[1] [Footnote 1: This figure represents the official estimate of the number of Russian Jews.

In other words, the Government hoped to get rid of all Jews.] The name of Maurice de Hirsch was not unknown to the Russian Government.
For a few years previously it had had occasion to carry on negotiations with him, with results of which it had scant reason to boast.

This great German-Jewish philanthropist, who was resolved to spend hundreds of millions on the economic and agricultural advancement of his co-religionists in Eastern Europe, had donated in 1888 fifty million francs for the purpose of establishing in Russia arts and crafts schools, as well as workshops and agricultural farms for the Jews.

It was natural for him to assume that the Russian Government would only be too glad to accept this enormous contribution which was bound to stimulate productive labor in the country and raise the welfare of its destitute masses.

But he had forgotten that the benefits expected from the fund would accrue to the Jewish proletariat, which, according to the catechism of Jew-hatred, was to be "removed from the monarchy." The stipulation made by the Russian Government to the representatives of Baron Hirsch was entirely unacceptable: it insisted that the money should not be handed over to Jewish public agencies but to the Russian Government which would expend it as it saw fit.