Jews are prohibited from owning farm land, and the renting of land to a Jew is forbidden. No Jew can keep a drug store, or be a veterinary surgeon; they cannot be employed in the sanitary service of the state or municipality; they cannot be received as free patients in hospitals, except in cases of great urgency; no Jew can peddle merchandise in Roumania, or sell liquor, or tobacco, and nearly every other mercantile occupation is closed to them.
The free schools are for Roumanians only; Jews must pay tuition fees, and even then they cannot be admitted if Christian children want their places. A law passed^in' 1898 debars Jews from all professional and agricultural schools and admits them only to schools of commerce and of the arts and trades to the number of one fifth of the average attendance, and then they must pay tuition, where Christian students are admitted free. Where they have founded schools of their own they are hampered with the most exasperating regulations and are required to keep open on Saturdays and on other Jewish holidays.
Although the Jewish population is not recognized by law, the young men are compelled to serve their time in
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the army, just as if they had a legal existence, but no Jew can be an oflBcer; they are excluded from pensions, and in barracks and camp they are required to perform menial service, to clean the streets and the closets and to carry off the garbage.
A Jew has no standing in court; his testimony is not accepted; when he is a defendant he has no right to employ counsel or question a jury. It is not necessary to recite other features of the peculiar laws and regulations which are intended to drive the Jews from Roumania by making it impossible for them to earn a living there. It is sufficient to say that a Jew is not recognized as having a legal existence; he is an object of persecution as well as contempt and has no redress for any ill treatment he may suffer in body, mind or estate.
These persecutions have driven a large proportion of the Jewish people from Roumania to the United States and other countries. Emigration is their only hope, and the number of arrivals at the ports of the United States in 1902 caused Secretary Hay to call the attention of the civilized world to the inhuman treatment of that race in Roumania by making a formal protest. The pretext for this imusual action was the large number of emigrants that had been driven to this country under conditions which rendered them unfit for citizens of the United States and were likely to make them a burden upon public and private charity.
Secretary Hay*s protest caused a tremendous sensation throughout the diplomatic world, and was discussed everywhere, but no official action was taken by any European government in regard to the matter, and the only beneficial effect was to direct the eyes of the world upon Roumania and thus cause a cessation of the persecutions for the time being. Since then the treatment of the Jewish subjects of Roumania has not been so cruel as before, although no law has been Repealed and no restriction has been modified. The tide of inunigration has recently been turned from the United States to Turkey, where the government has invited Jewish colonists to settle in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Syria, and other parts of the empire. And there are large schemes of benevolence to transplantas many as can find room upon the unoccupied lands of Turkey.
Notwithstanding all this persecution, the Jews of Roumania seem to be flourishing. They are still the leading business men of that country, and in the coast cities they show evidence of prosperity.
A large business in the way of grain exporting is done at Constanza and other ports. All the export grain goes out that way, but more than half the crop is sent up the Danube on barges to Budapest, which manufactures almost as much flour as Minneapolis.
The railway from Budapest via Bukharest to the Black Sea is the shortest route from central Europe to Constantinople, although it is necessary for passengers to change to a steamer at Constanza. The steamers are fast and comfortable, sailing promptly in connection with the trains three nights in the week, so that the journey can be made without delay.
South of Constanza are two or three Bulgarian ports which also handle a good deal of grain, which is shipped in bags, and not in bulk, as in the United States, by various lines of steamers to Marseilles and Genoa. The Black Sea region probably exports more wheat than any other part
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of the world except the United States and the Argentine Republic.