Part 2 (1/2)
The government of this state of All-Judaan is wonderfully organized.
Paris was its first seat, but has now been moved to third place. Before the war London was its first, and New York its second capital. It remains to be seen whether New York will now supplant London--the drift is toward America.
As All-Judaan is not in a position to have a standing army and navy, other states supply these for it. Its fleet is the British fleet, which guards from hindrance the progress of all-Jewish world economy, or that part of it which depends on the sea. In return, All-Judaan a.s.sures Britain an undisturbed political and territorial world rule. All-Judaan has added Palestine to British control. Wherever there was an All-Judaan land force (whatever national uniform it might wear), it worked with the British navy.
All-Judaan is willing to entrust the government of various strips of the world to the nationalistic governments; it only asks to control the governments. Judaism is pa.s.sionately in favor of perpetuating nationalistic divisions for the Gentile world. For themselves, Jews never become a.s.similated with any nation. They are a separate people, always were and always will be.
All-Judaan's only quarrel with any nation occurs when that nation makes it impossible for All-Judaan to control that nation's industrial and financial profits. It can make war, it can make peace; it can command anarchy in stubborn cases, it can restore order. It holds the sinews of world power in its hand and it apportions them among the nations in such ways as will best support All-Judaan's plan.
Controlling the world's sources of news, All-Judaan can always prepare the minds of the people for its next move. The greatest exposure yet to be made is the way that news is manufactured and the way in which the mind of whole nations is molded for a purpose. When the powerful Jew is at last traced and his hand revealed, then comes the ready cry of persecution and it echoes through the world press. The real causes of the persecution (which is the oppression of the people by the financial practices of the Jews) are never given publicity.
All-Judaan has its vice-governments in London and New York. Having wreaked its revenge on Germany it will now go forth to conquer other nations. Britain it already has. Russia it is struggling for, but the chances are against it. The United States, with its good-natured tolerance of all races, offers a promising field. The scene of operations changes, but the Jew is the same throughout the centuries.
[Issue of May 29, 1920.]
”At first sight it would seem as if the economic system of North America was the very one that developed independently of the Jews . . . .
Nevertheless I uphold my a.s.sertion that the United States (perhaps more than any other land) are filled to the brim with the Jewish spirit. This is recognized in many quarters, above all in those best capable of forming a judgment on the subject . . . .
”In the face of this fact, is there not some justification for the opinion that the United States owe their very existence to the Jews? And if this be so, how much more can it be a.s.serted that Jewish influence made the United States just what they are--that is, American? For what we call Americanism is nothing else, if we may say so, than the Jewish spirit distilled.”
--Werner Sombart, ”The Jews and Modern Capital,” pp. 38, 43.
III.
Jewish History in the United States
The story of the Jews in America begins with Christopher Columbus. On August 2, 1492, more than 300,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, with which event Spain's prestige began its long decline, and on August 3, the next day, Columbus set sail for the West, taking a group of Jews with him. They were not, however, refugees, for the prophetic navigator's plans had aroused the sympathy of influential Jews for a long period previously. Columbus himself tells us that he consorted much with Jews. The first letter he wrote detailing his discoveries was to a Jew. Indeed, the eventful voyage itself which added to men's knowledge and wealth ”the other half of the earth” was made possible by Jews.
The pleasant story that it was Queen Isabella's jewels which financed the voyage has disappeared under cool research. There were three Maranos or ”secret Jews” who wielded great influence at the Spanish court: Luis de Santagel, who was an important merchant of Valencia and who was ”farmer” of the royal taxes; his relative, Gabriel Sanchez, who was the royal treasurer; and their friend, the royal chamberlain, Juan Cabrero.
These worked unceasingly on Queen Isabella's imagination, picturing to her the depletion of the royal treasury and the likelihood of Columbus discovering the fabulous gold of the Indies, until the Queen was ready to offer her jewels in p.a.w.n for the funds. But Santagel craved permission to advance the money himself, which he did, 17,000 ducats in all, about $20,000, perhaps equal to $160,000 today. It is probable that the loan exceeded the expedition's cost.
a.s.sociated with Columbus in the voyage were at least five Jews: Luis de Torres, interpreter; Marco, the surgeon; Bernal, the physician; Alonzo de la Calle, and Gabriel Sanchez. The astronomical instruments and maps which the navigators used were of Jewish origin. Luis de Torres was the first man ash.o.r.e, the first to discover the use of tobacco; he settled in Cuba and may be said to be the father of Jewish control of the tobacco business as it exists today.
