rising towns were Marseilles, Bordeaux, Rouen — again the havens of refuge of the Jewish exiles.6

As for Holland, it is well-known that at the end of the 16th century a sudden upward development (in the capitalistic sense) took place there. The first Portuguese Marannos settled in Amsterdam in 1593, and very soon their numbers increased. The first synagogue in Amsterdam was opened in 1598, and by about the middle of the 17th century there were Jewish communities in many Dutch cities. In Amsterdam, at the beginning of the 18th century, the estimated number of Jews was 2400.7 But even by the middle of the 17th century their intellectual influence was already marked; the writers on international law and the political philosophers speak of the ancient Hebrew commonwealth as an ideal which the Dutch constitution might well seek to emulate.8 The Jews themselves called Amsterdam at that time their grand New Jerusalem.9 Many of the Dutch settlers had come from the Spanish Netherlands, especially from Antwerp, whither they had fled on their expulsion from Spain. It is true that the proclamations of 1532 and 1539 forbade the pseudo-Christians to remain in Antwerp, but they proved ineffective. The prohibition was renewed in 1550, but this time it referred only to those who had not been domiciled for six years. But this too remained a dead letter: "the crypto-Jews are increasing from day to day." They took an active part in the struggle for freedom in which the Netherlands were engaged, and its result forced them to wander to the more northerly provinces.10 Now it is a remarkable thing that the brief space during which Antwerp became the commercial centre and the money-market of the world should have been just that between the coming and the going of the Marannos.11

It was the same in England. The economic development of the country, in other words, the growth of capitalism,12 ran parallel with the influx of Jews, mostly of Spanish andPortuguese origin.13

It was believed that there were no Jews in England from the time of their expulsion under Edward I (1290) until their more or less officially recognized return under Cromwell (1654–56). The best authorities on Anglo-Jewish history are now agreed that this is a mistake. There were always Jews in England; but not till the 16th century did they begin to be numerous. Already in the reign of Elizabeth many were met with, and the Queen herself had a fondness for Hebrew studies and for intercourse with Jews. Her own physician was a Jew, Rodrigo Lopez, on whom Shakespeare modelled his Shylock. Later on, as is generally known, the Jews, as a result of the efforts of Manasseh ben Israel, obtained the right of unrestricted domicile. Their numbers were increased by further streams of immigrants including, after the 18th century, Jews from Germany, until, according to the author of the Anglia Judaica, there were 6000 Jews in London alone in the year 1738.14

When all is said, however, the fact that the migration of the Jews and the economic vicissitudes of peoples were coincident events does not necessarily prove that the arrival of Jews in any land was the only cause of its rise or their departure the only cause of its decline. To assert as much would be to argue on the fallacy "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Nor are the arguments of later historians on this subject conclusive, and therefore I will not mention any in support of my thesis.15 But the opinions of contemporaries always, as I think, deserve attention. So I will acquaint the reader with some of them, for very often a word suffices to throw a flood of light on their age.

When the Senate of Venice, in 1550, decided to expel the Marannos and to forbid commercial intercourse with them, the Christian merchants of the city declared that it wouldmean their ruin and that they might as well leave Venice with the exiles, seeing that they made their living by trading with the Jews. The Jews controlled the Spanish wool trade, the trade in Spanish silk and crimsons, sugar, pepper, Indian spices and pearls. A great part of the entire export trade was carried on by Jews, who supplied the Venetians with goods to be sold on commission; and they were also bill-brokers.16

In England the Jews found a protector in Cromwell, who was actuated solely by considerations of an economic nature. He believed that he would need the wealthy Jewish merchants to extend the financial and commercial prosperity of the country. Nor was he blind to the usefulness of having moneyed support for the government.17

Like Cromwell, Colbert, the great French statesman of the 17th century, was also sympathetically inclined towards the Jews, and in my opinion it is of no small significance that these two organizers, both of whom consolidated modern European states, should have been so keenly alive to the fitness of the Jew in aiding the economic (i.e., capitalistic) progress of a country. In one of his Ordinances to the Intendant of Languedoc, Colbert points out what great benefits the city of Marseilles derived from the commercial capabilities of the Jews.18 The inhabitants of the great French trading centres in which the Jews played an important role were in no need of being taught the lesson; they knew it from their own experience and, accordingly, they brought all their influence to bear on keeping their Jewish fellow-citizens within their walls. Again and again we hear laudatory accounts of the Jews, more especially from the inhabitants of Bordeaux. In 1675 an army of mercenaries ravaged Bordeaux, and many of the rich Jews prepared to depart. The Town Council was terrified, and the report presented by its members is worth quoting. "The Portuguese who occupy whole streets and do considerable business have asked for their passports. They and those aliens who do a very large trade are resolved to leave; indeed, the wealthiest among them, Gaspar Gonzales and Alvares, have already departed. We are very much afraid that commerce will cease altogether."19 A few years later the Sous-Intendant of Languedoc summed up the situation in the words "without them (the Jews) the trade of Bordeaux and of the whole province would be inevitably ruined."20

We have already seen how the fugitives from the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th century streamed into Antwerp, the commercial metropolis of the Spanish Netherlands. About the middle of the century, the Emperor in a decree dated July 17, 1549 withdrew the privileges which had been accorded them. Thereupon the mayor and sheriffs, as well as the Consul of the city, sent a petition to the Bishop of Arras in which they showed the obstacles in the way of carrying out the Imperial mandate. The Portuguese, they pointed out, were large undertakers; they had brought great wealth with them from the lands of their birth, and they maintained an extensive trade. "We must bear in mind," they continued, "that Antwerp has grown great gradually, and that a long space of time was needed before it could obtain possession of its commerce. Now the ruin of the city would necessarily bring with it the ruin of the land, and all this must be carefully considered before the Jews are expelled." Indeed, the mayor, Nicholas Van den Meeren, went even further in the matter. When Queen Mary of Hungary, the Regent of the Netherlands, was staying in Ruppelmonde, he paid her a visit in order to defend the cause of the New Christians, and excused the conduct of the rulers of Antwerp in not publishing the Imperial decree by informing her that it was contrary to all the best interests of the city.21 His efforts, however, were unsuccessful, and the Jews, as we have already seen, left Antwerp for Amsterdam.

Antwerp lost no small part of its former glory by reason of the departure of the Jews, and in the 17th century especially it was realized how much they contributed to bring about material prosperity. In 1653 a committee was appointed to consider the question whether the Jews should be allowed into Antwerp, and it expressed itself on the matter in the following terms: "And as for the inconveniences which are to be feared and apprehended in the public interest — that they (the Jews) will attract to themselves all trade, that they will be guilty of a thousand frauds and tricks, and that by their usury they will devour the wealth of good Catholics — it seems to us on the contrary that by the trade which they will expand far beyond its present limits the benefit derived will be for the good of the whole land, and gold and silver will be available in greater quantities for the needs of the state."22

The Dutch in the 17th century required no such recommendations; they were fully alive to the gain which the Jews brought. When Manasseh ben Israel left Amsterdam on his famous mission to England, the Dutch Government became anxious; they feared lest it should be a question of transplanting the Dutch Jews to England, and they therefore instructed Neuport, their ambassador in London, to sound Manasseh as to his intentions. He reported (December 1655) that all was well, and that there was no cause for apprehension. "Manasseh ben Israel hath been to see me, and did assure me that he doth not desire anything for the Jews in Holland but only for those as sit in the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal."23

It is the same tale in Hamburg. In the 17th century the importance of the Jews had grown to such an extent that they were regarded as indispensable to the growth of Hamburg's prosperity. On one occasion the Senate asked that permission should be given for synagogues to be built, otherwise, they feared, the Jews would leave Hamburg, and the city might then be in danger of sinking to a mere village.24 On another occasion, in 1697, when it was suggested that the Jews should be expelled, the merchants earnestly entreated the Senate for help, in order to prevent the serious endangering of Hamburg's commerce.25 Again, in 1733, in a special report, now in the Archives of the Senate, we may read: "In bill-broking, in trade with jewellery and braid and in the manufacture of certain cloths the Jews have almost a complete mastery, and have surpassed our own people. In the past there was no need to take cognizance of them, but now they are increasing in numbers. There is no section of the great merchant class, the manufacturers and those who supply commodities for daily needs, but the Jews form an important element therein. They have become a necessary evil."26 To the callings enumerated in which the Jews took a prominent part, we must add that of marine insurance brokers.27

So much for the judgment of contemporaries. But as a complete proof even that will not serve. We must form our own judgment from the facts, and therefore our first aim must be to seek these out. That means that we must find from the original sources what contributions the Jews made to the building-up of our modern economic life from the end of the 15th century onward — the period, that is, when Jewish history and general European economic progress both tended in the same direction. We shall then also be able to state definitely to what extent the Jews influenced the shifting of the centre of economic life.

My own view is, as I may say in anticipation, that the importance of the Jews was twofold. On the one hand, they influenced the outward form of modern capitalism; on the other, they gave expression to its inward spirit. Under the first heading, the Jews contributed no small share in giving to economic relations the international aspect they bear to-day; in helping the modern state, that framework of capitalism, to become what it is; and lastly, in giving the capitalistic organization its peculiar features, by inventing a good many details of the commercial machinery which moves the business life of to-day, and co-operating in the perfecting of others. Under the second heading, the importance of the Jews is so enormous because they, above all others, endowed economic life with its modern spirit; they seized upon the essential idea of capitalism and carried it to its fullest development.

We shall consider these points in turn, in order to obtain a proper notion of the problem. Our intention is to do no more than ask a question or two, and here and there to suggest an answer. We want merely to set the reader thinking. It will be for later research to gather sufficient material by which to judge whether, and to what extent, the views as to cause and effect here propounded have any foundation in actual fact.
Chapter 3:  The Quickening of International Trade

The transformation of European commerce which has taken place since the shifting of the centre of economic activity owed a tremendous debt to the Jews. If we consider nothing but the quantity of commodities that passed through their hands, their position is unique. Exact statistics are, as I have already remarked, almost non-existent; special research may, however, bring some figures to light that will be useful. At present there is, to my knowledge, only some slight material on this head, but its value cannot be overestimated.

It would appear that even before their formal admission into England—that is, in the first half of the 17th century—the extent of the trade in the hands of Jews totalled one-twelfth of that of the whole kingdom.1 Unfortunately we are not told on what authority this calculation rests, but that it cannot be far from the truth is apparent from a statement in a petition of the merchants of London. The question was whether Jews should pay the duty on imports levied on foreigners. The petitioners point out that if the Jews were exempted, the Crown would sustain a loss of ten thousand pounds annually.2

We are remarkably well informed as to the proportion of trading done by Jews at the Leipzig fairs,3 and as these were for a long period the centre of German commerce, we have here a standard by which to measure its intensive and extensive development. But not alone for Germany. One or two of the neighbouring countries, especially Bohemia and Poland, can also be included in the survey. From the end of the 17th century onwards we find that the Jews take an increasing share in the fairs, and all the authorities who have gone into the figures are agreed that it was the Jews who gave to the Leipzig fairs their great importance. 4

It is only since the Easter fair of 1756 that we are able to compare the Jewish with the Christian traders, as far as numbers are concerned, for it is only from that date that the Archives possess statistics of the latter. The average number of Jews attending the Leipzig fair was as follows:—

1675-1680                416

1681-1690                489

1691-1691                834

1701-1710                854

1711-1720                769

1721-1730                899

1731-1740                874

1741-1748                708
   

1767-1769                995

1770-1779              1652

1780-1789              1073

1790-1799              1473

1800-1809              3370

1810-1819              4896

1820-1829              3747

1830-1839              6444

 

Note especially the speedy increase towards the end of the 17th and 18th centuries and also at the beginning of the 19th.

If we glance at the period 1766 to 1839, we see that the fairs were visited annually by an average of 3185 Jews and 13,005 Christians—that is to say, the Jews form 24.49 per cent, or nearly one-quarter of the total number of Christian merchants. Indeed, in some years, as for example between 1810 and 1820, the Jewish visitors form 33% per cent of the total of their colleagues (4896 Jews and 14,366 Christians). This is significant enough, and there is no need to lay stress on the fact that in all probability the figures given in the table are underestimated.

The share taken by Jews in the commerce of a country may sometimes be ascertained by indirect means. We know, for example, that the trade of Hamburg with Spain and Portugal, and also with Holland, in the 17th century was almost entirely in the hands of the Jews.5 Now some 20 per cent. of the ships' cargoes leaving Hamburg were destined for the Iberian Peninsula, and some 30 per cent for Holland.6

Take another instance. The Levant trade was the most important branch of French commerce in the 18th century. A contemporary authority informs us that it was entirely controlled by Jews—"buyers, sellers, middlemen, bill-brokers, agents and so forth were all Jews."7

In the 16th and 17th centuries, and even far into the 18th, the trade of the Levant as well as that with, and via, Spain and Portugal, was the broadest stream in the world's commerce. This mere generalization goes far to prove how preeminent, from the purely quantitative point of view, the Jews were in forwarding the development of international intercourse. Already in Spain the Jews had managed to obtain control of the greater portion of the Levant trade, and everywhere in the Levantine ports Jewish offices and warehouses were to be found. Many Spanish Jews at the time of the expulsion from Spain settled in the East; the others journeyed northwards. So it came about that almost imperceptibly the Levantine trade became associated with the more northerly peoples. In Holland, more especially, is the effect of this seen: Holland became a commercial country of world-wide influence. Altogether, the commercial net, so to say, became bigger and stronger in proportion as the Jews established their offices, on the one hand further afield, on the other in closer proximity to each other.8 More particularly was this the case when the Western Hemisphere—largely through Jewish influence—was drawn into the commerce of the world. We shall have more to say on this aspect of the question in connexion with the part the Jews played in colonial foundations.

Another means by which we may gain a clear conception of what the Jews did for the extension of modern commerce is to discover the kind of commodities in which they for the most part traded. The quality of the commerce matters more than its quantity. It was by the character of their trade that they partially revolutionized the older forms, and thus helped to make commerce what it is to-day.

Here we are met by a striking fact. The Jews for a long time practically monopolized the trade in articles of luxury, and to the fashionable world of the aristocratic 17th and 18th centuries this trade was of supreme moment. What sort of commodities, then, did the Jews specialize in? Jewellery, precious stones, pearls and silks.9 Gold and silver jewellery, because they had always been prominent in the market for precious metals. Pearls and stones, because they were among the first to settle in those lands (especially Brazil) where these are to be found; and silks, because of their ancient connexions with the trading centres of the Orient.

Moreover, Jews were to be found almost entirely, or at least predominantly, in such branches of trade as were concerned with exportation on a large scale. Nay, I believe it may with justice be asserted that the Jews were the first to place on the world's markets the staple articles of modern commerce. Side by side with the products of the soil, such as wheat, wool, flax, and, later on, distilled spirits, they dealt throughout the 18th century specially in textiles,10 the output of a rapidly growing capitalistic industry, and in those colonial products which for the first time became articles of international trade, viz., sugar and tobacco. I have little doubt that when the history of commerce in modern times comes to be written Jewish traders will constantly be met with in connexion with enterprises on a large scale. The references which quite by accident have come under my notice are already sufficient to prove the truth of this assertion.11

Perhaps the most far-reaching, because the most revolutionary, influence of the Jews on the development of economic life was due to their trade in new commodities, in the preparation of which new methods supplanted the old. We may mention cotton,12 cotton goods of foreign make, indigo and so forth.13 Dealing in these articles was looked upon at the time as "spoiling sport," and therefore Jews were taunted by one German writer with carrying on "unpatriotic trade"14 or "Jew-commerce, which gave little employment to German labour, and depended for the most part on home consumption only."15

Another great characteristic of "Jew-commerce," one which all later commerce took for its model, was its variety and many-sidedness. When in 1740 the merchants of Montpelier complained of the competition of the Jewish traders, the Intendant replied that if they, the Christians, had such well-assorted stocks as the Jews, customers would come to them as willingly as they went to their Jewish competitors.16 We hear the same of the Jews at the Leipzig fairs: "The Jewish traders had a beneficial influence on the trade of the fairs, in that their purchases were so varied. Thus it was the Jews who tended to make trade many-sided and forced industry (especially the home industries) to develop in more than one direction. Indeed, at many fairs the Jews became the arbiters of the market by reason of their extensive purchases."17

But the greatest characteristic of "Jew-commerce" during the earlier capitalistic age was, to my mind, the supremacy which Jewish traders obtained, either directly or by way of Spain and Portugal, in the lands from which it was possible to draw large supplies of ready money. I am thinking of the newly discovered gold and silver countries in Central and South America. Again and again we find it recorded that Jews brought ready money into the country.18 The theoretical speculator and the practical politician knew well enough that here was the source of all capitalistic development. We too, now that the mists of Adam Smith's doctrines have lifted, have realized the same thing. The establishment of modern economic life meant, for the most part, and of necessity, the obtaining of the precious metals, and in this work no one was so successfully engaged as the Jewish traders. This leads us at once to the subject of the next chapter, which deals with the share of the Jews in colonial expansion.
Chapter 4:  The Foundation of Modern Colonies

We are only now beginning to realize that colonial expansion was no small force in the development of modern capitalism. It is the purpose of this chapter to show that in the work of that expansion the Jews played, if not the most decisive, at any rate a most prominent part.

