elect Jews to the legislatures--and even
one member in such a body is sometimes a force which counts. How
deeply have you concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France, and
Germany? Or even in America, for that matter? You remark that the Jews
were not to blame for the riots in this Reichsrath here, and you add
with satisfaction that there wasn't one in that body. That is not
strictly correct; if it were, would it not be in order for you to
explain it and apologise for it, not try to make a merit of it? But I
think that the Jew was by no means in as large force there as he ought
to have been, with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to him on
fairly liberal terms, and it must surely be his own fault that he is so
much in the background politically.

As to your numerical weakness. I mentioned some figures awhile
ago--500,00--as the Jewish population of Germany. I will add some
more--6,000,000 in Russia, 5,000,000 in Austria, 250,000 in the United
States. I take them from memory; I read them in the 'Encyclopaedia
Brittannica' ten or twelve years ago. Still, I am entirely sure of them.
If those statistics are correct, my argument is not as strong as it
ought to be as concerns America, but it still has strength. It is plenty
strong enough as concerns Austria, for ten years ago 5,000,000 was nine
per cent of the empire's population. The Irish would govern the Kingdom
of Heaven if they had a strength there like that.

I have some suspicions; I got them at second-hand, but they have
remained with me these ten or twelve years. When I read in the 'E.B.'
that the Jewish population of the United States was 250,000 I wrote the
editor, and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more
Jews than that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt
a misprint for 25,000,000. I also added that I was personally acquainted
with that many there; but that was only to raise his confidence in me,
for it was not true. His answer miscarried, and I never got it; but I
went around talking about the matter, and people told me they had reason
to suspect that for business reasons many Jews whose dealings were
mainly with the Christians did not report themselves as Jews in the
census. It looked plausible; it looks plausible yet. Look at the city
of New York; and look at Boston, and Philadelphia, and New Orleans,
and Chicago, and Cincinnati, and San Francisco--how your race swarms in
those places!--and everywhere els