Columbus' old patrons, Luis de Santagel and Gabriel Sanchez, received many privileges for the part they played in the work, but Columbus himself became the victim of a conspiracy fostered by Bernal, the s.h.i.+p's doctor, and suffered injustice and imprisonment as his reward.
From that beginning, Jews looked more and more to America as a fruitful field, and immigration set in strongly toward South America, princ.i.p.ally Brazil. But because of military partic.i.p.ation in a disagreement between the Brazilians and the Dutch, the Jews of Brazil found it necessary to emigrate, which they did in the direction of the Dutch colony of what is now New York. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor, did not entirely approve of their settling among his people and ordered them to leave, but the Jews had evidently taken the precaution to a.s.sure their being received even if not welcomed, because upon revoking the order of Stuyvesant, the Directors gave as one of the reasons for the Jews being received, ”the large amount of capital which they have invested in the shares of the Company.” Nevertheless they were forbidden to enter public service and to open retail shops, which had the effect of driving them into foreign trade in which they were soon exercising all but a monopoly because of their European connections.
This is only one of the thousand ill.u.s.trations which can be given of the resourcefulness of the Jew. Forbid him in one direction, he will excel in another. When he was forbidden to deal in new clothes, he sold old clothes--that was the beginning of the organized traffic in secondhand clothing. When he was forbidden to deal in merchandise, he dealt in waste--the Jew is the originator of the waste product business of the world; he was the originator of the salvage system; he found wealth in the debris of civilization. He taught people how to use old rags, how to clean old feathers, how to use gall nuts and rabbit skins. He has always had a taste for the furrier trade, which he now controls, and to him is due the mult.i.tude of common skins which now pa.s.s under various alluring trade names as furs of high origin. The idea of renovation gained commercial value through the Jew. In the ”rag men” who blow tin horns through our cities and save the old iron, old bottles, old paper and old fabrics, we have the commercial descendants of those earlier Jews who turned adversity into success by converting the rubbish of the earth into material of value.
Unwittingly, old Peter Stuyvesant compelled the Jew to make New York the princ.i.p.al port of America, and though a majority of New York Jews had fled to Philadelphia at the time of the American Revolution, most of them returned to New York at the earliest opportunity, instinct seeming to make them aware that in New York was to be their princ.i.p.al paradise of gain. And so it has proved. New York is the greatest center of Jewish population in the world. It is the gateway where the bulk of American imports and exports are taxed, and where practically all the business done in America pays tribute to the masters of money. The very land of the city is practically the holdings of the Jews. A list of the property owners of the metropolis reveals only at rare intervals a Gentile name.
No wonder that Jewish writers, viewing this unprecedented prosperity, this unchecked growth in wealth and power, exclaim enthusiastically that the United States is the Promised Land foretold by the prophets, and New York the New Jerusalem. Some have gone even further and described the peaks of the Rockies as ”the mountains of Zion,” and with reason, too, if the mining and coastal wealth of the Jews is considered.
The new waterways proposal, which will make an ocean port of practically every great city on the Great Lakes and take from New York the prestige she has maintained by being the gateway toward which the princ.i.p.al railways narrowed, is being strongly protested at this time. And the strongest motive in opposing this most obvious betterment is that so much wealth counted in New York is not wealth at all, but fict.i.tious values depending solely on New York remaining New York. When anything comes which will make New York merely a city on the coast, and not the city where the great taxers sit to levy their tribute, much Jewish wealth will decrease. It was fabulous before the war. What it is now the statisticians will hardly undertake to say.
In fifty years the increase in the Jewish population of the United States has been from 50,000 to more than 3,300,000. In the British Isles there are only 300,000, in Palestine only 100,000. It is fortunate for the Jew himself that in Great Britain his numbers are not greater, for the large and evident control he exercises in great matters would sometimes make it inconvenient for the poorer Jew, if he were abroad in England in large numbers. An unusually well-informed Briton says that anti-Semitism is always ready to break out in England upon sufficient cause, but it cannot break out against the inaccessible rich Jews who control in politics and international finance. It us probably true that the commonest real cause of anti-Semitism is the action of the international Jew who is often unknown and always secure, but the innocent victim of it is the poor Jew. Anti-Semitism, however, will be considered in the next article.
The figures representing Jewish population in Great Britain and the United States indicate that the colossal power wielded by international Jewish financiers is neither consequent nor dependent upon their number.
The arresting fact about the Jew is his world-wide unchallenged power, coupled with comparative numerical inferiority. There are only about 14,000,000 Jews in the world; they are about as numerous as the Koreans.