That the Jews should have been keen colonial settlers was only natural, seeing that the New World, though it was but the Old in a new garb, seemed to hold out a greater promise of happiness to them than crossgrained old Europe, more especially when their last Dorado (Spain) proved an inhospitable refuge. And this applies equally to all colonial enterprises, whether in the East or the West or the South of the globe. There were probably many Jews resident in the East Indies even in mediaeval times,1 and when the nations of Europe, after 1498, stretched out their hands to seize the lands of an ancient civilization, the Jews were welcomed as bulwarks of European supremacy, though they came as pioneers of trade. In all likelihood—exact proofs have not yet been established—the ships of the Portuguese and of the Dutch must have brought shoals of Jewish settlers to their respective Indian possessions. At any rate, Jews participated extensively in all the Dutch settlements, including those in the East. We are told that Jews were large shareholders in the Dutch East India Company.2 We know that the Governor of the Company who, "if he did not actually establish the power of Holland in Java, certainly contributed most to strengthen it,"3 was called Cohn (Coen). Furthermore, a glance at the portraits of the Governors of the Dutch colonies would make it appear that this Coen is not the only Jew among them.4 Jews were also Directors of the Company;5 in short, no colonial enterprise was complete without them.6

It is as yet unknown to what extent the Jews shared in the growth of economic life in India after the English became masters there. We have, however, fairly full information as to the participation of the Jews in the founding of the English colonies in South Africa and Australia. There is no doubt that in these regions (more particularly in Cape Colony), wellnigh all economic development was due to the Jews. In the twenties and thirties of the 19th century Benjamin Norden and Simon Marks came to South Africa, and "the industrial awakening of almost the whole interior of Cape Colony" was their work. Julius Mosenthal and his brothers Adolph and James established the trade in wool, skins, and mohair. Aaron and Daniel de Pass monopolized the whaling industry; Joel Myers commenced ostrich fanning. Lilienfeld, of Hopetown, bought the first diamonds. 7 Similar leading positions were occupied by the Jews in the other South African colonies, particularly in the Transvaal, where it is said that to-day twenty-five of the fifty thousand Jews of South Africa are settled.8 It is the same story in Australia, where the first wholesale trader was Montefiore. It would seem to be no exaggeration therefore that "a large proportion of the English colonial shipping trade was for a considerable time in the hands of the Jews."9

But the real sphere of Jewish influence in colonial settlements, especially in the early capitalistic period, was in the Western Hemisphere. America in all its borders is a land of Jews. That is the result to which a study of the sources must inevitably lead, and it is pregnant with meaning. From the first day of its discovery America has had a strong influence on the economic life of Europe and on the whole of its civilization; and therefore the part which the Jews have played in building up the American world is of supreme import as an element in modern development. That is why I shall dwell on this theme a little more fully, even at the risk of wearying the reader.10

The very discovery of America is most intimately bound up with the Jews in an extraordinary fashion. It is as though the New World came into the horizon by their aid and for them alone, as though Columbus and the rest were but managing directors for Israel. It is in this light that Jews, proud of their past, now regard the story of that discovery, as set forth in the latest researches.11 These would seem to show that it was the scientific knowledge of Jewish scholars which so perfected the art of navigation that voyages across the ocean became at all possible. Abraham Zacuto, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Salamanca, completed his astronomical tables and diagrams, the Almanach perpetuum, in 1473. On the basis of these tables two other Jews, Jose Vecuho, who was Court astronomer and physician to John II of Portugal, and one Moses the Mathematician (in collaboration with two Christian scholars), discovered the nautical astrolabe, an instrument by which it became possible to measure from the altitude of the sun the distance of a ship from the Equator. Jose further translated the Almanack of his master into Latin and Spanish.

The scientific facts which prepared the way for the voyage of Columbus were thus supplied by Jews. The money which was equally necessary came from the same quarter, at any rate as regards his first two voyages. For the first voyage, Columbus obtained a loan from Louis de Santangel, who was of the King's Council; and it was to Santangel, the patron of the expedition, and to Gabriel Saniheg, a Maranno, the Treasurer of Aragon, that the first two letters of Columbus were addressed. The second voyage was also undertaken with the aid of Jewish money, this time certainly not voluntarily contributed. On their expulsion from Spain in 1492, the Jews were compelled to leave much treasure behind; this was seized by Ferdinand for the State Exchequer, and with a portion of it Columbus was financed.

But more than that. A number of Jews were among the companions of Columbus, and the first European to set foot on American soil was a Jew—Louis de Torres. So the latest researches would have us believe. 12

But what caps all—Columbus himself is claimed to have been a Jew. I give this piece of information for what it is worth, without guaranteeing its accuracy. At a meeting of the Geographical Society of Madrid, Don Celso Garcia de la Riega, a scholar famous for his researches on Columbus, read a paper in which he stated that Christobal Colon (not Columbus) was a Spaniard who on his mother's side was of Jewish descent. He showed by reference to documents in the town of Pontevedra, in the province of Galicia, that the family of Colon lived there between 1428 and 1528, and that the Christian names found among them were the same as those prevalent among the relatives of the Spanish admiral. These Colons and the Fonterosa family intermarried. The latter were undoubtedly Jews, or they had only recently been converted, and Christobal's mother was called Suzanna Fonterosa. When disorders broke out in the province of Galicia the parents of the discoverer of America migrated from Spain to Italy. These facts were substantiated by Don Celso from additional sources, and he is strengthened in his belief by distinct echoes of Hebrew literature found in the writings of Columbus, and also because the oldest portraits show him to have had a Jewish face.

Scarcely were the doors of the New World opened to Europeans than crowds of Jews came swarming in. We have already seen that the discovery of America took place in the year in which the Jews of Spain became homeless, that the last years of the 15th century and the early years of the 16th were a period in which millions of Jews were forced to become wanderers, when European Jewry was like an antheap into which a stick had been thrust. Little wonder, therefore, that a great part of this heap betook itself to the New World, where the future seemed so bright. The first traders in America were Jews. The first industrial establishments in America were those of Jews. Already in the year 1492 Portuguese Jews settled in St. Thomas, where they were the first plantation owners on a large scale; they set up many sugar factories and gave employment to nearly three thousand Negroes.13 And as for Jewish emigration to South America, almost as soon as it was discovered, the stream was so great that Queen Joan in 1511 thought it necessary to take measures to stem it.14 But her efforts must have been without avail, for the number of Jews increased, and finally, on May 21, 1577, the law forbidding Jews to emigrate to the Spanish colonies was formally repealed.

In order to do full justice to the unceasing activity of the Jews in South America as founders of colonial commerce and industry, it will be advisable to glance at the fortunes of one or two colonies.

The history of the Jews in the American colonies, and therefore the history of the colonies themselves, falls into two periods, separated by the expulsion of the Jews from Brazil in 1654.

We have already mentioned the establishment of the sugar industry in St. Thomas by Jews in 1492. By the year 1550 this industry had reached the height of its development on the island. There were sixty plantations with sugar mills and refineries, producing annually, as may be seen from the tenth part paid to the King, 150,000 arrobes of sugar.15

From St. Thomas, or possibly from Madeira,16 where they had for a long time been engaged in the sugar trade, the Jews transplanted the industry to Brazil, the largest of the American colonies. Brazil thus entered on its first period of prosperity, for the growth of the sugar industry brought with it the growth of the national wealth. In those early years the colony was populated almost entirely by Jews and criminals, two shiploads of them being brought thither annually from Portugal.17 The Jews quickly became the dominant class, "a not inconsiderable number of the wealthiest Brazilian traders were New Christians."18 The first Governor-General was of Jewish origin, and he it was who brought order into the government of the colony. It is not too much to say that Portugal's new possessions really began to thrive only after Thomé de Souza, a man of exceptional ability, was sent out in 1549 to take matters in hand.19 Nevertheless the colony did not reach the zenith of its prosperity until after the influx of rich Jews from Holland, consequent on the Dutch entering into possession in 1642. In that very year, a number of American Jews combined to establish a colony in Brazil, and no less than six hundred influential Dutch Jews joined them.20 Up to about the middle of the 17th century all the large sugar plantations belonged to Jews,21 and contemporary travellers report as to their many-sided activities and their wealth. Thus Nieuhoff, who travelled in Brazil from 1640 to 1649, says of them:22 "Among the free inhabitants of Brazil that were not in the (Dutch West India) Company's service the Jews were the most considerable in number, who had transplanted themselves thither from Holland. They had a vast traffic beyond the rest; they purchased sugar-mills and built stately houses in the Receif. They were all traders, which would have been of great consequence to the Dutch Brazil had they kept themselves within the due bounds of traffic." Similarly we read in F. Pyrard's Travels:29 "The profits they make after being nine or ten years in those lands are marvellous, for they all come back rich."

The predominance of Jewish influence in plantation development outlasted the episode of Dutch rule in Brazil, and continued, despite the expulsion of 1654,24 down to the first half of the 11th century.25 On one occasion, "when a number of the most influential merchants of Rio de Janeiro fell into the hands of the Holy Office (of the Inquisition), the work on so many plantations came to a standstill that the production and commerce of the Province (of Bahio) required a long stretch of time to recover from the blow." Later, a decree of the 2nd March 1768 ordered all the registers containing lists of New Christians to be destroyed, and by a law of 25th March 1773 New Christians were placed on a footing of perfect civic equality with the orthodox. It is evident, then, that very many crypto-Jews must have maintained their prominent position in Brazil even after the Portuguese had regained possession of it in 1654, and that it was they who brought to the country its flourishing sugar industry as well as its trade in precious stones.

Despite this, the year 1654 marks an epoch in the annals of American-Jewish history. For it was in that year that a goodly number of the Brazilian Jews settled in other parts of America and thereby moved the economic centre of gravity.

The change was specially profitable to one or two important islands of the West Indian Archipelago and also to the neighbouring coastlands, which rose in prosperity from the time of the Jewish influx in the 17th century. Barbados, which was inhabited almost solely by Jews, is a case in point.26 It came under English rule in 1627; in 1641 the sugar cane was introduced, and seven years later the exportation of sugar began. But the sugar industry could not maintain itself. The sugar produced was so poor in quality that its price was scarcely sufficient to pay for the cost of transport to England. Not till the exiled "Dutchmen" from Brazil introduced the process of refining and taught the natives the art of drying and crystallizing the sugar did an improvement manifest itself. As a result, the sugar exports of Barbados increased by leaps and bounds, and in 1661 Charles II was able to confer baronetcies on thirteen planters, who drew an annual income of £10,000 from the island. By about the year 1676 the industry there had grown to such an extent that no fewer than 400 vessels each carrying 180 tons of raw sugar left annually.

In 1664 Thomas Modyford introduced sugar manufacturing from Barbados into Jamaica,27 which in consequence soon became wealthy. Now, while in 1656, the year in which the English finally wrested the island from Spain, there were only three small refineries in Jamaica, in 1670 there were already 75 mills at work, many of them having an output of 2000 cwts. By 1700 sugar was the principal export of Jamaica and the source of its riches. The petition of the English merchants of the colony in 1671, asking for the exclusion of the Jews, makes it pretty plain that the latter must have contributed largely to this development. The Government however, encouraged the settlement of still more Jews, the Governor in rejecting the petition remarking28 that "he was of opinion that his Majesty could not have more profitable subjects than the Jews and the Hollanders; they had great stocks and correspondence." So the Jews were not expelled from Jamaica, but "became the first traders and merchants of the English colony."29 In the 18th century they paid all the taxes and almost entirely controlled industry and commerce.

Of the other English colonies, the Jews showed a special preference for Surinam.30 Jews had been settled there since 1644 and had received a number of privileges—"whereas we have found that the Hebrew nation ... have ... proved themselves useful and beneficial to the colony." Their privileged position continued under the Dutch, to whom Surinam passed in 1667. Towards the end of the 17th century their proportion to the rest of the inhabitants was as one to three, and in 1730 they owned 115 of the 344 sugar plantations.

The story of the Jews in the English and Dutch colonies finds a counterpart in the more important French settlements, such as Martinique, Guadeloupe, and San Domingo.81 Here also sugar was the source of wealth, and, as in the other cases, the Jews controlled the industry and were the principal sugar merchants.

The first large plantation and refinery in Martinique was established in 1655 by Benjamin Dacosta, who had fled thither from Brazil with 900 co-religionists and 1100 slaves.

In San Domingo the sugar industry was introduced as early as 1587, but it was not until the "Dutch" refugees from Brazil settled there that it attained any degree of success.

In all this we must never lose sight of the fact that in those critical centuries in which the colonial system was taking root in America (and with it modern capitalism), the production of sugar was the backbone of the entire colonial economy, leaving out of account, of course, the mining of silver, gold and gems in Brazil. Indeed, it is somewhat difiicult exactly to picture to ourselves the enormous significance in those centuries of sugar-making and sugar-selling. The Council of Trade in Paris (1701) was guilty of no exaggerated language when it placed on record its belief that "French shipping owes its splendour to the commerce of the sugar-producing islands, and it is only by means of this that the navy can be maintained and strengthened." Now, it must be remembered that the Jews had almost monopolized the sugar trade; the French branch in particular being controlled by the wealthy family of the Gradis of Bordeaux. 32

The position which the Jews had obtained for themselves in Central and South America was thus a powerful one. But it became even more so when towards the end of the 17th century the English colonies in North America entered into commercial relations with the West Indies. To this close union, which again Jewish merchants helped to bring about, the North American Continent (as we shall see) owes its existence. We have thus arrived at the point where it is essential to consider the Jewish factor in the growth of the United States from their first origins. Once more Jewish elements combined, this time to give the United States their ultimate economic form. As this view is absolutely opposed to that generally accepted (at least in Europe), the question must receive full consideration.

At first sight it would seem as if the economic system of North America was the very one that developed independently of the Jews. Often enough, when I have asserted that modern capitalism is nothing more or less than an expression of the Jewish spirit, I have been told that the history of the United States proves the contrary. The Yankees themselves boast of the fact that they throve without the Jews. It was an American writer—Mark Twain, if I mistake not—who once considered at some length why the Jews played no great part in the States, giving as his reason that the Americans were as "smart" as the Jews, if not smarter. (The Scotch, by the way, think the same of themselves.) Now, it is true that we come across no very large number of Jewish names to-day among the big captains of industry, the well-known speculators, or the Trust magnates in the country. 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. Thus, a few years ago, at the magnificent celebration of the 250th anniversary of the first settlement of the Jews in the United States, President Roosevelt sent a co

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Chapter 9:  What is a Capitalist Undertaker?

Capitalism1 is the name given to that economic organization wherein regularly two distinct social groups co-operate—the owners of the means of production, who at the same time do the work of managing and directing, and the great body of workers who possess nothing but their labour. The co-operation is such, that the representatives of capital are the subjective agents, that is, they decide as to the "how" and the "how much" in the process of production, and they undertake all risks.

Now what are the mainsprings of the whole system? The first, and perhaps the chiefest, is the pursuit of gain or profit. This being the case, there is a tendency for undertakings to grow bigger and bigger. Arising from that, all economic activities are strictly logical. Whereas in the pre-capitalistic period quieta non movere was the watchword and Tradition the guiding star, now it is constant movement. I characterize the whole as "economic rationalism," and this I would term the second mainspring of the capitalistic system.

