of the country, and that also, like our trusts, they can not be made amenable to existing laws. An imperial circular directed to local officials after the disorders of 1882 reads as follows:
During the last twenty years the Jews have gradually possessed themselves of not only every trade and business in all its branches, but also of a great part of the land by buying and farming it. With few exceptions they have as a body devoted their attention, not to enriching or benefiting the country, but to defrauding by their wiles its inhabitants, and particularly its poor people. This conduct of theirs has called forth protests on the part of the people, as manifested in acts of violence and robbery. The government, while, on the one hand doing its best to put down the disturbances and to deliver the Jews from oppression and slaughter, have also, on the other hand, thought it a matter of urgency and justice to adopt stringent measures in order to put an end to the oppression practised by the Jews and to free the country from their malpractices which were, as is shown, the cause of the agitation. With this in view, it has appointed a commission (in all towns inhabited by Jews) whose duty it is to inquire into the following matters:
I. What are the trades of the Jews injurious to the inhabitants of the place?
II. What makes it impracticable to put into force the former laws limiting the rights of the Jews in the matter of buying and farming land, the trade in intoxicants and usury?
III. How can these laws be altered so that they shall no longer be enabled to evade them, or what new laws are required to stop their pernicious conduct in business?
Give additional information on:
(a) Usury practised by Jews in their dealings.
(b) Number of public houses kept by Jews in their own names or in that of a Christian.
(c) Number of persons in service with Jews or under their control.
(d) The extent (acreage) of the land in their possession by buying or farming.
(e) Number of Jewish agriculturists.Each line of inquiry directed therein had reference to some condition which had been a specific source of trouble. To take one instance which concerned the matter of land tenure, one of the most perplexing problems with which Russia, with its agricultural population, is called on to deal. The fondness of the Pole and Russian for drink served to make the liquor business particularly lucrative, and the Jewish liquor dealer utilized it as a means of involving the peasant in debt, and of finally securing from him the possession of his property rights; and where there was an annual assignment of communal lands the dealer with an eye to his own income saw that his best customers got the most productive parcels.
