In consequence of the widespread anti-Jewish pogroms in the wake of the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881 and the discriminatory May Laws of 1882, more than two million of the Czar’s Jewish subjects found themselves caught up in - or rather jumped into - the rapids of history and were washed ashore the east-coast of North America as well as the white cliffs of Dover.

1. Leaving one’s orbit: economic history meets cultural history
Andrew Godley’s comparative study is concerned with how these East European immigrants to the U.K. and the U.S. thrived economically. Hence this in not a study of Jewish entrepreneurship per se, but of that of a specific group which shared a common ethnic make-up as well as occupational history. By comparing the entrepreneurial behaviour of Jewish immigrants to London with that of those to New York, Andrew Godley studies the impact of mainstream cultural values, which the immigrants assimilated, on their economic performance. His is a study in economic history, that examines the interrelation between culture and economy, and Godley, who himself is lecturer in Economics at the University of Reading, modestly expects those interested in Jewish historiography to find no more than “one or two topics of interest” (p.xi) in his book. This is understatement in its purest.

The study is broken up into three parts and eight chapters. The first section also forms the first part and is headed ‘Culture and economic behaviour’: here Godley unfolds the theoretical premises of his study and identifies his aim as to come up with empirical proof of the impact of culture on economic behaviour.(p.5) He also outlines the research context to which his book seeks to contribute: the debate about the reasons for Britain’s economic decline since the last decades of the Victorian era. The East European Jewish immigrants to New York and London serve as control population, whose entrepreneurial behaviour on both sides of the Atlantic comes under scrutiny in order to establish, whether prevalent cultural values hampered British economic development in late 19th and early 20th century.(pp.14-16)

2. They came, they saw, they conquered. Upward mobility: the main economic characteristic of Jewish immigrants
The first chapter of the book’s main body (ch.2) introduces the readers to the basic facts and figures of the Jewish mass migration from Eastern Europe. The most remarkable characteristic of the Jewish immigrants, reported and commented upon over and again by contemporaries, was their economic upward mobility, which was higher than that of the surrounding population. They came as paupers, and almost all of them managed to rise from poverty to economic security within little more than one generation.(pp.20-22) Why was this the case? What did the Jewish immigrants get right where the surrounding native population failed in comparison? The answer to this question is fairly straightforward: unlike the natives, the immigrants showed themselves to be relative inventive and flexible. They built upon skills they had acquired back in Russia, but were willing to move on from there. The path to upward mobility was, as Andrew Godley points out, an entrepreneurial one.(p.21)

Exact figures on the Jewish immigration to both the United States and Great Britain have always been a weak spot of Jewish historiography, since there were no exact demographical data available. The British case was aggravated from the historians’ point of view (though certainly not in the eyes of contemporary would be immigrants) by the fact, that the country had kept an open door policy until 1905 and thus not recorded the entrants into the country on a reliable, regular basis. In addition, the decennial census reports do not state religious affiliation and also are everything but detailed with respect to occupations. By drawing on Synagogue Marriage Records, which he then correlates with the Chief Rabbi’s authorisation certificates to marry (CRA) – both widely neglected so far by historians - Andrew Godley is able to come up with new and most accurate demographical and occupational details, which form the basis of his study. It is in chapter 3, that Godley discusses the scope and validity of these records.

Jewish immigrants to New York were much more likely to become entrepreneurs than those to London, as Godley proceeds to elaborate in chapter 4. However, the performance of the new Londoners was everything but meagre: one in five, or 18%, of the male Jewish immigrant workers took to entrepreneurship between 1907 and 1914. Still, the figures for New York are even more impressive: here, 35% of the male Jewish immigrants were entrepreneurs by 1905.(pp.58-60)

Why this difference? The most obvious explanation would be, that those who chose New York, the New World, di goldene medine, as destination, were a priori more entrepreneurial, adventurous, flexible, brought more capital (financial and human) with them, than those who ‘stayed behind’ in Europe.

