hopeless game they are playing. The Jewish Question of today is turning about in the direction of the Jewish Question of tomorrow—which is, When are the Jewish Leaders going to admit that their game is a losing one? They see it now; but they must admit it and quit it. And it will not be surprising if a mass movement of the Jewish people compels them to do so.
“The Jewish race,” said one of the magistrates, “seems deliberately blind to its own faults. Some twelve years ago General Bingham, then police commissioner, found it necessary to call attention to certain criminal tendencies of the East Side Jews. His criticisms were bitterly resented. I venture to say, however, that there are few men who preside in our inferior courts who will not readily indorse those views of General Bingham in their application to the conditions of the present day.”
(It was because of General Bingham’s criticisms that the New York Kehillah was increased in power—not to clean up conditions, but to shut up the critics.)
“The different groups, racial or religious, of New York City, have always each supported institutions for the care of its fallen women. We have the Magdalen Home, the Protestant Episcopal House of Mercy and the Catholic House of the Good Shepherd. The Jews alone are the exception. Yet it does not require more than a short experience in the Magistrates’ Courts to convince one that more than two-thirds of the fallen women in the metropolis are of the Jewish race. This fact and the urgent necessity of caring for these unfortunates was laid before some prominent Jews. They gave the assurance that ample provision was being made by a group of wealthy Jewish families to endow an institution of the kind. However, nothing was done or even contemplated. The Jews absolutely ignored the issue. And today we magistrates are compelled, as usual, to commit such Jewish women to the Protestant Episcopal and Catholic homes.