and statisticians of Europe, it was stated to me by well-informed
men that a plan had been considered by several continental states
in the event of war to change the present international custom by
making food products contraband of war, the purpose being to cripple
England. To such desperate conditions have some of the European
states been brought under the burden of the policy of blood and
iron. My comment upon this insane proposal was that I hoped it might
become a matter of public discussion, since nothing could so surely
and quickly bring about a commercial union of the English-speaking
people, to the end that, even if no other alliance were made, their
navies might at any moment be combined for the protection of their
commerce, and for the total cessation of any interference by war
vessels or privateers with their traffic.
The prime motive of this article is to remove from the minds of our
English friends many false impressions which I have constantly met in
my intercourse even among men who hold important positions, of which
the address of Sir William Crookes is but an extreme expression, and
to bring into common view a comprehension of the resources of this
country and of the mutual dependence of the United Kingdom and the
United States in the supply and consumption not only of wheat, but of
all the other necessaries of life.
THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.
(_Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896._)
BY WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SUPPLEMENT.--THE JEWS.[1]
Social solidarity, the clearest expression of which to-day is
nationality, is the resultant of a multitude of factors. Foremost
among these stand unity of language, a common heritage of tradition
and belief, and the permanent occupation of a definite territory.
The first two are largely psychological in essence. The third, a
material circumstance, is necessary rather to insure the stability of
the others than for its own sake; although, as we know, attachment
to the soil may in itself become a positive factor in patriotism.
Two European peoples alone are there which, although landless,
have succeeded, notwithstanding, in a maintenance of their social
consciousness, almost at the level of nationality. Both Gypsies and
Jews are men without a country. Of these, the latter offer perhaps
the most remarkable example, for the Gypsies have never disbanded
tribally. They still wander about eastern Europe and Asia Minor
in organized bands, after the fashion of the nomad peoples of the
East. The Jews, on the other hand, have maintained their solidarity
in all parts of the earth, even in individual isolation one from
another. They wander not gregariously in tribes, often not even in
families. Their seed is scattered like the plant spores of which
the botanists tell us; which, driven by wind or sea, independently
travel thousands of miles before striking root or becoming fecund.
True, the Jews bunch wherever possible. This is often a necessity
imposed for self-preservation; but in their enforced migrations their
associations must change kaleidoscopically from place to place.
Not all has been said even yet of the unique achievement of this
landless people. That the Jews have preserved their individuality
despite all mutations of environment goes without saying. They have
done more. They have accomplished this without absolute unity of
language. Forced of necessity to adopt the speech of their immediate
neighbors, they have only where congregated in sufficient numbers
been able either to preserve or to evolve a distinctive speech. In
Spain and the Balkan states they make use of Spanish; in Russia and
Poland they speak a corrupt German; and in the interior of Morocco,
Arabic. Nevertheless, despite these discouragements of every kind,
they still constitute a distinctive social unit wherever they chance
to be.
This social individuality of the Jews is of a peculiar sort. Bereft
of linguistic and geographical support, it could not be political.
The nineteenth century, says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, is the age of
nationality; meaning obviously territorial nationality, the product
of contiguity, not birth. To this, he says, the Jew is indifferent,
typifying still the Oriental tribal idea. As a result he is out of
harmony with his environment. An element of dislike of a political
nature on the part of the Christian is added to the irreconcilability
of religious belief. It has ever been the Aryan versus the Semite in
religion throughout all history, as Renan has observed; and to-day it
has also become the people _versus_ the nation, as well as the Jew
_versus_ the Christian. Granted that this political dissonance is
largely the fault of the Gentile, its existence must be acknowledged,
nevertheless.
[Illustration: GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION of JEWS.]
How has this remarkable result been achieved? How, bereft of two out
of three of the essentials of nationality, has the Jew been enabled
to perpetuate his social consciousness? Is the superior force of
religion, perhaps abnormally developed, alone able to account for it
all? Is it a case of compensatory development, analogous in the body
to a loss of eyesight remedied through greater delicacy of finger
touch? Or is there some hidden, some unsuspected factor, which has
contributed to this result? We have elsewhere shown that a fourth
element of social solidarity is sometimes, though rarely, found, in a
community of physical descent. That, in other words, to the cementing
bonds of speech, tradition, belief, and contiguity, is added the
element of physical brotherhood--that is to say, of race. Can it be
that herein is a partial explanation of the social individuality of
the Jewish people? It is a question for the scientist alone. Race,
as we constantly maintain, despite the abuses of the word, really
is to be measured only by physical characteristics. The task before
us is to apply the criteria of anthropological science, therefore,
to the problems of Jewish derivation and descent. Only incidentally
and as matters of contributory interest shall we consider the views
of the linguists, the archæologists, and the students of religious
traditions. Our testimony is derived from facts of shape of head,
color of hair and eye, of stature, and the like. These alone are
the data indicative of racial descent. To these the geographer may
add the probabilities derived from present distribution in Europe.
