Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-01-18
JEWISH LABOR.
A MOVEMENT OF VITAL IN
TEREST TO AMERICAN
WAGE-WORKERS.

Condition Of the Jewish Immigrants
Their Activity and Tendencies
Anarchists Opposed to Organized
Labor Frustrated by Socialist
Organizers-A National Organ of
Jewish Labor Interests to be Pub.
lished Here in the German.He.
brew Dialect-krantz, of London,
the Editor.
OF the polyglot mass Of immigrants
that come to make this land their home
no nationality ought to attract more at
tention on the part of Organized Labor
than the unhappy sons of Israel. Home
less, despised and prosecuted in Hun
gary and Galicia, hated and slandered in
Germany and Roumania, debarred from
almost every means of livelihood in the
dominions of the Car, unable to find
shelter in the overcrowded, poverty
stricken cities of the more tolerant por-
ton of Europe, those disinherited people
have naturally made this country the
cynosure of their hopes and flock to our
shores from every noock and corner of
the old world. Every incoming passenger
steamer adds scores, sometimes hun
dreds of Hebrews to our population.
While some favorable change in the
economic situation of the Scandinavian.
for example, may considerably curtail
the influx of Swedes and Norwegians to
this land, there is hardly an influence
powerful enough to keep down the tide
of the Jewish immigration to the only
country where the wandering people
finds home. ...
There is scarcely trade, scarcely a
shop but gives employment to denizens
of the Mosaic faith.
These constant additions to the labor
market cannot obviously fail to have the
effect of bringing down wages, unless
the immigrant becomes good member
of the union of his trade and thus in
creases the force against capital instead
of becoming burden upon labor.
Naturally ambitious, active and sus-
ceptible, the Jewish workman has pro-
we'd to be as useful within the ranks of
organized labor as he is dangerous out
side of it.
While the Jew is found among the
greediest and most heartless parasites,
his coreligionists take rank with the
most devoted, dauntless and in
defatigable workers in behalf of the
emancipation of labor.
The Jew seldom remains passive,
inert part of the whole he is either per-
niciously or beneficently active. The
Jewish immigrant cannot therefore too
soon be won over to our cause and in all
fairness to our Jewish speaking comrades
it must be said that their wonderful
activity among their brethren has borne
great results in this respect.
1t would suffice to take the reader
around to the meeting halls of the 7th &
10th Ward of Friday evening to con,
vince him of the fruitfulness of their
agitation. 1t would do his heart good
to take look at the hundreds of worn
and haggard Russian or Polish Hebrews,
many of them fresh from the steerage
cabin, eagerly and absorbedly listening
to the theory of surplus value popularly
expounded in their own conglomerate
dialect. Half dozen of large meeting
rooms are crowded every Friday with
the audiences of lecturers and speakers
on similar subjects in that neighborhood.
There are sixteen well organized Unions
in the city alone which are made up of
people who speak no other language
than the so-cplled "Jewish- German,
besides the hundreds of Jewish work.
men who enter the English or German
unions of their respective trades through
the mighty influence of these meetings.
Nor is this admirable work confined to
the metropolis. There is not city, not
village with considerable Jewish po-
pulatlOn, tDdt HAS not sOlue kluu Ol al or
ganlzation spreading the light among
the recent subjects of the Car. Thus in
v3oston we have the Jewish Workmen's s
Education Club, whose regular Sunday
meetings attract hundreds of the Jewish
immigrants working in the factories OF
that city. In Chicago similar work
is carried on by the Jewish Workmen's
Society; in Denver by the Jewish Agita
ton Club; &C., &c.
The results reaped from this exem.
plary activity would assuredly be much
greater, were it not for the great finan-