Economic rationalism expresses itself in three ways. (1) There is a plan, in accordance with which all things are ordered aright. And the plan covers activities in the distant future. (2) Efficiency is the test applied in the choice of all the means of production. (3) Seeing that the "cash nexus" regulates all economic activity, and that everywhere and always a surplus is sought for, exact calculations become necessary in every undertaking.

Everybody knows that a modern business is not merely, say, the production of rails or cotton or electric motors, or the transport of stones or of people. Everybody knows that these are but parts in the organization of the whole. And the characteristics of the undertaker are not that he arranges for the carrying out of the processes named. They are to be found elsewhere, and for the present we may put it roughly that they are a constant buying and selling of the means of production, of labour or of commodities. To vary the phrase somewhat, the undertaker makes contracts concerning exchanges, wherein money is the measure of value.

When do we speak of having accomplished a successful piece of business? Surely when the contract-making has ended well. But what is meant precisely by "well"? It certainly has no reference to the quality or to the quantity of the goods or services given or received; it refers solely and only to the return of the sum of money expended, and to a surplus over and above it (profit). It is the aim of the undertaker so to manipulate the factors over which he has control as to bring about this surplus.

Our next step must be to consider what functions the capitalistic undertaker (the subjective economic factor) has in the sphere of capitalism, seeing that our purpose is to show the capacity of the Jews in this direction. We shall try to discover what special skill is necessary in order to be successful in the competitive struggle. In a word, we shall seek for the type.

To my mind, the best picture of the modern capitalistic undertaker is that which paints him as the combination of two radically different natures in one person. Like Faust, he may say that two souls dwell within his breast; unlike Faust's, however, the two souls do not wish to be separated, but rather, on the contrary, desire to work harmoniously together. What are these two natures? The one is the undertaker (not in the more limited sense of capitalistic undertaker, but quite generally), and the other is the trader.

By the undertaker I mean a man who has an object in view to which he devotes his life, an object which requires the cooperation of others for its achievement, seeing that its realization is in the world of men. The undertaker must thus be differentiated from the artist or the prophet. Like them he has a mission; unlike them he feels that he must bring it to realization. He is a man, therefore, who peers into the distant future, whose every action is planned and done only in so far as it will help the great whole. As an instance of an undertaker in this (non-capitalistic) sense we may mention an African or a North Pole explorer. The undertaker becomes a capitalistic undertaker when he combines his original activities with those of the trader.

And what is a trader? A man whose whole being is set upon doing profitable business; who appraises all activities and all conditions with a view to their money value, who turns everything into its gold equivalent. The world to such a man is one great market-place, with its supply and demand, its conjunctures—good and bad—and its profits and losses. The constant question on his lips is, "What does it cost? What can I make out of it?" His last question would in all probability be, "What is the price of the universe?" The circle of his thoughts is circumscribed by one piece of business, to the successful issue of which he devotes all his energies.

In the combination I have endeavoured to sketch, the undertaker is the constant factor, the trader the variant one.

Constant the undertaker must be, for, having set his heart upon some far-distant goal, he is of necessity bound to follow some plan in order to reach it. Change in his policy is contrary to his nature. Constancy is the basis of his character. But the trader is changeable, for his conduct wavers with the conditions of the market. He must be able to vary his policy and his aim from one moment to another if the prevailing conjuncture so demands it. "Busy-ness" marks him out above all else.

This theory of the two souls in one body is intended to clarify our conception of the capitalistic undertaker. But we must analyse the conception still further, this time into its actual component parts.

In the undertaker I perceive the following four types:—

(1) The Inventor—not merely in the technical sense, but in that of the organizer introducing new forms which bring greater economies into production, or transport, or marketing.

(2) The Discoverer—of new means of selling his commodities, either intensively or extensively. If he finds a new sphere for his activities—let us say he sells bathing-drawers to Eskimos, or gramophones to Negroes—we have a case of extensive discovery; if he creates new demands in markets where he already has a footing, we may speak of intensive discovery.

(3) The Conqueror. An undertaker of the right kind is always a conqueror, with the determination and will-power to overcome all the difficulties that beset his path. He must also be able to risk much, to stake his all (that is to say, his fortune, his good name, even his life), if need be, to achieve great results for his undertaking. It may be the adoption of new methods in manufacture, the extension of his business though his credit is unstable, and so on.

(4) The Organizer. Above all else the undertaker must be an organizer; i.e., he must be able so to dispose of large numbers of individuals as to bring about the most successful result; must be able to fit the round man into the round hole and the square man into the square; must be able to give a man just the job for which he is best equipped, so as to obtain the maximum of efficiency. To do this satisfactorily demands many gifts and much skill. For example, the organizer must be able to tell at a glance what a man can do best, and which man among many will best suit his purpose. He must be able to let others do his work—i.e., to place in positions of trust such persons as will be able to relieve him of responsibility. Finally, he must be able to see to it that the human factors in the work of production are sufficient for the purpose, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and that their relationship to each other is harmonious. In short, the management of his business must be the most efficient possible.

Now business organization means a good deal more than the skilful choice of men and methods; it means taking into consideration also geographical, ethnological and accidentalcircumstances of all sorts. Let me illustrate my point. The Westinghouse Electric Company is one of the best organized concerns in the United States. When the Company decided to capture the English market it set up a branch in this country, the organization of which was modelled exactly on that of the parent concern. After a few years, what was the result? The financial break-up of the English branch, chiefly because sufficient allowance had not been made for the difference in English conditions.

This leads us to the activities of the trader. A trader has no definite calling; he has only certain well-defined functions in the body economic. But they are of a very varied kind. For example: to provision ships and supply them with men and ammunition, to conquer wild lands in distant parts, to drive the natives from hearth and home and seize their goods and chattels, to load the ships with these latter and bring them home in order to sell them at public auctions to the highest bidder—all this is a form of trading.

Or, it may be a different form—as when a dealer obtains a pair of old trousers from a needy man of fashion, to whose house he comes in vain five times in succession, and then palms those same trousers off on a stupid yokel.

Or, again, it may take the form of arbitrage dealing on the Stock Exchange.

Clearly there are differences in these instances, as there were between trading in modern and in mediaeval times. In the pre-capitalistic period, to trade meant to trade on a big scale, as the "royal merchants" did in the Italian and German cities, and the trader had to be an undertaker (in the general, and not merely in the capitalistic sense). "Each (of the citizens of Genoa) has a tower in his house; if civil war breaks out, the battlements of these towers are the scenes of conflict. They are masters of the sea; they build them ships, called galleys, and roam for plunder in the most distant parts, bringing the spoil back to Genoa. With Pisa they live in continual enmity." "Royal merchants" these, if you like; but not traders in my sense.

I regard those as traders who set out with the intention of doing good business; who combine within themselves two activities—calculation and negotiation. In a word, the trader must be (1) a speculating calculator, and (2) a business man, a negotiator.

As a speculating calculator, he must buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. Which means that he must obtain his labour and his raw material at as low a rate as possible, and not waste anything in the process of manufacture. And when the commodity is ready for sale, he must part with it to the man whose credit is sound, and so forth. For all this he must calculate, and he must speculate. By speculation in this sense I mean the drawing of several conclusions from particular instances—let us call it the power of economic diagnosis, the complete survey of the market, the evaluation of all its symptoms, the recognition of future possibilities and the choice of that course which will have the greatest utility in the long run.

To this end the dealer must have a hundred eyes, a hundred ears and a hundred feelers in all directions. Here he may have to search out a needy nobleman, or a State bent on war, in order to offer them a loan at the psychological moment; there, to put his hand on a labour group that is willing to work a few pence below the prevailing rate of wages; here he may have to form a right estimate of the chances that a new article is likely to have with the public; there, to appraise the true effect of a political crisis on the Stock Exchange. In every case the trader expresses the result in terms of money. That is where the calculation comes in. "A wonderfullyshrewd calculator" is a term common in the United States for an adept in this direction.

But a discerning eye for a profitable piece of business is not sufficient: the trader must also possess the capacity for doing business. In this, his negotiating powers will come into play, and he will be doing something very much more akin to the work of an arbitrator between two litigants. He will talk to his opponent, urge reasons and counterreasons in order to induce him to embark on a certain course. To negotiate is to fence with intellectual weapons.

Trading, then, means to negotiate concerning the buying and selling of some commodity, be it a share, a loan, or a concern. Trading must be the term applied to the activity of the hawker at the back-door, trying to sell the cook a "fur" collar, or to that of the Jewish old do' man, who talks for an hour to the bucolic driver to persuade him to purchase a pair of trousers. But it must be equally applied to the activities of a Nathan Rothschild, who negotiated with the representative of the Prussian Government for a loan of a million. The difference is not one of kind, but of extent, for the essence of all trading is negotiation, which need not necessarily be by word of mouth. The shopkeeper who recommends his goods to the public, be his method what you will, is in reality negotiating. What is all advertisement but "dumb show" negotiation? The end in view is always the same—to convince the possible buyer of the superiority of a particular set of goods. The ideal of the seller is realized when everybody purchases the article he has recommended.

To create interest, to win confidence, to stir up a desire to buy—such is the end and aim of the successful trader. How he achieves it is of little moment. Sufficient that he uses not outward force but inner forces, his customers coming to him of their own free will. He wins by suggestion, and one of the most effective is to arouse in the heart of the buyer the feeling that to buy at once will be most advantageous. "We shall have snow, boys, said the Finns, for they had Aander (a kind of snowshoe) to sell," we read in the Magnus Barford Saga (1006 A.D.). This is the prototype of all traders and the suggestion of the Finns the prototype of all advertising—the weapon with which the trader fights. No longer does he dwell in fortified towers, as did his precursor in Genoa in the days of Benjamin of Tudela, nor does he wreck the houses of the natives with his guns if they refuse to "trade" with him, as did the early East India settlers in the 17th century.
Chapter 10:  The Objective Circumstances in the Jewish Aptitude for Modern Capitalism

Now that we know what a capitalist undertaker is our next question must be. What were the outward circumstances that made it possible for the Jews to do so much in shaping the capitalistic system? To formulate an answer we shall have to review the position of the Jews of Western Europe and America from the end of the 15th century until the present time—the period, that is, in which capitalism took form.

How can that position be best characterized?

The Governor of Jamaica in a letter he wrote (December 17, 1671) to the Secretary of State was happy in his phraseology.1 "He was of opinion," he said, "that His Majesty could not have more profitable subjects than the Jews: they had great stocks and correspondence." These two reasons, indeed, will account in large measure for the headway made by Jews. But we must also bear in mind their peculiar status among the peoples with whom they dwelt. They were looked upon as strangers and were treated not as full, but as "semi-citizens."

I would therefore assign four causes for the success of the Jews: (1) their dispersion over a wide area, (2) their treatment as strangers, (3) their semi-citizenship, and (4) their wealth.
Jewish Dispersion over a Wide Area

The fact of primary significance is that the Jews were scattered all over the world. Scattered they had been from the time of the first Exile; they were scattered anew after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal, and again when great masses of them left Poland. We have already accompanied them on their wanderings during the last two or three centuries, and have noted how they settled in Germany and France, in Italy and in England, in the Near East and in the Far West, in Holland, in Austria, in South Africa and in Eastern Asia.

One result of these wanderings was that off-shoots of one and the same family took root in different centres of economic life and established great world-famed firms with numerous branches in all parts. Let us instance a few cases.2

The Lopez family had its seat in Bordeaux, and branches in Spain, England, Antwerp and Toulouse. The Mendes family, well-known bankers, also hailed from Bordeaux, and were to be found in Portugal, France and Flanders. The Gradis, relatives of the Mendes, were also settled in all directions. So, too, the Carceres in Hamburg, in England, in Austria, in the West Indies, in Barbados and in Surinam. Other famous families with world-wide branches were the Costas (Acostas, D'Acostas), the Coneglianos, the Alhadibs, the Sassoons, the Pereires, the Rothschilds. We might continue the list ad infinitum; suffice it to say that Jewish business concerns that had a footing in at least two places on the face of the globe may be counted in hundreds and in thousands.

What all this means is obvious enough. What Christian business houses obtained only after much effort, and even then only to a much less degree, the Jews had at the very beginning—scattered centres from which to carry on international commerce and to utilize international credit; "great correspondence" in short, the first necessity for all international organization.

Let us recall what I observed about the participation of the Jews in Spanish and Portuguese trade, in the trade of the Levant, and in the economic growth of America. It was of great consequence that the great majority of Jews settling in different parts hailed from Spain; they were thus agents in directing colonial trade, and to an even greater extent the flow of .silver, into the new channels represented by Holland, England, France and Germany.

Was it not significant that the Jews directed their footsteps just to these countries, all on the eve of a great economic revival, and were thus the means of allowing them to benefit by Jewish international connexions? It is well known that Jews turned away the flow of trade from the lands that expelled them to those that gave them a hospitable reception. Was it not significant that they were predominant in Leghorn, which in the 18th century was spoken of as "one of the great depots in Europe for the trade of the Mediterranean,"3 significant that they forged a commercial chain binding North and South America together, which assured the North American Colonies of their economic existence, significant above all, that by their control of the Stock Exchanges in the great European centres they were the means of internationalizing public credit?

It was their distribution over a wide area which enabled them to do all this.

An admirable picture of the importance of the Jews from this point of view was drawn by a clever observer who made a study of that people two hundred years ago. The picture has lost none of its freshness; it may be found in the Spectator of September 27, 1712:4—

They are so disseminated through all the trading Parts of the World, that they are become the Instruments by which the most distant Nations converse with one another and by which mankind are knit together in a general correspondence. They are like the pegs and nails in a great building, which though they are but little valued in themselves, are absolutely necessary to keep the whole frame together.

How the Jews utilized for their own advantage the special knowledge that their scattered position gave them, how they regulated their activities on the Stock Exchange, is related in all detail in a Report of the French Ambassador in The Hague, written in the year 1698.5 Our informant is of opinion that the dominance of the Jews on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange was due in a large degree to their being so well-informed. This piece of evidence is of such great value that I shall translate the whole of the passage:—

They carry on a correspondence on both these subjects (news and commerce) with those they call their brotherhoods (congregues). Of these, Venice is considered to be the most important (although neither the richest nor the most populous) because it is the link, by way of the brotherhood of Salonica, between the East and the West as well as the South. Salonica is the governing centre for their nation in these two parts of the world and is responsible for them to Venice, which together with Amsterdam, rules the northern countries (including the merely tolerated community of London, and the secret brotherhoods of France). The result of this association is that on the two topics of news and commerce they receive, one might almost say, the best information of all that goes on in the world, and on this they build up their system every week in their assemblies, wisely choosing for this purpose the day after Saturday, i.e., the Sunday, when the Christians of all denominations are engaged in their religious exercises. These systems, which contain the minutest details of news received during the week, are, after having been carefully sifted by their rabbis and the heads of their congregations, handed over on the Sunday afternoon to their Jewish stockbrokers and agents. These are men of great cleverness, who after having arranged a preconcerted plan among themselves, go out separately to spread news which should prove the most useful for their own ends; ready to start manipulations on the morrow, the Monday morning, according to each individual's disposition: either selling, buying, or exchanging shares. As they always hold a large reserve of these commodities, they can always judge of the most propitious moment, taking advantage of the rise or fall of the securities, or even sometimes of both, in order to carry out their plans.

Equally beneficial was their dispersion for winning the confidence of the great. Indeed, the progress of the Jews to la haute finance was almost invariably as follows. In the first instance their linguistic ability enabled them to be of service to crowned heads as interpreters, then they were sent as intermediaries or special negotiators to foreign courts. Soon they were put in charge of their employer's fortunes, at the same time being honoured through his graciousness in allowing them to become his creditors. From this point it was no long step to the control of the State finances, and in later years of the Stock Exchanges.

It is no far-fetched assumption that already in ancient times their knowledge of languages and their acquaintance with foreign civilizations must have made them welcome visitors at the courts of kings and won for them royal confidence. Think of Joseph in Egypt; of the Alabarch Alexander (of whom Josephus tells), the intimate of King Agrippa and of the mother of the Emperor Claudius; think of the Jewish Treasurer of Queen Candace of Ethiopia, of whom we may read in the Acts of the Apostles (viii. 27).

