About ninety per cent of the whole Jewish population form a mass of people that are entirely unprovided for, and come near being a proletariat—­a mass that lives from hand to mouth, amidst poverty, and most oppressive sanitary and general conditions.  This very proletariat is occasionally the target of tumultuous popular uprisings.  The Jewish mass lives in fear of pogroms and in fear of violence.  It looks with envy upon the Jews of the adjacent governments of the Kingdom of Poland, who are almost entirely emancipated, though living under the jurisdiction of the same State. [1] The law itself places the Jews in the category of “alien races,” on the same level with the Samoyeds and pagans. [2] In a word the abnormal condition of the present position of the Jews in Russia is evidenced by the instability and vagueness of their juridic rights.

[Footnote 1:  The law of 1862 conferred upon the Jews of “the Kingdom of Poland,” i.e., of Russian Poland, the right of unrestricted residence throughout the Kingdom, including the villages (see p. 181).  This privilege was practically annulled by the enactment of June 11, 1891, which severely restricts the property rights of the Polish Jews.]

[Footnote 2:  The Russian Code of Laws classifies the Jews as follows (Volume IX., Laws of Social Orders, Article 762):  “Among the Aliens inhabiting the Russian Empire are the following:  1) The Siberian Aliens; 2) The Samoyeds of the Government of Archangel; 3) The nomadic Aliens of the Government of Stavropol; 4) The Kalmycks leading a nomadic life in the Governments of Astrakhan and Stavropol; 5) The Kirgiz of the Inner Ord; 6) The Aliens of the Territories of Akmolinsk, Semipalatinsk, Semiryechensk, Ural, and Turgay; 7) the alien populations of the Trans-Caspian Territory; 8) The Jews.”]

Looking at the problem, not at all as Jewish apologetes or sympathizers, but purely from the point of view of civic righteousness and the highest principles of impartiality and justice, we cannot but admit that the Jews have a right to complain about their situation....  However unpleasant it might sound to the enemies of Judaism, it is nevertheless an axiom which no one can deny that the whole five million Jewish population of Russia, unattractive though it may appear to certain groups and individuals, is yet an integral part of Russia and that the questions affecting this population are at the same time purely Russian questions.  We are not dealing with foreigners, whose admission to Russian citizenship might be conditioned by their usefulness or uselessness to Russia.  The Jews of Russia are not foreigners.  For more than one hundred years they have formed a part of that same Russian Empire, which has incorporated scores of other tribes many of which count by the millions....

The very history of Russian legislation,