No more do we need to settle the primary racial facts. Further
speculations concerning matters rather than men belong to the
historian and the philologist.
The number and geographical distribution of the chosen people of
Israel is of great significance in its bearing upon the question
of their origin.[2] While, owing to their fluid ubiquitousness, it
is exceedingly difficult to enumerate them exactly, probability
indicates that there are to-day, the world over, between eight and
nine million Jews. Of these, six or seven million are inhabitants of
Europe, the remainder being sparsely scattered over the whole earth,
from one end to the other.
Their distribution in Europe, as our map opposite shows, is
exceedingly uneven. Fully one half of these descendants of Jacob
reside in Russia, there being four or five million Jews in that
country alone. Austria-Hungary stands next in order, with two
million odd souls. After these two there is a wide gap. No other
European country is comparable with them except it be Germany and
Roumania with their six or seven hundred thousand each. The British
Isles contain relatively few, possibly one hundred thousand, these
being principally in London. They are very rare in Scotland and
Ireland--only a thousand or fifteen hundred apiece. Holland contains
also about a hundred thousand, half of them in the celebrated Ghetto
at Amsterdam. Then follow France with eighty thousand more or less,
and Italy with perhaps two thirds as many. From Scandinavia they
have always been rigidly excluded, from Sweden till the beginning
and from Norway until nearly the middle of this century. Spain,
although we hear much of the Spanish Jew, contains practically no
indigenous Israelites. It is estimated that there were once about a
million there settled, but the persecutions of the fifteenth century
drove them forth all over Europe, largely to the Balkan states and
Africa. There are a good many along these Mediterranean shores of
Africa, principally in Morocco and Tripoli. The number decreases
as we approach Egypt and Palestine, the ancient center of Jewish
dispersion. As to America, it is estimated, although we know nothing
certainly, that there are about a half million Jews scattered through
our cities in the United States. New York city, according to the
last census, contained about eighty thousand Poles and Russians,
most of whom, it may be assumed, were Jews. But they have come since
in ever-increasing numbers, with the great exodus from Russia, at
the rate of scores of thousands annually. A recent writer places
their present number in New York city at a quarter of a million. The
British provinces, on the other hand, do not seem to offer great
attractions; as late as 1870, for example, the census in Nova Scotia
could not discover a solitary Jew.
A more suggestive index of the problems of Jewish distribution,
however, is offered in the ratio of the number of Jews to the entire
population. This is directly illustrated by our map. To be sure,
this represents the situation twenty years ago, but no great change
in relativity is to be suspected since that time. Even the wholesale
exodus from Russia of recent years has not yet drawn off any large
proportion of its vast body of population. Inspection of our map
shows that the relative frequency of Jews increases in proportion
to the progressive darkening of the tints. This brings out with
startling clearness the reason for the recent anti-Semitic uprisings
in both Russia, Austria, and the German Empire. A specific "center
of gravity" of the Jewish people, as Leroy-Beaulieu puts it, is at
once indicated in western Russia. The highest proportion, fifteen
per cent, more or less, appears, moreover, to be entirely restricted
to the Polish provinces, with the sole exception of the government
of Grodno. About this core lies a second zone, including the other
west Russian governments, as well as the province of Galicia in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Germany, as it appears, is sharply divided
from its eastern neighbors, all along the political frontier. Not
even its former Polish territory, Posen, is to-day relatively thickly
settled with Jews. Hostile legislation it is, beyond a doubt, which
so rigidly holds back the Jew from immigration along this line.
_Anti-Semitismus_ is not, therefore, to-day to any great extent an
uprising against an existing evil; rather does it appear to be a
protest against a future possibility. Germany shudders at the dark
and threatening cloud of population of the most ignorant and wretched
description which overhangs her eastern frontier. Berlin must
not, they say, be allowed to become a new Jerusalem for the horde
of Russian exiles. That also is our American problem. This great
Polish swamp of miserable human beings, terrific in its proportions,
threatens to drain itself off into our country as well, unless we
restrict its ingress. As along the German frontier, so also toward
the east, it is curious to note how rapidly the percentage of Jews
decreases as we pass over into Great Russia. The governments of St.