As for the Court Jews in the Middle Ages, we have definite information that they won their spurs in the capacity of interpreters or negotiators. We know it of the Jew Isaac, whom Charlemagne sent to the court of the Caliph Haroun al Rashid; of Kalonymus, the Jewish friend and favourite of the Emperor Otto II; of the famous Chasdai Ibn Shaprut (915–70), who achieved honour and renown as the diplomatic representative of the Caliph Abdul-Rahman III in his negotiations with the Christian courts of Northern Spain.6 Similarly when the Christian princes of the Iberian Peninsula required skilful negotiators they sought out Jews. Alphonso VI is a good example. Intent on playing off the petty Mohammedan rulers against each other, he chose Jewish agents, with their linguistic abilities and their insight into foreign ways, to send to the courts of Toledo, Seville and Granada. In the period which followed, Jewish emissaries are met with at all the Spanish courts, including those Jews, learned in ethnography, whom James II commissioned to travel into Asia in order to supply his spies with information and who tried to discover the mythical country of Prester John;7 including also the many interpreters and confidential agents associated with the discovery of the New World.8

Considering the importance of the Spanish period in Jewish history not only from the general, but also from the special economic point of view, these cases are worthy of note in that they clearly show the reason for the rise of Jews to influential positions. But they are not limited to the Spanish period; they abound in subsequent epochs also. Thus, Jewish diplomatists were employed by the States-General in their intercourse with the Powers; and names like Delmonte, Mesquita9 and others are well-known. Equally famous is the Seigneur Hebraeo, as Richelieu called the wealthy Ildefonso Lopez, whom the French statesman sent on a secret mission to Holland, and on his return bestowed upon him the tide of "Conseiller d'Etat ordinaire."10

Finally, the dispersion of the Jews is noteworthy in another way. Their dispersion internationally was, as we have seen, fruitful enough of results; but their being scattered in every part of some particular country had consequences no less potent. To take one instance—the Jews were army-purveyors (and their activities as such date from the days of antiquity, for do we not read that when Belisarius besieged Naples, the Jewish inhabitants offered to supply the town with provisions?).11 One reason was surely that they were able to accumulate large quantities of commodities much more easily than the Christians, thanks to their connexions in the different centres. "The Jewish undertaker," says one 18th-century writer, "is free from these difficulties. All he need do is to stir up his brethren in the right place, and at a moment's notice he has all the assistance he requires at his disposal."12 In truth, the Jew at that time never carried on business "as an isolated individual, but always as a member of the most extended trading company in the world."13 In the words of a petition of the merchants of Paris in the second half of the 18th century,14 "they are atoms of molten money which flow and are scattered, but which at the least incline reunite into one principal stream."
The Jews as Aliens

During the last century or two Jews were almost everywhere strangers in the sense of being new-comers. They were never old-established in the places where their most successful activities were manifest; nor did they arrive in such centres from the vicinity, but rather from distant lands, differing in manners and customs, and often in climate too, from the countries of their settlements. To Holland, France and England they came from Spain and Portugal and then from Germany; they journeyed to Hamburg and Frankfort from other German cities; later on they dispersed all over Germany from Russian Poland.

The Jews, then, were everywhere colonists, and as such learned the lesson of speedy adaptation to their new surroundings. In this they were ahead of the European nations, who did not become masters of this art until the settlements in America were founded.

New-comers must have an observant eye in order to find a niche for themselves amid the new conditions; they must be very careful of their behaviour, so that they may earn their livelihood without let or hindrance. While the natives are still in their warm beds the new-comers stand without in the sharp morning air of dawn, and their energy is all the keener in consequence. They must concentrate their thoughts to obtain a foothold, and all their economic activities will be dictated by this desire. They must of necessity determine how best to regulate their undertakings, and what is the shortest cut to their goal—what branches of manufacture or commerce are likely to prove most profitable, with what persons business connexions should be established, and on what principles business itself should be conducted. What is all this but the substitution of economic rationalism for time-honoured Tradition? That the Jews did this we have already observed; why they were forced to do it becomes apparent when we recall that everywhere they were strangers in the land, new-comers, immigrants.

But the Jews were strangers among the nations throughout many centuries in yet another sense, which might be termed psychological and social. They were strangers because of the inward contrast between them and their hosts, because of their almost caste-like separation from the peoples in whose midst they dwelt. They, the Jews, looked upon themselves as a peculiar people: and as a peculiar people the nations regarded them. Hence, there was developed in the Jews that conduct and that mental attitude which is bound to show itself in dealings with "strangers," especially in an age in which the conception of world-citizenship was as yet nonexistent. For in all periods of history innocent of humanitarian considerations the mere fact that a "stranger" was being dealt with was sufficient to ease the conscience and loosen the bonds of moral duty. In intercourse with strangers people were never quite so particular. Now the Jews were always brought into contact with strangers, with "others," especially in their economic activities, seeing that everywhere they were a small minority. And whereas the "others" dealt with a stranger, say, once in ten times or even in a hundred, it was just the reverse with the Jews, whose intercourse with strangers was nine out of the ten or ninety-nine out of the hundred times. What was the consequence? The Jew had recourse to the "ethics for strangers" (if I may use this term without being misunderstood) far more frequently than the non-Jew; for the one it was the rule, whilst for the other it was only the exception. Jewish business methods thus came to be based on it.

Closely interwoven with their status as strangers was the special legal position which they occupied everywhere. But this has an importance of its own, and we shall therefore assign an independent section to it.
Jews as Semi-Citizens

At first glance the legal position of the Jews would appear to have had an immense influence on their economic activities in that it limited the callings to which they might devote themselves, and generally closed the avenues to a livelihood. But I believe that the effect of these restrictions has been over-estimated. I would even go so far as to say that they were of no moment whatever for the economic growth of Jewry. At least, I am not aware that any of the traces left by Jews on the development of the modern economic system were due to the restraining regulations. That these could not have left a very deep impress is obvious, seeing that during the period which is of most interest to us the laws affecting Jews differed greatly according to locality. For all that we note a remarkable similarity in Jewish influence throughout the whole range of the capitalistic social order.

How varied the laws in restraint of Jews were is not always sufficiently realized. To begin with, there were broad differences between those of one country and of another. Thus, while the Jews in Holland and England were in a position of almost complete equality with their Christian neighbours so far as their economic life was concerned, they laboured under great disabilities in other lands. But even in these last their treatment was not uniform, for in certain towns and districts they enjoyed entire economic freedom, as, for example, in the papal possessions in France.15 Moreover, even the disabilities varied in number and in kind in each country, and sometimes in different parts of the same country. In most instances they appeared to be quite arbitrary; nowhere was there any underlying principle visible. In one place Jews might not be hawkers, and in another they were not allowed to be shopkeepers. Here they received permission to be craftsmen; there this right was denied them. Here they might deal in wool, there they might not. Here they might sell leather, there it was forbidden them. Here the sale of alcoholic liquors was farmed out to them, there such an idea seemed preposterous. Here they were encouraged to start factories, there they were strictly enjoined to desist from all participation in capitalistic undertakings. Such examples might be continued indefinitely.

Perhaps the best is furnished by Prussia's treatment of her Jews in the 18th century. Here in one and the same country the restrictive legislation for one locality was totally opposed to that of another. The revised General Privileges of 1750 (Article 2) forbade Jews the exercise of handicrafts in many places; yet a royal order of May 21, 1790, permitted the Jews in Breslau "to exercise all manner of mechanical arts," and went on to say that "it would be a source of much pleasure to Us if Christian craftsmen of their own free will took Jewish boys as apprentices and eventually received them into their gilds." A similar enactment was made in the General Reglement for the Jews of South-East Prussia, dated April 17, 1797 (Article 10).

Again, while the Jews of Berlin were forbidden (by Articles 13 and 15 of the General Privileges of 1750) to sell meat, beer and brandy to non-Jews, all the native-born Jews of Silesia had complete freedom of trade in this respect (in accordance with an Order of February 13, 1769).

The list of commodities in which they were allowed or forbidden to trade seems to have been drawn up with an arbitrariness that passes comprehension. Thus, the General Privileges of 1750 allowed the Jews to deal in foreign or home leather prepared though undyed, but not in raw or dyed leather; in raw calf and sheep skins, but not in raw cow or horse hides; in all manner of manufactured woollen and cotton wares, but not in raw wool or woollen threads.

The picture becomes still more bewildering when we take into consideration the varying legal status of the different classes of Jews. The Jewish community of Breslau, for instance, was (until the Order of May 21, 1790, changed things) composed of four groups: (1) those with "general privileges," (2) those with "privileges," (3) those who were only tolerated, and (4) temporary residents.

The first class included those Jews who were on an equal footing with Christians so far as trade and commerce were concerned, and whose rights in this respect were hereditary. In the second were comprised such Jews as had "special (limited) privileges" given them, wherein they were allowed to trade in certain kinds of goods specifically mentioned. But their rights did not pass to their children, though the children received preference when privileges of this kind were being granted. The third class was composed of Jews who had the right of living in Breslau, but whose economic activities were even more limited than those in the second class. As for the fourth, it contained the Jews who received permission to dwell in the town for a temporary period only.

But even of such rights as they had they were never sure. In 1769, for example, the Silesian Jews who lived in country districts were allowed to receive in farm the sale of beer, brandy and meat; in 1780 the permission was withdrawn; in 1787 it was renewed.

Yet in all this it must not be forgotten that regulations in restraint of industry and commerce during the last two or three centuries were for the most part a dead letter; as a matter of fact, capitalistic interests found ways and means of getting round them. The simplest method was to overstep the law, a course to which as time went on the bureaucratic State shut its eyes. But there were lawful means too of circumventing inconvenient paragraphs: concessions, privileges, patents, and the whole collection of documents granting exceptional treatment which princes were always willing to issue if only an additional source of income accrued therefrom. The Jews were not slow in obtaining such privileges. The proviso mentioned in the Prussian Edicts of 1737 and 1750—that all restraints referring to Jews might be removed by a special royal order—was tacitly held to apply in all cases. Some way out must have been possible, else how could the Jews have engaged in those trades (e.g., leather, tobacco) which the law forbade them?

At one point, however, industrial regulations made themselves felt as very real checks to the progress of the Jew, and that was wherever economic activities were organized on a corporate basis. The gilds were closed to them; they were kept back by the crucifix which hung in each gild-hall, and round which members assembled. Accordingly, if they wished to engage in any industry or trade monopolized by a gild, they were forced to do so as "outsiders," interlopers and free traders.

But a still greater obstacle in their path were the laws regulating their position in public life. In all countries there was a remarkable uniformity in these; everywhere the Jew was shut out from public offices, central or local, from the Bar, from Parliament, from the Army, from the Universities. This applied to the States of Western Europe—France, Holland, England—and also to America. But there is no need to consider with any degree of fullness the legal status of the Jews in the preemancipation era, seeing that it is fairly generally known. Only this we would mention here—that their condition of semi-citizenship continued in most countries right into the 19th century. The United States was the first land in which they obtained civil equality; the principle was there promulgated in 1783. In France the famous Emancipation Law dates from 27th September 1791; in Holland the Batavian National Assembly made the Jews full citizens in 1796. But in England it was not until 1859 that they were granted complete emancipation, while in the German States it took ten years longer. On 3rd July 1869 the North German Confederation finally set the seal on their civil equality; Austria had already done so in 1867, and Italy followed suit in 1870.

Equally well-known is it that in many cases the emancipation laws have become dead letters. Open any Liberal paper in Germany (to take a good instance) and day by day you will find complaints that Jews are never given commissions in the Army, that they are excluded from appointments to the Bench, and so on.

This set-back which the Jews received in public life was of great use to industry and commerce in that the Jew concentrated all his ability and energy on them. The most gifted minds from other social groups devoted themselves to the service of the State; among the Jews, in so far as they did not spend themselves in the Beth Hamidrash [the Communal House of Study], such spirits were forced into business. Now the more economic life aimed at profit-making and the more the moneyed interests acquired influence, the more were the Jews driven to win for themselves by means of commerce and industry what was denied them by the law—respect and power in the State. It becomes apparent why gold (as we have seen) was appraised so highly among Jews.

But if exclusion from public life was of benefit to the economic position of the Jews in one direction, giving them a pull over their Christian neighbours, it was equally beneficial in another. It freed the Jews from political partisanship. Their attitude towards the State, and the particular Government of the day, was wholly unprejudiced. Thanks to this, their capacity to become the standard-bearers of the international capitalistic system was superior to that of other people. For they supplied the different States with money, and national conflicts were among the chief sources from which Jews derived their profit. Moreover, the political colourlessness of their position made it possible for them to serve successive dynasties or governments in countries which, like France, were subjected to many political changes. The history of the Rothschilds illustrates the point. Thus the Jews, through their inferior civil position, were enabled to facilitate the growth of the indifference of capitalism to all interests but those of gain. Again, therefore, they promoted and strengthened the capitalistic spirit.
The Wealth of the Jews

Among the objective conditions which made possible the economic mission of the Jews during the last three or four centuries must be reckoned that at all times and in all places where their role in economic life was no mean one, they disposed of large sums of money. But this assertion says nothing about the wealth of the whole body of Jews, so that it is idle to urge the objection that at all periods there were poor Jews, and very many of them. Any one who has ever set foot in a Jewish congregation on the Eastern borders of Germany, or is acquainted with the Jewish quarter of New York, knows that well enough. But what I maintain—a more limited proposition—is that much wealth and great fortunes were to be found, and still are to be found, among Jews ever since the 17th century. Put in a slightly different way, there were always many wealthy Jews, and certainly the Jews on an average were richer than the Christians round them. It is beside the mark to say that the richest man in Germany or the three richest in America are not Jews.

A good many of the exiles from the Pyrenean Peninsula must have been very wealthy indeed. We are informed that their flight brought with it an "exodo de capitaes," a flow of capital from the country. However, in many instances they sold their property, receiving foreign bills in exchange.16 The richest among the fugitives probably made for Holland. At any rate it is recorded that the first settlers in that country—Manuel Lopez Homen, Maria Nunez, Miguel Lopez and others—had great possessions.17 Whether other wealthy Spaniards followed in the 17th century, or whether those already resident added to their fortunes, it is not easy to discover. But certain it is that the Jews of Holland in the 17th and 18th centuries were famed for their riches. True, there are no statistics to illustrate this, but an abundance of other weighty evidence exists. Travellers could not sufficiently admire the splendour and the luxury of the houses of these refugees who dwelt in what were really palaces. And if you turn to a collection of engravings of that period, do you not very soon discover that the most magnificent mansions in, say, Amsterdam or The Hague were built by Jews or inhabited by them—those of Baron Delmonte, of the noble Lord de Pinto, of the Lord d'Acoste and others? (At the close of the 17th century de Pinto's fortune was estimated at 8,000,000 florins.) Of the princely luxury at a Jewish wedding in Amsterdam, where one of her daughters married, Gliickel von Hamein draws a vivid picture in her Memoirs.18

It was the same in other lands. For 17th and 18th century France we have the generalization of Savary, who knew most things. "We say," these are his very words, "we say that a tradesman is 'as rich as a Jew' when he has the reputation of having amassed a large fortune."19

As for England, actual figures are extant concerning the wealth of the rich Sephardim soon after their arrival. A crowd of rich Jews followed in the train of Catharine of Braganza, Charles II's bride, so that while in 1661 there were only 35 Jewish families in London, two years later no less than 57 new-comers were added to the list. In 1663, as appears from the books of Alderman Blackwell, the following was the half-yearly turnover of the wealthy Jewish merchants:20 Jacob Aboab, £13,085; Samuel de Vega, £18,309; Duarte de Sylva, £41,441; Francisco da Sylva, £14,646; Fernando Mendes da Costa, £30,490; Isaac Dazevedo, £13,605; George and Domingo Francia, £35,759; and Gomez Rodrigues, £13,124.

The centres of Jewish life in Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries were, as we have already observed, Hamburg and Frankfort-on-the-Main. For both cities it is possible to compute the wealth of the resident Jews by the aid of figures.

