HUGE INCREASE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 431, 16 January 1933, Page 2

HUGE INCREASE

| JEWISH POPULATION [thirteen MILLION INCREMENTIN ONE IIUNDRED YEARS. | ' - ; PARTIALITY FOR BIG CITIES. During Ihe last huiulred years the wcrld's Jewish populatioii liasgrown from 3,000,000 to 16,000,000, having (juintupled in numbers from 1825 to | 1025, whereas Europe, America, SoutH i Africa and Australia increased their population only three and a half limes, aecording to figures published in the current number of the "Menorah" Journal by Jakob Lestschinsky | of Berlin, an authority on Jewish demograp'hy. d'Neyer before, Mr. Lestschinsky writes, "were the Jews so numerous, nor to such a "great extent gathered together in Metropolitan cehtres. Almost a third of the Jewish people now live in the fourteeri largesij cities of the civilised world. "Quintupling in numbers from 1825 to 1925, the Jewish people propagated at over one. and one-half times the rate of Europe's population as a whole. In no other period of their history have the Jews shown a similar growth. M-oreover, this phenomenal increase was achieved not through increased birth rate but through extraordinarily reduced death rate. Rate of Increase High. "In the fifty-five years from 1825 to 1880 the Jewish numbers grew from 3,280,000 to 7.660,000; and in, the half century from 1880 to 1&30 their numbers grew again to 15,800,000. In each of these periods they jnqre th'an doubled. This unjTecedented .increase seems all the more remarkable when we recall that during the last half century the East European Jews were engulfed by three large pogrom-waves (lboi-82,-1903-5, and 1918-21), with 2000 massacres in which' approximately 1Q0,000 Jews were murdered and from 200,000 to 300,000 pfematurely died of epidemics." What may propei'ly be called "World Jewry," the writer says, arose only during the last century. Out of a small people, the greater majority living in South-eastern Africa, and strewn about in innumerable villages and small towns, forming tiny, unimpor'tant islands in vast Gentile seas, the Jews have expanded over the entire world, settling in the industrially most advanced countries and concentrating ih the largest cities. "The georgraphical map of Jewry of a huhdred years back," he writes, "shows plainly that the Jews were at that tiriie crowded together in the most backward countries; in the Russian part of Europe, in Poland and Galicia, in the Balkans, in North Africa and Asia, Minor. Migrations to the West. "In the course of the century huge Jewish migrations took place froni East to West; from the agrarian to the industrial countries, fr'ohi politica'l despotisms to deniocratic nations, from the spheres of Slavic-Arahian culture to those of Ehglish-German culture. "Perhaps the most striking change has come about iii America, which now contains about a third of world Jewry, whereas a hundred years ago it contained only one-third of 1 per cent. — no less than a hundredfold multiplication." In the fourteen largest cultural centres in Europe and America, of more than 1,000,000 inhabitants each, there are now 4,5Q0,000 Jews — almost 30 per cent. of the entire Jewish people. New York, Phila^fep'lphia, \Chicfa.go, Boston, and Cleveland have 700, 000 Jews, or more than 60 per cent. of the entire Jewish population in the United States. More than 6,000,000 of the world Jewry, or 38.6 per cent., are engaged in trade, contracting and banking. The next largest group, 5,750,000, or 36.4 per cent., is engaged in indust^y and handicraft. A million, or 6.3 per cent., are professional men ahd public ofhcers; 625,000 are engaged in agriculture; 325,000 are h'ouseworkers and diyerse hirelings, while 2,000,000 are with out voc'ation's.