The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1903-02-15

the payment OF a large fee. The univer-
sity, open to Rumanians without money
and without price, cost a eJwish student
about SO a year. Military academies
were closed against the Jews. They could
serve in the army. but without pension
privileges. They were not allowed to
hold government positions. They were
shut out of the professions and out Of
! journalism.
This series Of exclusions might seem
enough to satisfy the most vindictive tor
mentor. But the Rumanians did not stop
here. They forbade Jews to take out IL
rcenses or to sell their wares about the
streets. Then they prevented them from
owning farming land or even from living
! in the agricultural sections. The climax
was a law which provided that no one
should employ Jew without also en-
ploying two Rumanians-an effectual bar
] rier to Jewish labor on all small estates.
| Truly the descendants of proud people
! have fallen upon evil days. A few petty
! trades, the most mental tasks of the
working world-only through these may
Rumanian Jews earn the pitiful stipend
to keep their bodies and souls together.
Abstractly, the condition of these Jews
seems just about as bad as 1t could be.
But it is the daily little experiences that
put the fine edge of torture on their op-
preston. If Providence should play a
gigantic game of tit-for-tat and put the
Rumanians where the Jews are now, it
/ would be these everyday insults that
would teach their rulers the meaning
of spiritual gall and NORWOOD.
M nd holf
Jews out of the land which the horrors
of the Inquisition had made almost I'M
bearable, they sought refuge anywhere
and everywhere that they could, and the
various groups moving hither and yon
were pretty we'll sifted through the ma
tions of the world. Descendants Of the
Spanish Jews are in Amsterdam. An
twerp, London, the West Indies, Dutch
Guiana, Brazil. America, and many other
places. Many of the old customs are
perpetrated among them. Some OF them
speak Ladino, the pure Castillian Spanish.
which they write in Hebrew characters.
of these far-away ancestors. But few
of them apparently have preserved their
autonomy SO thoroughly as the colony In
Rumania. Even there the people are merg-
ing with the Jews Of other origin, and
the Rumanian Jew in the immigrant band
showed a Spanish letter in Hebrew char
acters, which his wife, one Of the old
people, could read, but which was un-
Ineligible to him.
On the ferryboat going back. thrifty
German father, counted over his newly
gained family and wondered at the growth
of the kinder. A strong faced young man
in American clothes smiled down at the
rosy-cheeked bride for whose passage
money he had been saving dimes and
quarters for many profitable American
months Freedom. hope, equality, 1t was
the unconscious watchword of them all
They had put the hard past behind them.
Their eyes were turned to the new land
But out on the back deck a dark-haired
woman. as tragic as Judith OF old Bible
days. waved her hand at the windows Of
the excluded room. There they stood.
the Rurnanian fathers waiting for the
word from Washington. the Rumanian
boy who wanted to be a mining engineer.
the serious Rumanian baby who took
life as Il came, and those others whose
pilgrimage had been in vain They
strained their eyes TO see the Paradise
they might not enter, and as the fog shut
out the wistfuI faces. the dark-haired
woman echoed their disappointment with
the low. cry OF a hunted thing and COW
cred her cver-A X Fsllows IN The New
York Evening Post