In Hamburg, too, it was Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were the first settlers. In 1649, 40 of their families participated in the foundation of the Hamburg Bank, which shows that they must have been fairly comfortably off. Very soon complaints were made of the increasing wealth and influence of the Jews. In 1649 they were blamed for their ostentatious funerals and for riding in carriages to take the air; in 1650 for building houses like palaces. In the same year sumptuary laws forbade them too great a show of magnificence.21 Up to the end of the 17th century the Sephardic Jews appear to have possessed all the wealth; about that time, however, their Ashkenazi brethren also came quickly to the fore. Glückel von Hamein states that many German-Jewish families which in her youth were in comparative poverty later rose to a state of affluence. And Glückel's observations are borne out by figures dating from the first quarter of the 18th century.22 In 1729 the Jewish community in Altona was composed of 279 subscribing members, of whom 145 were wealthy, possessing between them 5,434,300 mark [£271,715], that is, an average of more than 37,000 mark [£1850] per head. The Hamburg community had 160 subscribing members, 16 of whom together were worth 501,500 mark [£25,075]. These figures appear to be below the actual state of things, if we compare them with the particulars concerning each individual. In 1725 the following wealthy Jews were resident in Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbeck: Joel Solomon, 210,000 mark; his son-in-law, 50,000; Elias Oppenheimer, 300,000; Moses Goldschmidt, 60,000; Alex Papenheim, 60,000; Elias Salomon, 200,000; Philip Elias, 50,000; Samuel Schiesser, 60,000; Berend Heyman, 75,000; Samson Nathan, 100,000; Moses Hamm, 75,000; Sam Abraham's widow, 60,000; Alexander Isaac, 60,000; Meyer Berend, 400,000; Salomon Berens, 1,600,000; Isaac Hertz, 150,000; Mangelus Heymann, 200,000; Nathan Bendix, 100,000; Philip Mangelus, 100,000; Jacob Philip, 50,000; Abraham Oppenheimer's widow, 60,000; Zacharias Daniel's widow and widowed daughter, 150,000; Simon del Banco, 150,000; Marx Casten, 200,000; Abraham Lazarus, 150,000; Carsten Marx, 60,000; Berend Salomon, 600,000 rthlr.; Meyer Berens, 400,000; Abraham von Halle, 150,000; Abraham Nathan, 150,000.

In view of this list it can scarcely be doubted that there were many rich Jews in Hamburg.

Frankfort presents the same picture; if anything the colours are even brighter. The wealth of the Jews begins to accumulate at the end of the 16th century, and from then onwards it increases steadily. In 1593 there were 4 Jews and 54 Christians (making 7.4 per cent.) in Frankfort who paid taxes on a fortune of over 15,000 florins; in 1607 thennumber had reached 16 (compared with 90 Christians, i.e., 17.7 per cent.).28 In 1618 the poorest Jew paid taxes on 100 florins, the poorest Christian on 50. Again, 300 Jewish families paid as garrison and fortification taxes no less than 100,900 florins in the years 1634 to 1650.24

The number of taxpayers in the Frankfort Jewish community rose to 753 by the end of the 18th century, and together they possessed at least 6,000,000 florins. More than half of this was in the hands of the twelve wealthiest families:25 Speyer, 604,000 florins; Reiss-Ellissen, 299,916; Haas,Kann, Stem, 256,500; Schuster, Getz, Amschel, 253,075; Goldschmidt, 235,000; May, 211,000; Oppenheimer, 171,500; Wertheimer, 138,600; Florsheim, 166,666; Rindskopf, 115,600; Rothschild, 109,375; Sichel, 107,000.

And in Berlin the Jews in the early 18th century were not by any means poor beggars. Of the 120 Jewish families resident in the Prussian capital in 1737 only 10 owned less than 1000 thalers, the rest all had 2000 to 20,000 thaler, and over.26

That the Jews were among the richest people in the land is thus attested, and this state of affairs has continued through the last two or three hundred years right down to our own day, except that to-day it is perhaps more general and more widespread. And its consequence? It can scarcely be overestimated for those countries which offered a refuge to the wanderers. The nations that profited by the Jews' sojourn with them were well equipped to help forward the development of capitalism. Hence it should be specially noticed that the wanderings of the Jews had the effect of shifting the centre where the precious metals had accumulated. Obviously it could not but influence the trend of economic life that Spain and Portugal were emptied of then: gold and England and Holland enriched.

Nor is it difficult to prove that Jewish money called into existence all the large undertakings of the 17th century and financed them. Just as the expedition of Columbus wouldhave been impossible had the rich Jews left Spain a generation earlier, so the great India Companies might never have been founded and the great banks which were established in the 17th century might not so quickly have attained their stability had it not been that the wealth of the Spanish exiles came to the aid of England, Holland and Hamburg; in other words, had the Jews been expelled from Spain a century later than was actually the case.

This in fact was why Jewish wealth was so influential. It enabled capitalistic undertakings to be started, or at least facilitated the process. To establish banks, warehouses, stock and share-broking—all this was easier for the Jew than for the others because his pockets were better lined. That, too, was why he became banker to crowned heads. And finally, because he had money he was able to lend it. This activity paved the way for capitalism to a greater degree than anything else did. For modern capitalism is the child of money-lending. Money-lending contains the root idea of capitalism; from moneylending it received many of its distinguishing features. In money-lending all conception of quality vanishes and only the quantitative aspect matters. In money-lending the contract becomes the principal element of business; the agreement about the quid pro quo, the promise for the future, the notion of delivery are its component parts. In money-lending there is no thought of producing only for one's needs.In money-lending there is nothing corporeal (i.e., technical), the whole is a purely intellectual act. In money-lending economic activity as such has no meaning; it is no longer a question of exercising body or mind; it is all a question of success. Success, therefore, is the only thing that has a meaning. In money-lending the possibility is for the first time illustrated that you can earn without sweating; that you may get others to work for you without recourse to force.

In fine, the characteristics of money-lending are the characteristics of all modern capitalistic economic organizations.

But historically, too, modern capitalism owes its being to moneylending. This was the case wherever it was necessary to lay out money for initial expenses, or where a business was started as a limited company. For essentially a limited company is in principle nothing but a matter of money-lending with the prospect of immediate profit.

The money-lending activities of the Jews were thus an objective factor in enabling the Jews to create, to expand and to assist the capitalistic spirit. But our last remarks have already touched upon a further problem, going beyond objective considerations. Is there not already a specific psychological element in the work of the money-lender? But more than this. It may be asked, Can the objective circumstances alone entirely explain the economic role of the Jews? Are there not perhaps special Jewish characteristics which must be taken into account in our chain of reasoning? Before proceeding to this chapter, however, we must turn to an influence of extreme importance in this connexion—to the Jewish religion.
Chapter 11:  The Significance of the Jewish Religion in Economic Life
Introductory Note

Three reasons have actuated me in devoting a special chapter to the consideration of the religion of the Jewish people and the demonstration of its enormous influence on Jewish economic activities. First, the Jewish religion ca be fully appreciated in all its bearings from the economic standpoint only when it is studied in detail and by itself; secondly, it calls for a special method of treatment; and thirdly, it occupies a position midway between the objective and the subjective factors of Jewish development. For, in so far as any religion is the expression of some particular spiritual outlook, it has a "subjective" aspect; in so far as the individual is born into it, it has an objective aspect.
The Importance of Religion for the Jewish People

That the religion of a people, or of a group within a people, can have far-reaching influences on its economic life will not be disputed. Only recently Max Weber demonstrated the connexion between Puritanism and Capitalism. In fact. Max Weber's researches are responsible for this book. For any one who followed them could not but ask himself whether all that Weber ascribes to Puritanism might not with equal justice be referred to Judaism, and probably in a greater degree; nay, it might well be suggested that that which is called Puritanism is in reality Judaism. This relationship will be discussed in due course.

Now, if Puritanism has had an economic influence, how much more so has Judaism, seeing that among no other civilized people has religion so impregnated all national life. For the Jews religion was not an affair of Sundays and Holy Days; it touched everyday life even in its minutest action, it regulated all human activities. At every step the Jew asked himself. Will this tend to the glory of God or will it profane His name? Jewish law defines not merely the relation between man and God, formulates not merely a metaphysical conception; it lays down rules of conduct for all possible relationships, whether between man and man or between man and nature. Jewish law, in fact, is as much part of the religious system as are Jewish ethics. The Law is from God, and moral law and divine ordinances are inseparable in Judaism.1 Hence in reality there are no special ethics of Judaism. Jewish ethics are the underlying principles of the Jewish religion.2

No other people has been so careful as the Jews in providing for the teaching of religion to even the humblest. As Josephus so well put it: Ask the first Jew you meet concerning his "laws" and he will be able to tell you them better than his own name. The reason for this may be found in the systematic religious instruction given to every Jewish child, as well as in the fact that divine service partly consists of the reading and explanation of passages from Holy Writ. In the course of the year the Torah is read through from beginning to end. Moreover, it is one of the primary duties of the Jew to study the Torah. "Thou shalt speak of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up" (Deut. vi. 5).3

No other people, too, has walked in God's ways so conscientiously as the Jews; none has striven to carry out its religious behests so thoroughly. It has indeed been asserted that the Jews are the least religious of peoples. I shall not stay to weigh the justice of this remark. But certain it is that they are the most "God-fearing" people that ever were on the face of the earth. They lived always in trembling awe, in awe of God's wrath. "My flesh trembleth for fear of Thee, and I am afraid of Thy judgments," said the Psalmist (Ps. cxix. 120), and the words may be taken as applicable to the Jews in every age. "Happy is the man that feareth alway" (Prov. xxviii. 14). "The pious never put away their fear" (Tanchuma Chukkath, 24 ).4 One can understand it when one thinks of the Jewish God—fearful, awful, curse-uttering Jehovah. Never in all the world's literature, either before or since, has humanity been threatened with so much evil as Jehovah promises (in the famous 28th chapter of Deuteronomy) to those who will not keep His commandments.

But this mighty influence (the fear of God) did not stand alone. Others combined with it, and together they had the tendency of almost forcing the Jews to obey the behests of their religion most scrupulously. The first of these influences was their national fate. When the Jewish State was destroyed the Pharisees and Scribes—i.e., those who cherished the traditions of Ezra and strove to make obedience to the Law the end and aim of life—the Pharisees and Scribes came to the head of affairs and naturally directed the course of events into channels which they favoured. Without a State, without their sanctuary, the Jews, under the leadership of the Pharisees, flocked around the Law (that "portable Fatherland," as Heine calls it), and became a religious brotherhood, guided by a band of pious Scribes, pretty much as the disciples of Loyola might gather around them the scattered remnants of a modern State. The Pharisees now led the way. Their most distinguished Rabbis looked upon themselves as the successors of the ancient Synhedrium, and were indeed so regarded, becoming the supreme authority in spiritual and temporal affairs for all the Jews in the world.5 The power of the Rabbis originated in this fashion, and the vicissitudes of the Jews in the Middle Ages only helped to strengthen it. So oppressive did it eventually become that the Jews themselves at times complained of the burden. For the more the Jews were shut off, or shut themselves off, from the people among whom they dwelt, the more the authority of the Rabbis increased, and the more easily could the Jews be forced to be faithful to the Law. But the fulfilment of the Law, which was urged upon them by the Rabbis, must have been a necessity for the Jews for inner reasons: it satisfied their heart's desire, it appeared the most precious gift that life had to offer. And why? Because amid all the persecution and suffering which was meted out to the Jews on all sides, that alone enabled them to retain their dignity, without which life would have been valueless. For a very long period religious teaching was enshrined in the Talmud, and hence Jews through many centuries lived in it, for it and through it. The Talmud was the most precious possession of the Jew; it was the breath of his nostrils, it was his very soul. The Talmud became a family history for generation after generation, with which each was familiar. "The thinker lived in its thought, the poet in its pure idealism. The outer world, the world of nature and of man, the powerful ones of the earth and the events of the times, were for the Jew during a thousand years accidents, phantoms; his only reality was the Talmud."6 The Talmud has been well compared (and the comparison to my mind applies equally to all religious literature) to an outer shell with which the Jews of the Diaspora covered themselves; it protected them against all influences from without and kept alive their strength within.7

We see, then, what forces were at work to make the Jews right down to modern times a more God-fearing people than any other, to make them religious to their inmost core, or, if the word "religious" be objected to, to keep alive among high and low a general and strict observation of the precepts of their religion. And for our purpose, we must regard this characteristic as applicable to all sorts and conditions of Jews, the Marannos of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries included. We must look upon these too as orthodox Jews. Says the foremost authority on that period of Jewish history,8 "The great majority of the Marannos were Jews to a much larger extent than is commonly supposed. They submitted to force of circumstance and were Christians only outwardly. As a matter of fact they lived the Jewish life and observed the tenets of the Jewish religion.... This admirable constancy will be appreciated to the full only when the wealth of material in the Archives of Alcalia de Henares, Simancas and other places has been sorted and utilized."

But among professing Jews the wealthiest were often enough excellent Talmudic scholars. Was not a knowledge of the Talmud a highway to honour, riches and favour among Jews? The most learned Talmudists were also the cleverest financiers, medical men, jewellers, merchants. We are told, for example, of some of the Spanish Ministers of Finance, bankers and court physicians that they devoted to the study of the Holy Writ not only the Sabbath day but also two nights of each week. In modern times old Amschel Rothschild, who died in 1855, did the same. He lived strictly according to Jewish law and ate no morsel at a stranger's table, even though it were the Emperor's. One who knew the Baron well says of him that "he was looked upon as the most pious Jew in all Frankfort. Never have I seen a man so afflict himself—beating his breast, and crying to Heaven—as Baron Rothschild did in the synagogue on the Day of Atonement. The continual praying weakens him so that he falls into a faint. Odorous plants from his garden are held to his nose to revive him."9 [Sombart in the German text quotes this as an occurrence on the Sabbath. It is obvious that the description refers to the Day of Atonement.—Trans.] His nephew William Charles, who died in 1901 and who was the last of the Frankfort Rothschilds, observed all the religious prescriptions in their minutest detail. The pious Jew is forbidden to touch any object which under certain circumstances has become unclean by having been already touched by some one else. And so a servant always walked in front of this Rothschild and wiped the door-handles. Moreover, he never touched paper money that had been in use before; the notes had to be fresh from the press.

If this was how a Rothschild lived, it is not surprising to come across Jewish commercial travellers who do not touch meat six months in the year because they are not absolutely certain that the method of slaughtering has been in accordance with Jewish law.

However, if you want to study orthodox Judaism you must go to Eastern Europe, where it is still without disintegrating elements—you must go there personally or read the books about it. In Western Europe the orthodox Jews are a small minority. But when we speak of the influence of the Jewish religion it is the religion that held sway until a generation ago that we mean, the religion that led the Jews to so many victories.
The Sources of the Jewish Religion

Mohammed called the Jews "the people of the Book." He was right. There is no other people that lived so thoroughly according to a book. Their religion in all its stages was generally incorporated in a book, and these books may be looked upon as the sources of the Jewish religion. The following is a list of such books, each originating at a particular time and supplementing some other.

1. The Bible, i.e., the Old Testament, until the destruction of the Second Temple. It was read in Hebrew in Palestine and in Greek  (Septuagint) in the Diaspora.

2. The Talmud (more especially the Babylonian Talmud), from the 2nd to the 6th century of the Common Era, the principal depository of Jewish religious teaching.

3. The Code of Maimonides, compiled in the 12th century.

4. The Code (called the Turim) of Jacob ben Asher (1248–1340).

5. The Code of Joseph Caro—the Shulchan Aruch (16th century).

These "sources" from which the Jewish religion drew its life appear in a different light according as they are regarded by scientific research or with the eyes of the believing Jew. In the first case they are seen as they really are; in the second, they are idealized.

What are they in reality? The Bible, i.e., the Old Testament, is the foundation upon which the entire structure of Judaism was built up. It was written by many hands at different periods, thus forming, as it were, a piece of literary mosaic.10 The most important portion of the whole is the Torah, i.e., the Pentateuch. It received its present shape by the commingling of two complete works some time in the period after Ezra. The one was the old and the new (the Deuteronomic) Law Book (650 B.C.) and the other, Ezra's Law Book (440 B.C.).[I.e. Deut. v. 45–xxvi, 69 (about 650 B.C.) and Exod. xii. 25–31, xxxv to Lev. xv; Numb. i–x; xv– xix; xxvii–xxxvi. (about 445 B.C.).] And its special character the Torah owes to Ezra and Nehemiah, who introduced a strict legal system. With Ezra and the school of Soferim (scribes) that he founded, Judaism in the form which it has to-day originated; from that period to the present it has remained unchanged.