Petersburg, Novgorod, and Moscow have no greater Jewish contingent
of population than has France or Italy; their Jewish problem is far
less difficult than that of our own country is bound to be in the
future. This clearly defined eastern boundary of _Judenthum_ is also
the product of prohibitive legislation. The Jews are by law confined
within certain provinces. A rigid law of settlement, intended to
circumscribe their area of density closely, yields only to the
persuasion of bribery. Not Russia, then, but southwestern Russia
alone, is deeply concerned over the actual presence of this alien
population. And it is the Jewish element in this small section of
the country which constitutes such an industrial and social menace
to the neighboring empires of Germany and Austria. In the latter
country the Jews seem to be increasing in numbers almost four times
as rapidly as the native population. The more elastic boundaries of
Jewish density on the southeast, on the other hand, are indicative of
the legislative tolerance which the Israelites there enjoy. Wherever
the bars are lowered, there does this migratory human element at once
expand.
The peculiar problems of Jewish distribution are only half realized
until it is understood that, always and everywhere, the Israelites
constitute pre-eminently the town populations.[3] They are not
widely disseminated among the agricultural districts, but congregate
in the commercial centers. It is an unalterable characteristic of
this peculiar people. The Jew betrays an inherent dislike for hard
manual or outdoor labor, as for physical exercise or exertion in
any form. He prefers to live by brain, not brawn. Leroy-Beaulieu
seems to consider this as an acquired characteristic due to mediæval
prohibition of land ownership or to confinement within the Ghetto. To
us it appears to be too constant a trait the world over to justify
such a hypothesis. Fully to appreciate, therefore, what the Jewish
question is in Polish Russia, we must always bear this fact in
mind. The result is that in many parts of Poland the Jews form an
actual majority of the population in the towns. This is the danger
for Germany also. Thus it is Berlin, not Prussia at large, which is
threatened with an overload of Jews from the country on the east.
This aggregation in urban centers becomes the more marked as the
relative frequency for the whole country lessens. Thus in Saxony,
which, being industrial, is not a favorite Jewish center, four
fifths of all the Jewish residents are found in Dresden and Leipsic
alone.[4] This is probably also the reason for the lessened frequency
of Jews all through the Alpine highlands, especially in the Tyrol.
These districts are so essentially agricultural that few footholds
for the Jew are to be found.
A small secondary center of Jewish aggregation appears upon our map
to be manifested about Frankfort. It has a peculiar significance.
The Hebrew settlers in the Rhenish cities date from the third
century at least, having come there over the early trade routes from
the Mediterranean. Germany being divided politically, and Russia
interdicting them from 1110, a specific center was established,
especially in Franconia, Frankfort being the focus of attraction.
Then came the fearful persecutions all over Europe, attendant upon
the religious fervor of the Crusades. The Polish kings, desiring to
encourage the growth of their city populations, offered the rights
of citizenship to all who would come, and an exodus in mass took
place. They seem to have been welcomed, till the proportions of the
movement became so great as to excite alarm. Its results appear
upon our map. Thus we know that many of the Jews of Poland came to
Russia as a troublesome legacy on the division of that kingdom. At
the end of the sixteenth century but three German cities remained
open to them--namely, Frankfort, Worms, and Furth.[5] Yet it was
obviously impossible to uproot them entirely. To their persistence
in this part of Germany is probably due the small secondary center
of Jewish distribution, which we have mentioned, indicated by the
darker tint about Frankfort, and including Alsace-Lorraine. Here is a
relative frequency, not even exceeded by Posen, although we generally
conceive of this former Polish province as especially saturated with
Jews. It is the only vestige remaining to indicate what was at one
time the main focus of Jewish population in Europe. It affords us a
striking example of what legislation may accomplish ethnically, when
supplemented, or rather aggravated, by religious and economic motives.
Does it accord with geographical probability to derive our large dark
area of present Jewish aggregation entirely from the small secondary
one about Frankfort, which, as we have just said, is the relic of a
mediæval center of gravity? The question is a crucial one for the
alleged purity of the Russian Jew; for the longer his migrations over
the face of the map, the greater his chance of ethnic intermixture. A
moot point among Jewish scholars is, as to the extent of this exodus
from Germany into Poland. Bershadski has done much to show its real
proportions in history. Talko-Hryncewicz[6] and Weissenberg,[7]
among anthropologists, seem to be inclined to derive this great body
of Polish Jews from Palestine by way of the Rhone-Rhine-Frankfort
route. They are, no doubt, partially in the right; but the mere
geographer would rather be inclined to side with Jacques.[8]
He doubts whether entirely artificial causes, even mediæval
persecutions, would be quite competent for so large a contract. There
is certainly some truth in Harkavy's theory, so ably championed
by Ikof (1884), that a goodly proportion of these Jews came into
Poland by a direct route from the East. Most Jewish scholars had
placed their first appearance in southern and eastern Russia, coming
around the Black Sea, as early as the eighth century. Ikof, however,
finds them in the Caucasus and Armenia one or two centuries before
Christ. Then he follows them around, reaching Ruthenia in the tenth
and eleventh centuries, arriving in Poland from the twelfth to the
fourteenth. The only difficulty with this theory is, of course, that
it leaves the language of the Polish Jews out of consideration. This
is, in both Poland and Galicia, a corrupted form of German, which in
itself would seem to indicate a western origin. On the other hand,
the probabilities, judging from our graphic representation, would
certainly emphasize the theory of a more general eastern immigration
directly from Palestine north of the Black and Caspian Seas. The
only remaining mode of accounting for the large center of gravity in
Russia is to trace it to widespread conversions, as the historic one
of the Khozars. Whichever one of these theories be correct--and there
is probability of an equal division of truth among them all--enough
has been said to lead us geographically to suspect the alleged purity
of descent of the Ashkenazim Jew. Let us apply the tests of physical
anthropology.
