In the course of time the idealistic pioneer spirit which had animated the Russian intellectuals gave way to a sober realism which was more in harmony with the conditions of American life.  The bulk of the emigrant masses settled in the cities, primarily in New York.  They worked in factories or at the trades, the most important of which was the needle trade; they engaged in business, in peddling, and in farming, and, lastly, in the liberal professions.  Many an immigrant passed successively through all these economic stages before obtaining a secure economic position.

The result of all these wanderings and vicissitudes was a well-established community in the United States of some 200,000 Jews, who formed the nucleus for the rapidly growing new Jewish center in America.  One of the active participants and leaders in this movement, who had in his own life experienced all the hardships connected with it, concludes his account of the emigration to the United States at the end of the eighties with the following words: 

No one who has seen the poor, down-trodden, faint-hearted inhabitant of the infamous Pale, with the Damocles sword of brutal mob rule dangling constantly over his head, shaking like an autumn leaf at the sight of an inspector or even a plain policeman; who has seen this little Jew transformed, under the influence of the struggle for existence and an independent life, into a free American Jew who holds his head proudly, whom no one would dare to offend, and who has become a citizen in the full sense of the word—­no one who has seen this wonderful transformation can doubt for a moment the enormous significance of the emigration movement for the 200,000 Jews that have found shelter in America.

Idealistic influences rather than realistic factors were at work in the Palestinian colonization movement, which proceeded on a parallel line with the American emigration, as a small stream sometimes accompanies a large river.  The ideas preached by the first “Lovers of Zion” were but slowly assuming concrete shape.  The pioneer colonists in the ancient fatherland met with enormous obstacles in their path:  the opposition of the Turkish Government which hindered in every possible way the purchase of land and acquisition of property; the neglected condition of the soil, the uncivilized state of the neighboring Arabs, the lack of financial means and of agricultural experience.  Despite all these drawbacks, the efforts of a few men led to the establishment in the very first year of the movement, in 1882, of the colony Rishon le-Zion, near Jaffa.  Subsequently a few more colonies were founded, such as Ekron and Ghederah in Judea, Yesod Hama’alah, Rosh-Pinah, Zikhron Jacob in Galilee—­the last two founded by Roumanian Jews.  Called into life by enthusiasts with inadequate material resources, these colonies would have scarcely been able to survive, had not their plight aroused the interest of Baron Edmond de Rothschild in Paris.