Beside the Torah we must mention the so-called Wisdom Literature—the Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiasticus and the Proverbs. This section of Jewish literature is wholly postexilic; only in that period could it have arisen, assuming as it did the existence of the Law, and the prevailing belief that for obeyin

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Jewish Characteristics as Applied to Capitalism

Now comes the question, how and in what way did the Jewish characteristics enable Jews to become financiers and speculators, indeed, to engage as successfully in economic activities within the framework of the capitalistic system as to be mathematicians, statisticians, physicians, journalists, actors and advocates? To what extent, that is, does a special talent for capitalistic enterprise spring from the elements in the Jewish character?

Speaking generally, we may say in this connexion what we have already remarked about capitalism and the Jewish religion, that the fundamental ideas of capitalism and those of the Jewish character show a singular similarity. Hence we have the triple parallelism between Jewish character, the Jewish religion and capitalism. What was it we found as the all-controlling trait of the Jewish people? Was it not extreme intellectuality? And is not intellectuality the quality which differentiates the capitalistic system from all others? Organizing ability springs from intellectuality, and in the capitalistic system we find the separation between head and hands, between the work of directing and that of manufacturing. "For the greatest work to be completely done, you need of hands a thousand, of mind but only one." That sums up the capitalistic state of things.

The purest form of capitalism is that wherein abstract ideas are most clearly expressed. That they are part and parcel of the Jewish character we have already seen; there is no occasion to labour the close kinship in this respect between capitalism and the Jew. Again, the quality of abstraction in capitalism manifests itself in the substitution of all qualitative differences by merely quantitative ones (value in exchange). Before capitalism came, exchange was a many-sided, multicoloured and technical process; now it is just one specialized act—that of the dealer: before there were many relationships between buyer and seller; there is only one now—the commercial. The tendency of capitalism has been to do away with different manners, customs, pretty local and national contrasts, and to set up in their stead the dead level of the cosmopolitan town. In short, there has been a tendency towards uniformity, and in this capitalism and Liberalism have much in common. Liberalism we have already shown to be a near relative of Judaism, and so we have the kindred trio of Capitalism, Liberalism, and Judaism.

How is the inner resemblance between the first and the last best manifested? Is it not through the agency of money, by means of which capitalism succeeds so well in its policy of bringing about a drab uniformity? Money is the common denominator, in terms of which all values are expressed; at the same time it is the be-all and end-all of economic activity in a capitalistic system. Hence one of the conspicuous things in such a system is success. Is it otherwise with the Jew? Does he not also make the increase of capital his chief aim? And not only because the abstractness of capital is congenial to the soul of the Jew, but also because the 'great regard in which (in the capitalistic system) money is held strikes another sympathetic note in the Jewish character—its teleology. Gold becomes the great means, and its value arises fromthe fact that you can utilize it for many ends. It needs but little skill to show that a nature intent on working towards some goal should feel itself drawn to something which has value only because it is a means to an end. Moreover, the teleology of the Jew brings it about that he prizes success. (Another point of similarity, therefore, with capitalism.) Because he rates success so highly he sacrifices to-day for to-morrow, and his mobility only helps him to do it all the better. Here again we may observe a likeness to capitalism. Capitalism is constantly on the look-out for something new, for some way of expanding, for abstaining to-day for the sake of to-morrow. Think of our whole system of credit. Does not this characteristic show itself there clearly enough? Now remember also that the Jews were very much at home in the organization of credit—in which values or services which may, or can, become effective some time in the future are made available to-day. Human thought can plainly picture future experiences and future needs, and credit offers the opportunity through present economic activities of producing future values. That credit is extensively found in modern life scarcely requires pointing out. The reason too is obvious: it offers golden chances. True, we must give up the joys that spring from "completely throwing ourselves into the present."19 But what of that? The Jewish character and capitalism have one more point in common—practical rationalism, by which I mean the shaping of all activities in accordance with reason.

To make the whole parallelism even more plain, let me illustrate it by concrete instances. The Jew is well fitted for the part of undertaker because of his strength of will and his habit of making for some goal or other. His intellectual mobility is accountable for his readiness to discover new methods of production and new possibilities of marketing. He is an adept at forming new organizations, and in these his peculiar capacity for finding out what a man is best fitted for stands him in good stead. And since in the world of capitalism there is nothing organic or natural but only what is mechanical or artificial, the Jew's lack of understanding of the former is of no consequence. Even undertaking on a large scale is itself artificial and mechanical; you may extend a concern or contract it; you may change it according to circumstances. That is why Jews are so successful as organizers of large capitalistic undertakings. Again, the Jew can easily grasp impersonal relationships. We have already noted that he has the feeling of personal dependence only in a slight measure. Hence, he does not care for your hoary "patriarchalism," and pays little attention to the dash of sentimentality which is still sometimes found in labour contracts. In all relations between sellers and buyers, and between employers and employed, he reduces everything to the legal and purely business basis. In the struggle of the workers to obtain collective agreements between themselves and the masters, which shall regulate the conditions of their labour, the Jew is almost invariably on the side of the first.

But if the Jew is well fitted to be an undertaker, still more is he cut out for the part of the trader. His qualities in this respect are almost innumerable.

The trader lives in figures, and in figures the Jew has always been in his element. His love of the abstract has made calculation easy for him; it is his strong point. Now a calculating talent combined with a capacity for working always with some aim in view has already won half the battle for the trader. He is enabled to weigh aright the chances, the possibilities and the advantages of any given situation, to eliminate everything that is useless, and to appraise the whole in terms of figures. Give this sober calculator a strong dose of imagination and you have the perfect speculator before you. To take stock of any given state of things with lightning speed, to see a thousand eventualities, to seize upon the most valuable and to act in accordance with that—such, as we have already pointed out, is the aim of the dealer. For all this the Jew hasthe necessary gifts of mind. I should like expressly to emphasize the close kinship between the activities of the clever speculator and those of the clever physician who can successfully diagnose a disease. The Jew, because of his qualities, is eminently fitted for both.

A good dealer must be a good negotiator. What cleverer negotiators are there than the Jews, whose ability in this direction has long been recognized and utilized? To adapt yourself to the needs of a market, to meet any specified form of demand, is the one prime essential for the dealer. That the Jew with his adaptability can do this as well as any other is obvious. The second is the power of suggestion, and in this also the Jew is well qualified by his ability to think himself into the situation of another.

Wherever we look the conclusion forces itself upon us that the combination of no other set of qualities is so well fitted, as are those of the Jew, for realizing the best capitalistic results. There is no need for me to take the parallelism further; the intelligent reader can easily do so for himself. I would only direct his attention to one point more before leaving the subject—the parallel between the feverish restlessness of Stock Exchange business, always intent on upsetting the tendency towards an equilibrium, and the restless nature of the Jew.

In another place I have sought to characterize the ideal undertaker in three words—he must be wide-awake, clever and resourceful. Wideawake: that is to say, quick of comprehension, sure in judgment, must think twice before speaking once, and be able to seize upon the right moment.

Clever: that is to say, he must possess a knowledge of the world, must be certain of himself in his judgment and in his treatment of men, certain in his judgment on a given conjuncture; and above all, acquainted with the weaknesses and mistakes of those around him.

Resourceful: that is to say, full of ideas. The capitalistic undertaker must have three additional qualities: he must be active, sober and thorough. By sober, I mean free from passion, from sentiment, from unpractical idealism. By thorough, I mean reliable, conscientious, orderly, neat and frugal.

I believe this rough sketch will, in broad outline, stand for the capitalistic undertaker no less than for the Jew.
Part III — The Origin of the Jewish Genius
Chapter 13:  The Race Problem
Prefatory Note

Strictly speaking the task I had set myself has now been completed. I have tried to show the importance of the Jews in modern economic life in all its aspects, and the connexion between Capitalism and "Jewishness." In other words, I have endeavoured to point out why it was that the Jews have been able to play, and still continue to play, so significant a part in economic life; endeavoured to show that their great achievements were due partly to objective circumstances, and partly to their inherent characteristics.

But here new questions crop up in plenty, and I must not pass them by unanswered, if I desire my most valued readers may not lay aside my book with a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is obvious that any one who has accompanied me to the point where I maintain that specifically Jewish characteristics exist, and that they will account for the great influence of the Jews in the body economic, must be bound to ask. What is the true nature of these characteristics? How have they come about? What will their ultimate effect be?

The answers to these questions may vary considerably. The Jewish characteristics we have noted may be nothing else but, as it were, a function without a corresponding organism; may be only surface phenomena, skin-deep, without any root at all in the human beings that give expression to them; may be but as a feather on a coat—easily blown away; something which vanishes with the disappearance of the person.

Or they may become hardened into a habit and be deep-seated, but yet not sufficiently powerful to be hereditary. Contrariwise, they may be so marked as to pass from one generation to another. In this case, the question presents itself, when did they arise? Were these characteristics always in the Jew, were they in his blood, or have they only been acquired in the course of his history—either in what is termed ancient times, or later? Again, all hereditary qualities may last for ever, or be only a temporary nature—may be, that is, permanent or only transient. Seeing that we are dealing with a social group, it will be necessary here, too, to answer the question. Is the group a racial entity? In a word, are the Jews a subdivision of mankind, differing by blood-kinship from other people? Finally, in a problem of this sort we must deal with the possibility that the peculiar characteristics of the group may be due to admixtures with other groups, or to selection within the group itself.

The problem is many-sided: of that there can be little doubt. And the worst of it is that modern science can give no certain replies to the questions propounded. Attempts have of course been made, but they are not without prejudice, and any one even only superficially acquainted with the subject will be faced by more problems and puzzles than by solutions.

The most pressing need of the moment, so it seems to me—one which alone will be able to withdraw the Jewish Problem from the semidarkness in which it is enshrouded—is to obtain a clear conception of the questions at issue, and to bring some order into the abundant material at hand. It is almost as though at the point where the general Jewish Question intersects the race problem, a thousand devils had been let loose to confuse the mind of men. As one authority1 recently urged with regard to the doctrines of heredity: what is most needed is an exact precision concerning elementals. The same is the case to an enormous extent with the question of whether the Jews are a race or not, and perhaps an outsider may contribute something to this end, just because he stands apart from the specialists. This thought emboldens me to attempt to give a resume of all that is current to-day regarding Jews as a race—of all that is certain,and of the thousand and one theories, to say nothing of the numerous false hypotheses.
The Anthropology of the Jews

Touching the origin of the Jews and their anthropology and ethnology, opinions at the present day are pretty well agreed as to the essential facts. It is generally assumed2 that Israel, like Judah, arose from the admixture of different Oriental peoples. When, in the 15th century B.C., the Hebrews, then a Bedouin tribe, wished to settle in Palestine they found there an old population long since established—Canaanites, who were probably hegemonic, Hittites, Perizites, Hivites and Jebusites (Judg. iii. 5). Recent research has come to the conclusion, opposed to the older view, that the Israelitish clans largely intermarried with these peoples.

Later, when a portion of the population went into the Babylonian Exile, the admixture of races continued in Palestine. And as for the exiles (whose history in this connexion is of vital importance), we learn much from the latest cuneiform inscriptions concerning their attitude toward intermarriage. The inscriptions show, "without doubt," that there was a gradual fusion between the Jews and the Babylonians. The immigrants called their children by Babylonian names, and the Babylonians theirs by Persian, Hebrew and Aramaic names.3

Nothing like so clear are the views as to the relationship to each other of the peoples and clans of which the Jews were composed; still less as to how they can be distinguished from other similar groups; and least of all how they are to be called. A very heated controversy has recently raged about the term "Semites," with the result that in anthropological circles the word is no longer used. The Semite controversy, like that on the Aryans, only shows how vicious it is to allow linguistic concepts to interfere in the anthropological divisions of mankind. It is generally accepted that the Semites are all those peoples whose speech is Semitic, but that anthropologically they belong to different and differing groups.4

My own view is that the controversy as to the exact demarcation of the civilized Oriental peoples is a little futile. Nor does our ignorance on this point much matter. One thing however is certain—that all of them, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians and the Jews, by virtue of their origin and earliest history, belong to one class, which may perhaps be termed "Desert" or "Desert-edge" Peoples. The assumption that a fair, blue-eyed tribe from the North intermingled with these is now almost unanimously regarded as a fable. The theory of the ubiquity of the Germans" will have to be but coldly entertained as long as no more convincing proofs are forthcoming than the reddish hair of Saul, or the dolichocephalic skull of the mummy of Rameses II.

What, then, was the anthropological history of the group of peoples in which the Jews originated? A common answer as regards the Jews was that they continued to mix with their non-Jewish neighbours in the Diaspora as they had done before. Renan, Loeb, Neubauer and others believe that the modern Jews are in large measure the descendants of heathen proselytes in the Hellenistic Age, or of marriages between Jews and non-Jews in the early centuries of the Common Era. The existence of fair Jews (to the extent of 13 per cent), especially in Eastern Europe, lent probability to this opinion. But to-day, so far as I can make out, the entirely opposite view generally prevails—that from the days of Ezra to these the Jews have kept strictly apart. For more than two thousand years they have been untouched by other peoples; they have remained ethnically pure. That drops of alien blood came into the Jewish body corporate through the long centuries of their dispersion no one will deny. But so small have these outside elements been that they have not influenced to any appreciable degree the ethnical purity of the Jewish people.

It seems pretty clear now that in the past the number of proselytes admitted into Judaism was considerably overestimated. There is no doubt that in the Hellenistic and early Christian periods Judaism won adherents among the heathen peoples. (The subsequent centuries were of no consequence at all, with the exception of one case only.) Both the Roman and the Jewish Law made provision for such converts.. But we may assume with certainty that all of them were the so-called "Proselytes of the Gate"—that is, they worshipped God in accordance with Jewish teaching, but they were not circumcised, nor were they allowed to marry Jewesses. Nearly all of them eventually drifted into Christianity. As a matter of fact, in the time of Pius circumcision was again allowed to the Jews, but the rite was expressly forbidden to be performed on proselytes. In this way conversion to Judaism was made a punishable offence. This in all probability was not the intention of the framers of the prohibition, but its effect was soon recognized, and it was extended.6 For Severus "forbade conversion to Judaism on pain of grave penalties."

But even if we allow foreign admixtures among the Jews in the early Christian Age, it could never have amounted to very much when we think of the millions of Jews who presumably existed at the time, and anyhow the stranger elements came from peoples closely akin to the Jews.

As for the centuries that followed the entry of the Jews into European history, we may take it that proselytizing ceased almost entirely. Throughout the Middle Ages therefore the Jews received but little of non-Jewish blood. The remarkable conversion of the Chozars in the 8th century cannot be regarded as an exception to this statement, for their realm was never very extensive. In the 10th century it was limited to a very small area in the western part of the Crimea, and in the 11th the tiny Jewish State disappeared altogether. Only a small remnant of the Chozars live in Kieff as Karaites. Hence, even if the whole of the Chozars professed Judaism, the ethnical purity of the Jews could have been affected but little. As a matter of fact, however, it is very doubtful whether any others than the ruling family, or the upper classes, became Jews.7 Mixed marriages thus remain as the only possible source whence Jewish blood might be made impure. Certainly marriages between Jews and non-Jews must have occurred in some periods of Jewish history.

Mixed marriages were probably numerous—a not extravagant assumption—in those epochs in which the band of Jewish solidarity was somewhat loosened—say, the last pre-Christian century, or the 12th and 13th in Spain. Even so, such relaxations never lasted for any considerable time; Jewish orthodoxy soon regained the upper hand, to the exclusion of non-Jews. What the Pharisees achieved in the first-named period resulted in the second from the Maimonides schism, and this had such reactionary consequences that marriages with Christian and Mohammedan women were annulled.8

But there are indications that such marriages were to be found. They were expressly forbidden at the early Spanish Councils. For instance, the 16th Canon of the Council of Elovia (304) provides that "the daughters of Catholics shall not be given in marriage to heretics, except they return to the Church. The same applies to Jews and schismatics." The 64th Canon of the Third Council of Toledo (589) forbids Jews to have Christian women either as wives or mistresses; and if any children spring from such unions they must be baptized. Once more, the 63rd Canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo (633) makes it incumbent upon Jews who have Christian wives to accept Christianity if they wish to continue to live with them.9 It seems hardly likely, however, that marriages against which these canons were issued were very numerous. And anyhow, as the children of such marriages were lost to Judaism, Jewish racial purity could not have suffered much by them.