STATURE.--A noted writer, speaking of the sons of Judah, observes:
"It is the Ghetto which has produced the Jew and the Jewish race;
the Jew is a creation of the European middle ages; he is the
artificial product of hostile legislation." This statement is fully
authenticated by a peculiarity of the Israelites which is everywhere
noticeable. The European Jews are all undersized; not only this,
they are more often absolutely stunted. In London they are about
three inches shorter than the average for the city. Whether they
were always so, as in the days when the Book of Numbers (xiii, 33)
described them "as grasshoppers in their own sight," as compared
with the Amorites, sons of Anak, we leave an open question. We
are certain, however, as to the modern Jew. He betrays a marked
constancy in Europe at the bodily height of about five feet four
inches (1.63 metre) for adult men. This, according to the data
afforded by measurements of our recruits during the civil war, is
about the average of American youth between the ages of fifteen and
sixteen, who have still three, almost four, inches more to grow. In
Bosnia, for example, where the natives range at about the American
level--that is to say, among the very tallest in the world (1.72
metre)--the Jews are nearly three inches and a half shorter on the
average.[9] If we turn to northern Italy, where Lombroso has recently
investigated the matter, we apparently find the Jew somewhat better
favored by comparison. He is in Turin less than an inch inferior
to his Italian neighbors. But why? Not because taller than in the
case of Bosnia, for his stature in both places is the same. The
difference decreases, not because the Jew in Piedmont is taller, but
solely because the north Italians are only of moderate height. So
it goes all over Austria and Russia: the diminutiveness is plainly
apparent.[10] There is in all Europe only a single exception to the
rule we have cited. Anutchin finds them in Odessa and Riga slightly
to exceed the Christians. In order to emphasize this point it will
repay us to consider the adopted fatherland of the Jews a bit more in
detail.
[Illustration: STATURE POLAND.]
Our map herewith shows a general average of stature for Poland by
districts. This unhappy country appears to be populated by the
shortest human beings north of the Alps; it is almost the most
stunted in all Europe. The great majority of the districts, as our
map shows, are characterized by a population whose adult men scarcely
average five feet four inches (1.62 metre) in height. This is more
than half a head shorter than the type of the British Isles or
northern Germany. What is the meaning of this? Is it entirely the
fault of the native Poles? We know that the northern Slavs are all
merely mediocre in stature. But this depression is too serious to
be accounted for in this way; and further analysis shows that the
defect is largely due to the presence of the vast horde of Jews,
whose physical peculiarity drags down the average for the entire
population.[11] This has been proved directly. Perhaps the deepest
pit in this great "misery spot," as we have termed such areas of
dwarfed population elsewhere, is in the capital city of Warsaw,
where Elkind found the average stature of two hundred male Jews to
be less than five feet three inches and a half (1.61 metre).[12]
The women were only four feet eleven inches tall on the average.
Compare the little series of maps given on pages 172 and 173 if
further proof of this national peculiarity be needed. Two of these,
it will be observed, give the average height of Jews and Poles
respectively, dividing the city into districts. The social status
of these districts is shown upon our third map. Comparison of these
three brings out a very interesting sociological fact, to which we
have already called attention in our earlier papers.[13] The stature
of men depends in a goodly measure upon their environment. In the
wards of the city where prosperity resides, the material well-being
tends to produce a stature distinctly above that of the slums. In
both cases, Poles and Jews are shortest in the poorer sections of
the city, dark tinted on the maps. The correspondence is not exact,
for the number of observations is relatively small; but it indicates
beyond a doubt a tendency commonly noticeable in great cities. But
to return to our direct comparison of Poles and Jews; the deficiency
of the latter, as a people, is perfectly apparent. The most highly
favored Jewish population socially, in the whole city of Warsaw in
fact, can not produce an average stature equal to that of the very
poorest Poles; and this, too, in the most miserable section of the
capital city of one of the most stunted countries in Europe.
[Illustration: AVERAGE STATURE of POLES, WARSAW.]
[Illustration: AVERAGE STATURE of JEWS, WARSAW.]