3. One-way ticket – Who they were, from where they came, why they left and how they decided where to go
In order to exclude external variables, i.e. different predispositions, qualifications, financial resources etc., which could have influenced the entrepreneurial activities of the immigrants, Andrew Godley first establishes who they were (age, sex, financial resources, education), and then takes his readers on a journey back to where the Jewish immigrants came from.(ch.5) Godley ably demonstrates that the two migrant streams were composed of people marked by a very high degree of similarity in financial resources (scarce), literacy (high, 70-80%) and demographics (roughly 60% male, 20% children, for women – see below).(pp.62-65)

Another factor, that could have had an impact on later economic behaviour is the regional one, because of the differences of economic activities in the various regions of the Pale of settlement from where the future immigrants headed westwards. But, as Andrew Godley is able to show, both streams of migrants were overwhelmingly composed of men and women from the north-western and northern regions of the Pale, Poland and Lithuania.(p.66)

“The Russian Jews were principally economic migrants, not political refugees.” (p.87) – At first, this probably appears to be one of the most astounding outcomes of Godley’s analysis of the two immigrant streams. To put this differently: had the Jewish migrants acted as political refugees, far more of them would have gone, wherever they found an open door – in our case: Great Britain. But only a tenth of those who emigrated from Eastern Europe headed for the British Isles. The violence, persecution and discrimination suffered under the Czarist regime served as a trigger to set off a population movement, that in scale is only comparable with the migration of the Irish after the Famine: in peak times 2 % of the Jewish population left the Pale every year, and again, most of them were Polish or Lithuanian. Since the mid-19th century, the economic situation of Jews in the Pale had deteriorated, due to a population growth, which was fifth fold, that was paralleled with a loss of traditional areas of income.(pp. 68-70) In addition, the Jewish population did not benefit from the industrialisation. It didn’t need much incentive to induce millions to leave.1

For those acquainted with the historiography of the East European Jewish emigration and immigration, Andrew Godley holds two more surprises in store. Firstly, by drawing on and combining previous research, official statistics and hitherto ignored primary material (the CRA) he is able to provide the most accurate figures of Jewish immigration so far available. Between 1881 and 1914, 143.450 East European Jews and Jewesses immigrated to the U.K., and 1.929.332 Jews and Jewesses set foot on North American soil.(p.80) Secondly, by comparing the two streams of immigrants, which differed in scale, but were identical in trend, Andrew Godley is able to prove older Anglo-Jewish historiography wrong, when it claimed, that the Aliens Act of 1905 had had a marked negative impact on Jewish immigration. Its effect was, indeed, negligible.(p.82)

So, who went where and why not elsewhere? The above-mentioned incentive for the would be immigrants was North America, the lures of the American economy. Paradoxically as it may seem, also for those who eventually went to Great Britain. The choice of destination was based on where the Jews and Jewesses set to go had relations or friends.(pp.87-88) The pre-existence of network was the most important single factor upon which the choice of destination was based, and not the potentially better employment opportunities or overall economic considerations.2

Far more Jewish immigrants became entrepreneurs in New York than in London. This can neither be explained by different predispositions nor, as Andrew Godley demonstrates in chapter 6, by higher profits to be gained in New York. The Jewish economies in both cities were dominated by the garment industry. Until the early 1900s at least, the profits to be gained in this industry were higher in London than in New York.

4. The Answer
The answer to the riddle lies in the high assimilative tendencies of the Jewish immigrants to the cultural values of the ‘majority society’ in whose midst they lived. In the final chapter of the book (ch. 7) Godley makes impressive use of the Synagogues Marriage Records, from which he extracts minute information on the cultural assimilation of grooms in London.(pp. 109-119) The young men fell into three occupational categories: workers, skilled workers and entrepreneurs. As it turns out, those who called themselves ‘journeymen’ – a term borrowed from English working class culture, that originally designated a highly-skilled craftsman and for which there is no equivalent in Yiddish - in order to identify their higher social status as skilled workers, had the same qualifications with respect to length of residence, English literacy and so forth as the entrepreneurs. Except for one crucial point: they had no ‘family advantage’, that is, no father or would be father-in-law who was an entrepreneur himself. In New York, in contrast, there were only two occupational categories: worker and entrepreneur. Thus those who sought a higher occupational status became entrepreneurs. In London the alternative on offer for those who lacked “parental advantage” and who shied away from the risks of entrepreneurship, was to become a skilled worker.(pp.121-123)

With the assistance of more than two million Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe, Andrew Godley is able to prove the strength of English working-class identification with the ideals of craft and skill. He convincingly argues that failure and success of a national economy not only hinge on the initiatives of the businessmen, but also on prevalent cultural norms that influence labour market choices.(ch.8) In so doing, Godley enriches Jewish historiography with numerous details, only some of which have been mentioned.