Similarly, it is improbable that there was any admixture of Jews with the Northern peoples. There was an opinion current that the Jews in Germany up to the time of the Crusades lived among their Christian neighbours, and had free intercourse with them in every direction. But this view is hardly credible, and Brann, one of the best authorities on German Jewish history, has declared the assumption of even the least degree of assimilation at this period to be "an airy fancy, which must vanish into nothingness when the inner life of the Jews of those days is understood."10

There remain the fair Jews. They have been regarded as a proof of Jewish admixture with the fair races of the North. But no scholar of repute looks upon these as the outcome of legitimate unions between Jews and their Slav neighbours. On the other hand, one hypothesis11 has found credence—that the fair Jews are the children of illegitimate unions between Jews and Russians, either in the ordinary way or forcibly on the occasion of pogroms. But the weakness of this assumption is obvious. Even if it did explain the existence of fair Jews in Russia, it would be of no use at all for accounting for fair Jews in Germany, in Southern lands, in North Africa and in Palestine.

There is really no necessity to look for an explanation of the fair Jews in the admixture of races. All dark peoples produce a number of variants, and this is a case in point.12

We come back then to the fact that for some twenty centuries the Jews have kept themselves ethnically pure. One proof of this is found in the similarity of the anthropological characteristics of the Jews all over the globe, and, moreover, in that the similarity has been remarkably constant through the centuries. "Differences in treatment or environment have not been able to blur a common type, and the Jews more than any other race stand as a proof that the influence of heredity is much more powerful than that of environment" (E. Auerbach).

The anthropological homogeneity of the Jewish stock at the present time has been established by numerous anatomical experiments and measurements.13 The only doubtful question is whether the ancient contrast between Ashkenazim [German Jews] and Sephardim [Spanish Jews] extends to their anthropology. There are two conflicting opinions on the subject,14 but I believe the basis of either is not sufficiently conclusive to justify an independent judgment. It must be added, though, that personal observation would seem to warrant the belief that there was some anthropological difference between the two. Look at your spare, elegant Spanish Jew, with his small hands and feet and his thin, hooked nose, and then at his German brother, stout and bow-legged, with his broad, fleshy Hittite nose. Do they not appear as two distinct types to the ordinary observer? There is as yet no scientific ground to explain the difference.

Another controversial argument is whether the Jews of to-day are a separate entity, distinct from their neighbours physiologically and pathologically. There can be no doubt that from this point of view Jews do exhibit certain peculiarities in many respects—early puberty, little liability to cancer, especially cancer of the womb, strong disposition for diabetes, insanity, and so forth. There are people, however, who cannot look upon these things as physiological and pathological Jewish traits, but explain them as resultants of the social position of the Jews, of their religious practices, and so on.15 Here also the ground has not been sufficiently prepared to warrant a definite statement.

It is different with the physiognomy of the Jew. Physiognomy, as is well known, is the outcome of two causes—of certain facial forms and of their particular expression. You cannot weigh or measure either, and therefore this is a matter that must be left entirely to common observation. Now, just as the colour-blind distinguish no colours, so those who cannot see differences in men's faces know nothing of physiognomy. When, therefore, some writers16 say that in the case of three-quarters of cultivated and wealthy Jews they cannot with certainty tell that they are Jews merely from their faces, then there is nothing to urge in reply. But a keen observer will most decidedly be able to tell. Jewish physiognomy is still a reality, and few will deny it. Undoubtedly there are individuals among Jews who do not look one whit Jewish. But there are also very many individuals among Gentiles who look very Jewish. I should not like to go so far as some do,17 and say that the Hapsburgs because of their heavy lips, or the Louis of France because of their hooked noses, were Jewish-looking. But among Oriental peoples (including possibly the Japanese) we do come across Jewish types. This in no wise detracts from the anthropological unity of the Jews. If it proves anything, it only points to a common origin of the Jews and the Oriental peoples. (It might be mentioned, by the way, that the lost Ten Tribes have been located in Japan—a somewhat fantastic conjecture, but having something in its favour in the striking similarity of the Japanese and Jewish types.) To consider the Jewish physiognomy as an expression of decadence, or to account for it, as Ripley does, as a result of Ghetto life, is not very conclusive in face of the undeniable Jewish types depicted on the monuments of ancient Egypt and Babylonia. Look at the picture of Jewish captives in the epoch of Shishak (973 B.C.), or of the Jewish ambassadors at the court of Salmanasar18 (884 B.C.), and you will be convinced that from those days to our own, a period of nearly three thousand years, few changes have marked the Jewish type of countenance. This is but another proof of the proposition that the Jewish stock is an anthropological entity, and that its characteristics have been constant through the ages in a most extraordinary fashion.
The Jewish "Race"

In view of all this, may we speak of a Jewish race? The answer would depend on the connotation of the word "race." But to define it is not easy, for there are probably as many definitions as there are writers on it.19 It is, of course, open to any one to say. Such and such things I look upon as the mark of race, and if I apply my standard the Jews are or are not a race, as the case may be. But a procedure of this kind is more of the nature of a game. What is needed is a scientific definition. But how? Many methods have been tried—anthropological differences, skull measurements, biological experiments and their application—but all with no absolute result. It would, however, be a fallacy to conclude that because hitherto no satisfactory classification of the human species has been achieved, therefore no anthropological differences really exist. An Eskimo is different from a Negro, and the South Italian from the Norwegian. We do not require anthropology to tell us that.

So with the Jews. It may be difficult to class them, but anthropological peculiarities of their own they surely have. When therefore one distinguished scholar20 writes: "I recognize only a Jewish religious community; of a Jewish race I know nothing," we must regard it as a hasty expression uttered in the heat of the moment. The objection to it is that we can easily place a "Jewish national community" with a common history beside the "Jewish religious community."

So with anthropological characteristics which mark off the Jew from the non-Jew. I am firmly of opinion that the Jews, no matter where they may be found, are an anthropological group differing from, let us say, the Swede or the negro. "A religious community" will not suffice.

After all, is it not a controversy about words? Some will have it that there is no Jewish race. Well and good. But they admit Jewish anthropological peculiarities. It is a thousand pities that there is no satisfactory term by which to describe them. "A people" will not serve, for the definitions of "people" are no less numerous than those of "race." But what does the name matter? The thing certainly is there, and I should have no hesitation in speaking of the Jewish race, or, if you will, of the Jewish "race."

Let me conclude this section with one or two wise words written by Arthur Ruppin,21 that excellent authority on the Jew, words that appear to me to be among the best that have been uttered on the subject: "The term 'race' should not be stretched too far. If we include in it such groups as developed their special anthropological characteristics in prehistoric times, and have since kept themselves without admixture with other groups, then in reality there are no 'races' among white-skinned peoples, seeing that all of them have intermingled over and over again. As for the Jews, whether they had common racial features in prehistoric times and have preserved them through the centuries, is a detail of no great significance. What does matter is this—that it is certain that those who professed the Jewish religion formed a well-defined group distinct from their surroundings, even as late as the end of the 18th century, after many generations of strict avoidance of marriage with non-Jews. The community which has descended from this group may be called, for lack of a better name, a race, more particularly, 'the Jewish race.'"
How the Jewish Genius Remained Constant

The question of greatest interest in these anthropological considerations is to discover whether any connexion exists between the somatic characteristics of the Jew and his intellectual qualities. We want to make sure whether the latter are in his blood, so to say, i.e., whether they are racial or no. To discover this it will be necessary to see whether the characteristics we have observed in modern Jews were to be found among Jews in ancient times also; whether they reach back to their earliest history, or whether they appeared at a later date, and if so, when.

The result will be that we shall observe that Jewish intellectual qualities have remained constant, that certain characteristics, certain peculiar features of the Jewish soul may be traced as far back as the formation of the Jewish ethnical group. We cannot prove all this directly, because we have no reliable accounts of the Jewish popular character dating from early times. What we do possess are brief and scanty expressions of opinions, valuable, however, as far as they go. It is of great interest, for example, to note that the Pentateuch (in four places— Exod. xxxii. 9, xxxiv. 9; Deut. ix. 13 and 27) asserts of the Jews what Tacitus said of them later—that they are a stiff-necked people. No less interesting is Cicero's statement that they hang together most fraternally, or Marcus Aurelius's that they are a restless people, to whom he cries, "O ye Marcomanni, O ye Quadi, O ye Sarmatae, at length have I found a race more restless than you!"; or finally Juan de la Huarte's that their intellect is keen and well fitted for worldly things.

The first point to note is:—

(1) The attitude of the Jews to the peoples among whom they dwelt all through the Diaspora. In the last century or so we have seen this to be one of aloofness. Before capitalism came and set them free, Jews were looked upon as "strangers," as "semi-citizens." They were hated and persecuted in all lands, but everywhere they knew how to preserve and maintain themselves.

How was it in antiquity? How later? The same spectacle confronts us, ever since the Jews came into contact with other peoples. Everywhere there was opposition, persecution and ill-treatment. To begin with the Egyptians: "They abhorred the children of Israel" (Exod. i. 12). Paul of Tarsus went so far as to say that the Jews "were contrary to all men" (1 Thess. ii. 15). In the Hellenistic period, in Imperial Rome— the same story of hate and plunder and death. Philo and Josephus both record dreadful Jewish pogroms in Alexandria in the first century of our era. "Hatred of the Jew and ill-treatment of him are as old as the Diaspora itself" (Mommsen).

Under the Caesars their lot was no different: "I am just sick of these filthy, noisy Jews," said Marcus Aurelius. Then, in the time of Theodoric, massacres and wholesale plundering were the order of the day, as later in the 7th century under the Longobards. And the East was like the West; the 6th century in Babylon was as dark as the 7th in Northern Italy. Even in the Pyrenean Peninsula, where they enjoyed much that was good, the end was bitter: Christian and Moslem both laid hands upon them.

These instances might be multiplied. They are all expressions of hatred of the Jew in Christian and non-Christian environments alike. Can the phenomenon be explained without the assumption of the existence of Jewish characteristics, which remained constant no matter where the Jew was placed? The answer must surely be in the affirmative. The hatred of the Jew could not have been the result of a passing mood on the part of all these peoples.

Then again, everywhere and at all times the Jews were semi-citizens. Sometimes indeed they were not in this category because the law placed them there. On the contrary. There were many cases in antiquity where Jews were assigned privileged positions, by virtue of which they were excused certain duties of the citizen (e.g., military service), or had exceptional advantages in regard to legal enactments. Nevertheless they took no full share in the life of the State in which they were domiciled. The Greek inhabitants of Caesarea, a city on Jewish soil and built under Jewish rule, denied citizen rights to the Jews, and Burnus, Nero's minister, upheld their decision.22 There was little change in this respect during the Middle Ages.

How are we to account for this generally prevailing treatment? Differing States adopted a similar policy towards the Jew: does it not seem clear that it was due to some special characteristic of his? If you like, say it was the strict adherence to the letter of the Jewish religion. But something it must have been.

And yet, despite all oppression, the Jew was not crushed. He knew how to maintain himself from the oldest times onward. Perhaps it was because of the curious mixture of stubbornness and elasticity which we have noted in Jews of modern days. They might be crushed never so relentlessly, but like a Jack-in-the-box they were soon up again. How they withstood the onslaught of the Roman Emperors, who used all the weapons at their command to stamp them out! Despite their efforts, there was again in the 3rd century a Patriarch at Jerusalem recognized by the government, with a jurisdiction of his own. In antiquity, in the Middle Ages, in this our own time, the peoples have summed up their judgment of the Jew in the one word—stubborn: "ostinato come un ebreo."

The peculiar mixture of determination and elasticity is most wonderfully exhibited by the Jews in their bearing towards governments, where their religion was concerned. To it they owed most of their enemies; because of it they suffered hardships untold. Yet they would not give up their beloved faith. And when pressure was severe, many Jews pretended to have forsworn their religion only to be able to carry out its precepts in secret. We know of this conduct in connexion with the Marannos, but it is as old as the Diaspora itself. When you read of the thousands of crypto-Jewish heathens, crypto-Jewish Mohammedans, crypto-Jewish Christians, you are astounded at this unique event in human history. The more so as it was the most religious Jews, teachers and leaders, who had recourse to the sham conversions in order to save their lives. Recall the case of R. Eleazar ben Parta, who was active under Hadrian as a pretended heathen;23 that of Ismael ibn Negrela, who, as R. Samuel, held discourses on the Talmud and answered questions of religious practice, and as Vizier of the Mohammedan King Habus, began his master's ordinances with the formula Chamdu-l-Illahi and ended them with urging those to whom they were addressed to live according to the laws of Islam;24 that of the great Maimonides, who sought to give excellent reasons for his pretended conversion to Mohammedanism;25 that of Sabbatti Zevi, the false Messiah, who though he acknowledged Mahomet yet did not lose the respect of his followers; that of the Neapolitan Jew Basilus, who made a pretence of having his sons baptized in order to be able to carry on the trade in slaves under their name,26 since this branch of commerce was forbidden the Jews; that of the thousands and thousands of Marannos who, after the expulsion of the Jews from the Pyrenean Peninsula, appeared to all the world as Christians and returned to the faith of their fathers at the very first opportunity that presented itself. What remarkable people must these have been who combined such determination with such elasticity!

We have thus noted that many Jewish characteristics developed to their fullest in the Diaspora. But

(2) Is the Diaspora itself explicable as a result of only outward circumstances? Does it not itself rather bear witness to special characteristics? Or to put the question somewhat differently, would it have been possible to scatter any other people over the face of the earth as the Jews were scattered?

The experience of exile the Jews tasted in quite early days. Most people have heard of Tiglath-Pileser, who dragged a part of the Jewish population to Media and Assyria; of the later Babylonian Exile; of Ptolemy Lagi, who forced very many Jews to settle in Egypt and planted a Jewish colony in Cyrene; of Antiochus the Great, who brought two thousand Jewish families from Babylon and peopled with them the centre of Asia Minor, Phrygia and Lydia. Mommsen calls the settlement of Jews outside Palestine "an invention of Alexander or of his generals."

In all these cases the temptation is strong to ascribe the dispersion of the Jews to outward circumstances, seeing that in most of the cases the Jews were carried away from their homes against their will. There appears to be nothing therefore in these dispersions that would point to inherent Jewish characteristics. Such a conclusion would be hasty. Is there not this possibility—that if the Jews had not possessed certain qualities they might never have been transplanted? The enforced settlements must have had some purpose. Either they were beneficial to the land from which the Jews were taken, or (what was more probable) to the land or the town where they were settled. Either they were feared in their own country as firebrands of sedition, or they were accounted such valuable citizens for their wealth or their industry that they were made the nucleus of new settlements, or they were held to be so trusty that they were utilized by rulers to strengthen their hold on turbulent centres (as was done by Ptolemy Lagi in Cyrene).

But many Jews may have forsaken Palestine for what might be termed economic reasons: there was not sufficient room for the maintenance of an increasing population. Considering the size and the productiveness of Palestine, emigration on these grounds must have been of frequent occurrence. But this points to a national characteristic—viz., an increasing population due, as is known, to physiological and psychological causes alike. Furthermore, that economic pressure led to emigration was traceable to another national peculiarity. In this respect the Jews have been compared to the Swiss. They, too, leave their homes because the country is unable efficiently to maintain them all. But they only emigrate because they have the energy and the determination to do better for themselves. The Hindoo does not emigrate. If the population increases, he is content with his smaller portion of rice.

But to regard all Jewish dispersion as enforced is probably onesided. We cannot possibly explain so general a phenomenon, which moreover remains the same through the ages, without assuming a voluntary migration. What precisely this was due to—whether to a migrative instinct, or to inability to remain on one piece of soil for long—does not much matter. But some special characteristic will have to be associated with this people to account for their travelling so easily from land to land, no less than for their settlement in large cities, a proclivity shown by the Jews already in very early times. Herzfeld, who has compiled probably the most complete list of Jewish settlements in the Hellenistic Age, draws attention to the striking fact that of the settlements 52 are in towns, and of these 39 were wealthy commercial centres.27

It would appear from all this that Jewish characteristics were by no means developed in the Diaspora, or as the Jewish historians assume, in the Middle Ages, but that the Diaspora itself was the result of these characteristics. The characteristics were there first, at least in embryo.

