History of the Jewish Labor Movement in the United States by E. TcherikowerReview by: Boris SapirThe American Historical Review, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Jul., 1944), pp. 763-764Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1850278 .

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Tcherikower: History of the Jewish Labor Movement 763

Many will question his unique position as the spokesman for the great American idea, despite his awareness of the realities in our political and economic world. He recognized certain limitations in our administration of so-called democratic institutions, but did he fully comprehend the limitations in his beloved man and his beloved woman?

The answer to this basic question is to be found in Henry Canby's book because it shows how his faith in democracy rests solidly on his Quaker belief that there is "that-of-God in every man"!

New England Conservatory of Music CLIFTON JOSEPH FURNESS

HISTORY OF THE JEWISH LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. Edited by E. Tcherikower. [Yiddish Scientific Institute, Section of History.] Volume I. (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute. I943. Pp. 4I4.)

THE above book is the first part of an extensive study-five or six volumes are contemplated-of the development of the Jewish labor movement in the United States, from its beginnings in the i88o's to the present time. This study is to be the collective work of a group of historians, with each writer contributing individual chapters to the series.

The first volume deals with the historic development of the social milieu which became the foundation of the Jewish labor movement in the United States, with the causes of its emigration to America, its demographic characteristics, its social and economic status, and the political and cultural conditions under which it grew into a social group of its own. The central figure in this volume is naturally the Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe and, in particular, from Russia.

In the early part of the last century Jews from eastern Europe first made their appearance in the United States. According to various data the number of these immigrants, during the period from I820 to I870, mounted to 30,000; from I87I to I880, to 70,000; from i88i to I890, to 200,ooo; and from I89I to I900, to 400,000. Of these 700,000 persons, 72 per cent came from Russia and the Russian part of Poland.

For hundreds of thousands of these immigrants there were dire times before they could manage to get on their feet. The sanitary conditions under which they lived and the exploitation to which they were subjected in sweatshops were com- mon talk. But, hardened by their previous experience, the new arrivals managed to surmount the difficulties in the land of their adoption, and their liking for social life remained unabated. Landsmannschaft clubs, religious organizations, and various societies sprang up among them spontaneously. They continued to culti- vate their native language and created Yiddish theaters, schools, and a Yiddish press. This social milieu furnished the groundwork for the Jewish labor move- ment, to be analyzed in the next volumes of this work.

The editor of the volume, E. Tcherikower, died suddenly in I943. Mr.

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764 Reviews of Books Tcherikower was one of the founders of the Yiddish Scientific Institute. A dis- ciple of S. Dubnov, he had been from his early youth a student of Jewish history. He was the author of the Histdry of Education among Russian Jews, of a book on pogroms in the Ukraine during the civil war, etc. As secretary of the historic section of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, he edited the three-volume Historishe Shriften, which contains extensive material on Jewish history, and a volume dedicated to Jews in France. In this country he continued his work. His passing is a great loss to Jewish historic research.

New York City BoRIs SAPIR

REPORT ON DEMOBILIZATION. By James R. Mock and Evangeline Thurber. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. I944. PP. xi, 257. $3.oo.)

THERE is always the sense of tragedy when great opportunities are bungled or else missed entirely, and after reading Report on Demobilization the first feeling is one of profound discouragement. Precisely, and in detail, Dr. Mock and Miss Thurber have considered the countless reconstruction programs that poured forth after November II, I9I8, and stressed the yawning gap between plan and per- formance. No closer nor more brilliant study of a period was ever put in print, and it is a tribute to the craftsmanship of the authors that high-piled fact has not been permitted to kill interest.

Under their skilled touch the past has been restored, its colors all unfaded, and once again, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, the high hopes and bitter disillusionments of that other day are paraded; the glad certainties that Allied victory would usher in millennial dawn, assuring equal justice for the peoples of the earth and freeing them of every fear and pain; the confusion of tongues; the utter lack of agreement on method; the widening gulf between idealism and realism; the haphazard, headlong dumping of demobilized men back to an in- dustry disorganized and bankrupted by the ruthless cancellation of contracts, in- ability to obtain payment for work done or under way, and failure to clear cluttered plants of military materials; the ugly breach between the White House and the Hill; the swift reaction from the emotionalism of war to the irritations of peace; the return to normalcy and the retreat into isolation-all of it is set down with unsparing particularity.

There is equal discouragement in the chapters devoted to present-day postwar planning. This time, certainly, even the most sudden collapse of the Axis Powers will not take us by surprise nor find us unprepared. As Dr. Mock and Miss Thurber point out, "Before we had been fighting a year, there were at least I40 federal and private agencies engaged wholly or in part in post-war planning. Practically every government office was interesting itself in questions that would affect its functions after the guns of battle began to cool."

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