JEWISH DISABILITIES OUTSIDE THE PALE Outside the Pale of Settlement the net of disabilities was stretched out even more widely and was sure to catch the Jew in its meshes.

Throughout the length and breadth of the Russian Empire, outside of the fifteen governments of Western Russia and the ten governments of the Kingdom of Poland, there was scattered a handful of "privileged" Jews who were permitted to reside beyond the Pale: men with an academic education, first guild merchants who had for a number of years paid their guild dues within the Pale, and handicraftsmen, so long as they confined themselves to the pursuit of their craft.

The influx of "illegal" Jews into this tabooed region was checked by measures of extraordinary severity.

The example was set by the Russian capital, "the window towards Europe," which had been broken through by Peter the Great.

The city of St.Petersburg, harboring some 20,000 privileged Jews who lived there legally, became the center of attraction for a large number of "illegal" Jews who flocked to the capital with the intention, deemed a criminal offence by the Government, of engaging in some modest business pursuit, without paying the high guild dues, or of devoting themselves to science or literature, without the diploma from a higher educational institution in their pockets.