education, “Physicians and Active Students,” [1] who had not obtained learned degrees.  On one occasion the Minister of Public Instruction put before the Council of State the following legal puzzle:  A Jewish student, while attending the university of the Russian capital, enjoys the right of residence there.  But when he has successfully finished his course and has obtained the customary certificate, without the learned degree, he forfeits this right and must return to the Pale.

[Footnote 1:  Both titles are given at the conclusion of the prescribed university course; the former to medical students, the latter to students of other faculties.]

Yet the Government in its stubbornness refused to make concessions, and when it was forced to make them, it did so rather in its own interest than in that of the Jews.  Owing to the scarcity of medical help in the army and in the interior, ukases issued in 1865 and 1867 declared Jewish physicians, even without the title of Doctor of Medicine, to be admissible to the medical corps and later on to civil service in all places of the Empire, except the capitals St. Petersburg and Moscow.  Nevertheless, the extension of the plain right of domicile, without admission to civil service, remained for a long time dependent on a learned degree.  It was only after two decades of hesitation that the law of January 19, 1879, conferred the right of universal residence on all categories of persons with a higher education, regardless of the nature of the diploma, and also including pharmacists, dentists, feldshers, [1] and midwives.

[Footnote 1:  From the German Feldscherer, a sort of combination of leech, first-aid, and barber, who frequently gave medical advice.]

The privileges bestowed upon the big merchants and “titled” intellectuals affected but a few small groups of the Jewish population.  The authorities now turned their attention to the mass of the people, and, in accordance with its rules of political homoeopathy, commenced to pick from it a handful of persons for better treatment.  The question of admitting Jewish artisans into the Russian interior occupied the Government for a long time.  In 1856 Lanskoy, the Minister of the Interior, entered into an official correspondence concerning this matter with the governors-general and governors of the Western provinces.  Most of the replies were favorable to the idea of conferring upon Jewish artisans the right of universal residence.  Of the three governors-general whose opinion had been invited the governor-general of Vilna was the only one who thought that the present situation needed no change.  His colleague of Kiev, Count Vasilchikov, was, on the contrary, of the opinion that it would be a rational measure to transfer the surplus of Jewish artisans who were cooped up within the Pale and had been pauperized by excessive competition to the interior governments where there was a scarcity of skilled labor. [1]