(3) So, too, with their religion. When it is asserted that the Jew of to-day is a product of his religion, that he has been made what he is, almost artificially, by means of a well thought-out policy of some man or group of men, and not organically, I am ready to admit the statement. My own presentation of this very subject in a previous chapter attempted to show what enormous influence the Jewish religion had, more especially on the economic activity of the Jew. But I want to oppose the view promulgated by H. S. Chamberlain with all my power. I want to make it clear that the religion of the Jew would have been impossible but for the special characteristics of the Jew. The fact that some man, or group of men, was able to give expression to such wonderful thoughts necessarily postulates that the individual or the group was specially gifted. Again, that the whole people should accept their teachings not merely by way of lip-service, but with deep and sincere inwardness—can we explain this except by the supposition of special national characteristics? Today we can no longer free ourselves from the opinion that every people has, in the long run, the religion best suited for it, and that if it adopts another religion it keeps on changing it to suit it to its needs.

I believe, therefore, that we may deduce the special characteristics of the Jewish people from the special characteristics of the Jewish religion. From this standpoint many traits of the Jewish character adduced from Jewish legends may be placed very far back, certainly as early as the Babylonian Exile. That I shall proceed in this as the authors of anti-Semitic catechisms do, and infer from the somewhat questionable story of Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and their cheating of each other, a tendency on the part of the Jews for swindling, need not be feared. No one, I hope, will flunk so badly of me. Cheating is an element found in all mythologies. We need only cast our eyes on Olympus or Valhalla to see the gods cheating and swindling each other in the most shameless fashion. No. What I mean is that the fundamental characteristics of the Jewish religious system which we have already examined—Intellectuality, Rationalism, Teleology—are also the characteristics of the Jewish people, and they must have been in existence (I would repeat, at least in embryo) even before the religion was developed.

(4) My next point is the remarkable similarity in the economic activities of the Jews throughout almost all the centuries of history. In asserting that this is a proof that Jewish characteristics were constant, I am setting myself in opposition to the prevailing views. I differ not only from those who believe that the economic activities of the Jews have changed in the course of time, but also from those who agree with me that it was a constant factor in their development. From the latter I differ because we do no agree as to what those activities were.

What is the generally accepted view of Jewish economic history? I believe it may be traced to Heine, and is something to this effect. Originally the Jews were an agricultural people. Even in the Diaspora, it is said, the Jews tilled the soil, avoiding all other pursuits. But in the 6th and 7th centuries of our era they were forced to sell their holdings and had, willy-nilly, to look out for other means of livelihood. What did they do? They devoted themselves to trade, and for something like five centuries continued in this calling. Again Fate pressed heavily upon them, for the Crusades engendered much anti-Jewish feeling in commercial circles, and the growing trading class in each country organized themselves into gilds, and excluded the Jews from the markets, which they retained as the exclusive preserves of members of their corporations. Once more the Jews had to cast about for new occupations. All channels were closed to them; the only possibility left was to become moneylenders. So they became money-lenders, and before long enjoyed privileges as such because the usury laws meted out special treatment to them.

Such is the almost semi-official view prevalent in Jewish circles, certainly among assimilationists, but also among a goodly number of Jewish nationalists.

There is another view to which some historians, Jewish and Gentile (among the former Herzfeld), have given currency. It is that the Jews have always been a commercial people, from the age of King Solomon onwards, throughout the Diaspora, down to our own times.

I regard both views as wrong, certainly as one-sided, and I hope to give my reasons in a sketch of the economic history of the Jews which I shall furnish.

From the period of the Kings to the end of the national independence—we may even say up to the codification of the Talmud—the Jewish people were a self-contained, self-sufficing economic unit. Its surplus commodities it sent to foreign lands, and its constituent units produced all they needed, or at best, supplemented their own work by simple bartering with their neighbours. We should describe the whole by saying that we had here single economic units satisfying their own wants, with which was connected a certain amount of hired labour; there was something of the nature I of the manorial system, and there were some handicrafts. Where these are found little trade is possible. But how about the numerous merchants in Palestine, of whom we read in the time of the Kings? How account for them? To speak of merchants in the ordinary interpretation of the term is to misunderstand the nature of the economic organization of the country .in Solomon's day. It was nothing but an extensive manorial system, something like that of Charlemagne, and obviously required the distribution of commodities. But this was not commerce. "The chief officers (they corresponded to the villici) that were over Solomon's work were 550. .. . And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber.... And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir and they fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to King Solomon" (1 Kings ix. 23, 26–28).

This and similar passages have been taken to denote a flourishing international commercial intercourse, even a monopoly of trade. But there is no need of this explanation at all. It is perfectly simple when we think of the royal household as a manor on a large scale, from which the servants, in company with those from another large manor, were sent forth to distant lands in order to bring back commodities that were needed at the King's court. The economic independence of the royal household further appears in the story of the building of the Temple. Solomon asks Hiram to send him "a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver and in brass, and in iron and in purple, and in crimson and in blue, and that can skill to grave all manner of gravings, to be with the cunning men that are with me.... Send me also cedar-trees, fir-trees and algum-trees, out of Lebanon: for I know that thy servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon; and behold my servants will be with thy servants.... And behold I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil" (2 Chron. ii. 7ff.). The same applies to a later passage in the same book (2 Chron. viii. 4), "And Solomon built Tadmor in the wilderness and all the store cities which he built in Hamath." Store cities tell of the manor and its wealth in kind rather than of commerce.

The other passages on which the theory is based that an extensive trade was carried on in later times hardly warrant this deduction.28 True, we learn that the Babylonian exiles were wealthy (Ezra i. 46; Zech. vi. 10, 11), but no indication is given of their callings. There is not one iota of evidence in the Bible for the contention of Graetz that they had obtained their riches in commerce. Perhaps the cuneiform inscriptions brought from Nippur may support such an assumption. But to refer the prophecy of Ezekiel about the destruction of Tyre (Ezek. xxvi. 2) to jealousy of the Phoenicians, and then on that basis to establish the suggestion that even in the pre-Exilic period Palestine was largely a trading country, appears to me to be somewhat bold.

That we cannot be too careful in reasoning of this kind is made abundantly manifest by the interpretation put upon the famous passage in Proverbs (vii. 19, 20), where the wiles of the adulteress are described. "For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey; he hath taken a bag of money with him: he will come back at the full moon." Was the husband a merchant? Perhaps, but he may have been a farmer who had left home to pay his rent to the bailiff in a distant town, and at the same time to buy a couple of oxen there.

There is no clear proof, therefore, for the existence of commerce as a specialized calling. On the other hand, there are passages which support my view that the manorial system was prevalent even at a later period. Take, for example, Nehemiah ii. 8, where the letter is mentioned in which Asaph, the keeper of the King's forest, is asked to give timber to make beams for the gate of the castle. The injunction in Leviticus (xix. 35, 36) about just weights and measures does not in itself militate against this theory.

But this does not mean that there were no traders. There must have been, even in the period of the Kings, but they were only retail dealers. Do we not read of them in the Book of Kings (1 Kings xx. 34), where the defeated Benbadad. King of Syria, offers Ahab to build streets for bazaars in Damascus as his father had done in Samaria? Or in Nehemiah (iii. 32), where we are told that the goldsmiths and the merchants built their shops in a particular quarter? How this last statement can be construed to mean that there must have been highly respected merchant gilds (Bertholet) I cannot understand. You can almost see the small shopkeepers at the Sheep Gate.

That there was an international exchange of commodities, even in the earliest times, cannot of course be denied. There must have been extensive trade and great merchants, who exchanged the surplus produce of Palestine for the articles of luxury which they brought with them.29 "Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy (Tyre's) traffickers: they traded for thy merchandise wheat of Minnith and pannag [a kind of confection] and honey and oil and balm" [Ezek. xxvii. 17]. But the extraordinary thing is that these great merchants were never Jews, but always foreigners. The caravans that crossed the country were led by Midianites, Sabaeans, Dedanites, men of Keder, but not by Jews.30 Even retail trade, when the Proverbs were written, was in the hands of Canaanites. Ousted from trade in their own land, the Jews were hardly likely to have had any influence in the international trade of those times. The great international merchants were Phoenicians, Syrians or Greeks.31 "Absolute proofs that Jewish emigration was chiefly for commercial ends are wanting entirely."32 In view of all this I see no reason for regarding the passage in Josephus, which describes the position of the Jews in his days, as prejudiced and one-sided. It was in all probability true to fact. What does he say? "As for ourselves, therefore, we neither inhabit a maritime country, nor do we delight in merchandise" (Contra Apion, i. 12).

The centuries that followed brought little change in these conditions. In the Talmud those sayings predominate that would point to the prevalence among Jews, at least in the East, of small independent economic units, each sufficient for its own needs. It would be a mistake to speak of commercial activity. Granted we hear33 that man accounted blessed who is able to become a spice-seller, and need not do laborious work. But surely the retail trader is meant, and not the great merchant. In fact trade, and more particularly over-sea trade, found little favour with the Rabbis. Some even go so far as to damn all manner of markets, pinning their faith to that economic organization where there is no need for the exchange of commodities. "R. Achai ben Joshia used to say, Unto whom may he be likened who buys fruit in the market? Unto a little child whose mother has died, which, when taken to the houses of other mothers who feed their own babes, yet remains unsatisfied. Whoso buys bread in the market is like to a man who digs the grave in which he will be buried."34 Rab (175–247) constantly impressed upon his second son that "better was a small measure from the field than a large one from the vat" (i.e., warehouse).35 Or again, "The Rabbis taught: four kinds of grain bring no blessing—the payment of a scribe, the fee of an interpreter, the earnings that flow from orphans' property and the profits derived from over-sea trade." Why the latter? "Because miracles do not happen every day."36

So much for the East. What of the West? Here, too, the Jews were not great merchants. Throughout the Imperial period and the succeeding early Middle Ages the Jew, like the Syrian, if he were a "trader" was only a poor chapman, a mere grasshopper who got entangled between the feet of the royal merchants of Rome, just like the small Polish dealer of the 17th and 18th centuries, who made himself a nuisance to the merchants of that day. All that we can discover regarding Jewish trade in the early mediaeval period fits beautifully into the picture. The Jews, in short, were never merchants so long as commerce, and especially inter-municipal and inter-national commerce, remained partly a robbing expedition and partly an adventure—that is to say, until modern times.

If this is so—if the Jews never were a trading people from of old—are those correct who hold that they were agriculturists? Certainly, in so far as their economic organization was the manorial one. But that is not all. The occupation to which Jews devoted themselves in later times and which, in the view of Jewish historians, was forced upon them against their will, was well-known and practised even in the earliest periods. I refer to money-lending, and I attach the greatest importance to the establishment of this fact. The economic history of the Jews throughout the centuries makes it appear that money-lending always played a very great, nay, an extraordinarily great, part in the economic life of the people. We meet with it in all phases of Jewish history, in the age of national independence as in the Diaspora. Indeed, a community of peasant proprietors is fine game for money-lenders. Always the creditors are Jews, anyhow after the Exodus. In Egypt it appears the Jews were the debtors, and when they left, as the official report narrates, they carried away what had been lent to them. "And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall come to pass when ye go, ye shall not go empty" (Exod. iii. 21). "And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked ..." (Exod. xii. 36). Thereafter the position changed. Israel became the creditor and other peoples became its debtors. Thus the promise made by God was fulfilled, the promise that may rightly be called the motto of Jewish economic history, the promise which indeed expresses the fortunes of the Jewish people in one sentence: "The Lord thy God will bless thee as He promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shaltnot borrow" (Deut. xv. 6).37

The oldest passage which points to a highly developed system of borrowing in ancient Israel is that in Nehemiah (vi. 15):—

Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brethren the Jews. For there were that said. We, our sons and our daughters, are many: let us get corn, that we may eat and live. Some also there were that said, We are mortgaging our fields, and our vineyards and our houses: let us get corn because of the dearth. There were also that said. We have borrowed money for the king's tribute upon our fields and our vineyards. Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought into bondage already: neither is it in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards. And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. Then I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother.... Restore, I pray you, to them even this day their fields, their vineyards, their olive-yards and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money, and of the corn, the wine and the oil, that ye exact of them.

The picture here drawn is clear enough. The people were divided into two sections, an upper wealthy class, which became rich by moneylending, and the great mass of agricultural labourers whom they exploited. This state of affairs must have continued, in despite of Nehemiah and other reformers, throughout the whole history of the Jews in Palestine and Babylon. We need only refer to the Talmud for proof. In some of the Tractates, after the study of the Torah nothing occupies so much space as money-lending. The world of ideas which the Rabbis had was crammed full with money business. A decision of Rabina (488–556), one of the last of the Amoraim (Baba Mezia, 70b), sounds almost like the creation of a money-lending monopoly for the Rabbis. Throughout the three Tractates called Baba, there are numerous examples from the business of money-lending and from the rise and fall of interest, and numerous discussions about money and problems of money-lending. The unprejudiced reader of the Talmud cannot but come to this conclusion: in the Talmudic world there must have been a good deal of moneylending.

With the Diaspora the business only extended. How far moneylending was regulated among the Jews in the Egyptian Diaspora, four or five centuries before the Common Era, may be seen from the Oxford Papyrus (MS. Aram. cl. P)38:—

... Son of Jatma ... you gave me money ... 1000 segel of silver. And I am ready to pay by way of interest 2 hallur of silver / per month for each segel until the day whereon I repay the money to you. The interest / for your money is thus to amount to 2000 hallur every month. And if in any month I pay you no / interest, then the amount of interest shall be added to the principal and shall bear interest itself. I undertake to pay you month by month / out of my salary which I receive from the Treasury, and you will give me a receipt (?) for the whole / sum and for the interest that I will pay you. And if I have not repaid the whole of your / money by the month of Roth in the year ... then your money shall be doubled (?) / and also the interest I have yet to pay, and month by month I must be made to pay the same / until the day I repay you the whole / Witness, etc.

In the Hellenistic and Imperial periods rich Jews were found supplying crowned heads with money, and the poorer Jews lent to the lower classes. The Romans were not unacquainted with Jewish business.39 It was the same in the pre-Islamic period among the Arabs, to whom the Jews lent money at interest, and who regarded this business as being natural to the Jew, as being in his blood.40

When the Jews first appeared on the scene in Western Europe it was as money-lenders. We have already noted that they acted as financiers to the Merovingians, which means, of course, mainly as creditors.41 They went further in Spain; there, where they had complete freedom of movement, the common people were soon in their debt. Long before there was a Jewish (i.e., money-lending) question in other States, the legislative authorities in Castile were dealing with the problem of debts owing to Jews, and dealing with it in such a way as to show that it was of no small practical importance.42 That money-lending became the principal calling of the Jews after the Crusades will be admitted on all hands.

We come, then, to this conclusion, that from the earliest times moneylending was a prime factor in the economic history of the Jews.

The time has really arrived when the myth that the Jews were forced to have recourse to money-lending in mediaeval Europe, chiefly after the Crusades, because they were debarred from any other means of livelihood, should be finally disposed of. The history of Jewish moneylending in the two thousand years before the Crusades ought surely to set this fable at rest once and for all. The official version that Jews could not devote themselves to anything but money-lending, even if they would, is incorrect. The door was by no means always shut in their faces; the fact is they preferred to engage in money-lending. This has been proved by Professor Bücher for Frankfort-on-the-Main, and the same may be done for other towns as well. The Jews had a natural tendency towards this particular business, and both in the Middle Ages and after rulers were at pains to induce Jews to enter into other callings, but in vain. Edward I made the attempt in England;43 it was also tried in the 18th century in the Province of Posen,44 where the authorities sought to direct the Jews to change their means of livelihood by offering them bounties if they would. Despite this, and despite the possibility of being able to become handicraftsmen and peasants like all others, there were, in 1797, in the southern towns of Prussia, 4164 Jewish craftsmen side by side with 11,000 to 12,000 Jewish traders. The significance of these figures is borne in upon us when we note that though the Jewish population formed 5 or 6 per cent. of the whole, the Christian traders totalled 17,000 or 18,000.

It may be urged, however, that the practice of usury, even when it is carried on quite voluntarily, need not be accounted for by special racial attributes. Human inclinations of a general kind will amply explain it. Wherever in the midst of a people a group of moneyed men dwell side by side with others who need cash, be it for consumption, be it for production, it soon comes about, especially where the legal conditions governing money-lending are of a primitive kind, that the one class becomes the debtors and the other the creditors.

True. Wherever rich and poor lived together, the latter borrowed from the former, even when there was as yet no money in existence—in which case the debts were in kind. In the earliest stages of civilization, when the two classes felt themselves members of the same br