Omaha daily bee., 1902-09-14

IExY$&l that on Manhattan island-the
80 old city of New York-every
fourth person is a Jew.
They find it hard to believe, because,
in spite of all that they imagine they
know about their metropolis, probably not
/ per cent knows anything about the great
city of the Jew that has been builded
within New York.
They hear much talk of the Ghetto"
but comparatively few outsiders ever see
it. If New Workers did visit it they would
believe the figures. For in that wonderful
section one may pass through forty miles
Of streets and see none but Jewish faces,
with the exceptions of policemen, street
sweepers and other city employees.
The section could not have been located
better geographically to insure seculsion.
OF all New York territory it is the one
that does not contain at least one great
thoroughfare vital to the life Of the city.
The thOroughfares that traverse it-East
Broadway, Grand street and Houston street
serve only a relatively small proportion
of outside workers and remain noticeably
local in their nature.
So, as the famous Ghetto OF old Frank
furt once was walled in with structures
of masonry, loop-holed and guarded with
towers, the Ghetto of modern New York
is walled in with natural conditions that
make it a land so unknown to the mass
of the rest of the population that it might
as we'll be in Siberia.
Possibly more New Workers would know
it If 1t were.
It's limits are defined almost as sharply
as II, indeed, they were marked by walls.
The visitor steps out of the German quar-
ter or the Hungarian quarter or the Ital-
ian quarter at once into the City Of the
Jew. This is a city truly, and no mere
quarter"
The tall flats of the tenement houses,
from end to end of vistas, are gaudy with
pinks and blues and yellows from top to
bottom, as if they were Oriental houses
with gorgeous rugs flung from each open
ing. The scattering of hues is from the
rugs of the East Side--the bedding that
is hung out from every window to sun
throughout the day.
The atavism of the population has over
Whelmed the hldeOus tenemen house de-
signs. From the c~oloring of the fronts to
the crowds on the streets, everywhere Is
~ touch of the Orient.
In the c~easless flowing to and fro of a
people there come and go true figures Of
the magical east. Here, presiding over a
stand with melons and pears, black bearded,
hawknosed, hawkeyed, straight and 1.-THE,
surely is a son of Ishmael-such a one as
might be pictured in a flowing burnouse,
riding a white racing camel and waving
flashing weapons in a charge over Arabia's
yellow sand.
BY the side of him, chaffering with
would-be buyers of the cheap cottons and
mus ms on his handcart, stands a yeritable
Egyptian sculpture come to earth,
stalking out of twilight tombs on
the Nile to stand on Essex street
and barter stuffs made in Connect
cut. There are the wide thighs, the sinewy
shoulders, with the muscles laid on them
as they are laid on in those carved figures.
A Russian general could not look more
imposing than does yonder Jew with his
close trimmed beard and his keen, strong,
determined face. That he should be pushing
a cart with suspenders and hose on it seems
as ridiculous as the topsy-turvy things seen
in dreams.
majestic boards, noble models for pictures
of Cadis and Talmudists, sit behind greasy
show windows waiting for customers to buy
their unleayened breads or groceries or kO.
sher meats. Tall, thin German Jews, modern
in every respect, with the deep, angry eyes
OF men who talk o. nights OF social tyTan~
mics, press through the crowds, bearing unfn-
ishel trousers and vests to the Sweatshops,
Behind a tumblDd, junk-like mass Of shoe
strings, tin spoons at the price Of two fol