Note (return) — Chapter VI

The desire for self-help and the tendency towards organization, to which Zionism gave an impetus, was rapidly reflected in every sphere of Russo-Jewish activity. In a series of works and articles, Jacob Wolf Mendlin, who studied under Lassalle, pointed out the importance of the co-operative system. Accordingly, a union was organized by the Jewish salesmen in Warsaw. In 1897 a conference of Jewish workingmen was held in that city and Der allgemeine jüdische Arbeiterbund in Littauen, Polen, und Russland (Federation of Jewish Labor Unions in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia) was perfected. It published three papers as its organs, Die Arbeiterstimme, Der jüdischer Arbeiter, and, in Switzerland, Letzte Nachrichten. Soon workmen's associations and artisans' clubs appeared wherever there was a sufficient number of Jewish tailors, hatters, bookbinders, etc., for the purpose of increasing and improving the value of their production, and to do away with middlemen and money-lenders. They organized a tailors', dyers', and shoemakers' union in Kharkov, and a carpenters' union in Minsk, for mutual support in the struggle for existence, and for the construction of sanitary workingmen's houses. The cultural desire of the handicraftsmen, constituting twelve per cent of the Russo-Jewish population and occasionally fifty-two per cent (Odessa), seventy-three per cent (Kovno), and even ninety per cent (Byelostok), is phenomenal. Their object is not only physical improvement. Their highest aim is that their members be enabled, by means of efficient night schools and private instruction, to acquire elementary and higher education; in the words of the constitution of the carpenters' union of Minsk, "to protect their material interests, raise their moral and intellectual status, and foster efforts of self-help."17