domicile to the Jews living there before that date.  This vast host of honest and hard-working men—­artisans, tradesmen, clerks, teachers—­were ordered to leave Moscow in three installments:  those having lived there for not more than three years and those unmarried or childless were to depart within three to six months; those having lived there for not more than six years and having children or apprentices to the number of four were allowed to postpone their departure for six to nine months; finally the old Jewish settlers, who had big families and employed a large number of workingmen, were given a reprieve from nine to twelve months.

It would almost seem as if the maximum and minimum dates within each term were granted specifically for the purpose of yielding an enormous income to the police, which, for a substantial consideration, could postpone the expulsion of the victims for three months and thereby enable them to wind up their affairs.  At the expiration of the final terms the unfortunate Jews were not allowed to remain in the city even for one single day; those that stayed behind were ruthlessly evicted.  An eye-witness, in summing up the information at his disposal, the details of which are even more heart-rending than the general facts, gives the following description of the Moscow events: 

People who have lived in Moscow for twenty, thirty, or even forty years were forced to sell their property within a short time and leave the city.  Those who were too poor to comply with the orders of the police, or who did not succeed in selling their property for a mere song—­there were cases of poor people disposing of their whole furniture for one or two rubles—­were thrown into jail, or sent to the transportation prison, together with criminals and all kinds of riff-raff that were awaiting their turn to be dispatched under convoy.  Men who had all their lives earned their bread by the sweat of their brow found themselves under the thumb of prison inspectors, who placed them at once on an equal footing with criminals sentenced to hard labor.  In these surroundings they were sometimes kept for several weeks and then dispatched in batches to their “homes” which many of them never saw again.  At the threshold of the prisons the people belonging to the “unprivileged” estates—­the artisans were almost without exception members of the “burgher class”—­had wooden handcuffs put on them....[1]

It is difficult to state accurately how many people were made to endure these tortures, inflicted on them without the due process of law.  Some died in prison, pending their transportation.  Those who could manage to scrape together a few pennies left for the Pale of Settlement at their own expense.  The sums speedily collected by their coreligionists, though not inconsiderable, could do nothing more than rescue a number of the unfortunates from jail, convoy, and handcuffs.  But what can there be done when thousands of human nests, lived