it held the line at a congress that joined Zionism with a push for democ-
racy. Since differences over the degree of democracy could no longer be
masked, the carefully constructed alliance between uptown and downtown
fell apart.^89
Removal from the GhettoThe successive waves of eastern European immigrants magnified the
ghetto’s problems and appeared to harden its resistance to charitable and
Americanizing enterprises. Aside from any personal aversion they may
have harbored to the newly transplanted shtetl Jews, concerned philan-
thropists reasoned that if the problems could not be solved in the ghetto,
they could perhaps be mitigated or avoided entirely by distributing immi-
grants to other parts of the country. Hadn’t their own families, the mid-
nineteenth-century immigrants from central Europe, spread out through
the length and breadth of the country? Distribution stood to benefit the
immigrant, the established Jews, and, by supplying manpower where it was
needed, the country as well. It promised fewer burdens on New York Jews,
more rapid Americanization of the immigrants, and a less conspicuous
“alien” Jewish element to incite popular suspicions. Most important, cer-
tainly for Schiff, distribution seemed the surest guarantee for keeping
America’s doors open to refugees. Thus, from the beginning of the mass
eastern European exodus the stewards seriously discussed ideas of settling
the newcomers in the South and West.
Of the various options, the idea of agricultural settlement was the peren-
nial favorite. The oft-touted myths of agrarian virtue had resonated in
American Jewish circles since before the Civil War and were revived with
greater intensity in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The Jewish
Messenger, a New York weekly that often ranted about the “leprosy of the
ghetto walls,” reminded its readers that “Paradise was a garden, not a city.”
As a path to physical well-being and “moral elevation,” a back-to-the-soil
movement presaged a healthy diversification of the traditionally urban
people while it simultaneously refuted the image of the nonproductive or
parasitic Jew.^90
How well the Jewish farmer undid the negative stereotypes about Jews
was quite another matter. In 1904 the Springfield Republican described the
reclamation of old New England farms by Jewish settlers. The paper
praised the industry and productivity of the farmers, but it went on to add:
“These Jews... have an eye ever open for business, and are very sharp in a
trade or bargain. In fact, they represent the typical Jew of Baxter street,
The New Immigrants 117