5. His-story. What about her story?
In 1990 Ricky Burman wrote, that “The history of the Jewish immigrant to England has to a large extent been that of the Jewish male.”3 Eleven years on, this blunt statement still seems to hold truth, at first glance. But here we meet with an author, who notices the gap and acknowledges the necessity to explain to his readers why his is a study of the male: Women stopped working outside the household upon marriage. In addition, (in cases where women worked alongside male family members, ST) the women’s wages were not paid extra, but supplemented to the “family wage”. Hence, Godley couldn’t find enough reliable statistical data on the occupational profile of Jewish women.(p.53)

Alas! Jewish women would make a prime case for examination and comparison in a study that seeks to track down the influence of cultural values on economic (entrepreneurial) behaviour. Research has shown that the Anglo-Jewish middleclass had assimilated the Victorian ideal of domesticity of women in the course of the 19th century. Unsurprisingly, Anglo-Jewish initiatives to further the Anglicisation of the young female East European immigrants also included schemes to train and recruit them as domestics.4

So, if domesticity was the ideal the women immigrants were expected to conform with in Britain, were there markedly fewer (unmarried) Jewish women of recent immigrant background taking on paid work outside the household than in the U.S.? Did Jewish immigrant families to the U.K. strive to keep daughters out of the family business – probably to a larger extent than Jewish immigrants in North America? If that was the case, which were the economic consequences for small family businesses, since this would have meant fewer unpaid or poorly paid (female) workforce?5 Or, did economic considerations override the wish to assimilate to prevalent cultural norms? Were women, i.e. widows, less reluctant in the U.S. to keep a family business after their husbands’ deaths than in the U.K.? - For answers to these questions we have to rely on evidence from oral history, such as Sydney Stahl Weinberg has collided for her survey of “The Lives of Jewish Immigrant Women” (in North America, ST): the book gives numerous examples of daughters who not only contributed to their family’s income by taking on work, e.g. as sewers in garment shops or as bookkeepers, but at times even found themselves to be the sole breadwinner of the family, when the father became unemployed. This, again, often had an emancipating effect on the young women’s lives, as earning their own money and keeping their family enhanced their independence as much as their self-esteem.6

So, which roles did women play in the world of Jewish immigrant entrepreneurship in New York and London? We can safely assume, that this entrepreneurship had a female backbone, of which we learn little for the time being – until further evidence (e.g. representative samples from business records) can be unearthed.

But this is no shortcoming of Andrew Godley’s, who has come up with a groundbreaking (a fruitful get together of economics, cultural history and Jewish historiography), informative (go west!) and highly readable (who would have thought, that going meticulously through statistics can be so entertaining?) book. - “Jewish immigrant entrepreneurship in New York and London, 1880-1914” will certainly become standard reading for historians studying 19th century European Jewish history, both east and west, migration history as well as American Jewish history – and for economic historians anyway.

Notes
1 For Poland see also, François Guesnet, Polnische Juden im 19. Jahrhundert. Lebensbedingungen, Rechtsnormen und Organisation im Wandel, Köln, Weimar, Wien, 1998. (Lebenswelten osteuropäischer Juden, hg. v. Heiko Haumann, Bd. 3). (esp. pp.30-48).
2 Even after the introduction of the Aliens Act in 1905, those who had already successfully immigrated to Britain retained the right to let their kith and kin follow them (as long as they guaranteed that the new immigrants would not fall back on the public welfare system). David Feldman, L’immigration, les immigrés et l’État en Grande Bretagne aux XIXe et XXe siècles, in: Le Mouvement Social (Immigration et Logiques nationales), No. 188, juillet-septembre 1999, p.44.
3 Rickie Burman, Jewish Women and the Household Economy in Manchester, c. 1890-1920, in: David Cesarani (Ed.), The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry, Oxford, 1990, p.55.
4 Tony Kushner, Sex and Semitism: Jewish Women in Britain in War and Peace, in: Panikos Panayi (Ed.), Minorities in Wartime. National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America and Australia during the Two World Wars, Oxford, 1992, pp.118-149.
5 Women’s wages were considerably lower than those paid out to male workers. In 1909 the average wage of a male worker in a New York workshop was $13.88 – women received on average $8.74 per week. Godley, p.104.
6 Sydney Stahl Weinberg, The Lives of Jewish Immigrant Women. The World of Our Mothers, Chapel Hill, London, 1988 (esp. chapter 10, pp.185-202).