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RUSSIAN ECONOMIC LIFE

occupations. It is characteristic of the part the Jews play in Russia's economic life that nearly seventy-three and eight hundredths per cent. of them are forced to seek employment in the country's commerce and industry. Of the entire Jewish population throughout the Empire, only two and four tenths per cent. are engaged in agriculture, four and seven tenths per cent. in liberal professions, eleven and five tenths per cent. in personal service (domestic service etc.); the rest, minus the persons without any definite employment are forced to seek for means of livelihood in the field of commerce (thirty-one per cent.), industry (thirty-six and three tenths per cent.), and transport (three per cent.) In the same way works the artificial congestion of the Jews in the cities: only eighteen per cent, live in the villages of the Pale of Settlement, while the rest—more than four-fifths—toil in the towns and townlets. Such a one-sided distribution of Jewish labour would not be a negative phenomenon if it were possible to spread it uniformly over the entire country. For, backward as Russia is industrially and commercially, the Jews would easily find a place in the