That, indeed, is where any explanation of Jewish control must begin. Here is a race whose entire period of national history saw them peasants on the land, whose ancient genius was spiritual rather than material, bucolic rather than commercial, yet today, when they have no country, no government, and are persecuted in one way or another everywhere they go, they are declared to be the principal though unofficial rulers of the earth. How does so strange a charge arise, and why do so many circumstances seem to justify it?
Begin at the beginning. During the formative period of their national character the Jews lived under a law which made plutocracy and pauperism equally impossible among them. Modern reformers who are constructing model social systems on paper would do well to look into the social system under which the early Jews were organized. The Law of Moses made a "money aristocracy," such as Jewish financiers form today, impossible because it forbade the taking of interest. It made impossible also the continuous enjoyment of profit wrung out of another's distress. Profiteering and sheer speculation were not favored under the Jewish system. There could be no land-hogging; the land was apportioned among the people, and though it might be lost by debt or sold under stress, it was returned every 50 years to its original family ownership, at which time, called "The Year of Jubilee," there was practically a new social beginning. The rise of great landlords and a moneyed class was impossible under such a system, although the interim of 50 years gave ample scope for individual initiative to assert itself under fair competitive conditions.
If, therefore, the Jews had retained their status as a nation, and had remained in Palestine under the Law of Moses, they would hardly have achieved the financial distinction which they have since won. Jews never got rich out of one another. Even in modern times they have not become rich out of each other but out of the nations among whom they dwelt. Jewish law permitted the Jew to do business with a Gentile on a different basis than that on which he did business with a brother Jew. What is called "the Law of the Stranger" was defined thus: "unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury."
Being dispersed among the nations, but never merging themselves with the nations and never losing a very distinctive identity, the Jew has had the opportunity to practice "the ethics of the stranger" for many centuries. Being strangers among strangers, and often among cruelly hostile strangers, they have found this law a compensating advantage. Still, this alone would not account for the Jew's preeminence in finance. The explanation of that must be sought in the Jew himself, his vigor, resourcefulness and special proclivities.
Very early in the Jewish story we discover the tendency of Israel to be a master nation, with other nations as its vassals. Notwithstanding the fact that the whole prophetic purpose with reference to Israel seems to have been the moral enlightenment of the world through its agency, Israel's "will to mastery" apparently hindered that purpose. At least such would seem to be the tone of the Old Testament. Divinely ordered to drive out the Canaanites that their corrupt ideas might not contaminate Israel, the Jews did not obey, according to the old record. They looked over the Canaanitish people and perceived what great amount of man-power would be wasted if they were expelled, and so Israel enslaved them—"And it came to pass, when Israel was strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, and did not utterly drive them out." It was this form of disobedience, this preference of material mastery over spiritual leadership, that marked the beginning of Israel's age-long disciplinary distress.
The Jews' dispersion among the nations temporarily (that is, for more than 25 centuries now) changed the program which their scriptures declare was divinely planned, and that dispersion continues until today. There are spiritual leaders in modern Judaism who still claim that Israel's mission to the nations is spiritual, but their assertions that Israel is today fulfilling that mission are not as convincing as they might be if accompanied by more evidence. Israel throughout the modern centuries is still looking at the Gentile world and estimating what its man-power can be made to yield. But the discipline upon Israel still holds; he is an exile from his own land, condemned to be discriminated against wherever he goes, until the time when exile and homelessness shall end in a re-established Palestine, and Jerusalem again the moral center of the earth, even as the elder prophets have declared.
Had the Jew become an employe, a worker for other men, his dispersion would not probably have been so wide. But becoming a trader, his instincts drew him round the habitable earth. There were Jews in China at an early date. They appeared as traders in England at the time of the Saxons. Jewish traders were in South America 100 years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock. Jews established the sugar industry in the Island of St. Thomas in 1492. They were well established in Brazil when only a few villages dotted the eastern coast of what is now the United States. And how far they penetrated when once they came here is indicated by the fact that the first white child born in Georgia was a Jew—Isaac Minis. The Jew's presence round the earth, his clannishness with his own people, made him a nation scattered among the nations, a corporation with agents everywhere.
Another talent, however, contributed greatly to his rise in financial power—his ability to invent new devices for doing business. Until the Jew was pitted against the world, business was very crudely done. And when we trace the origins of many of the business methods which simplify and facilitate trade today, more likely than not we find a Jewish name at the end of the clue. Many of the indispensable instruments of credit and exchange were thought out by Jewish merchants, not only for use between themselves, but to check and hold the Gentiles with whom they dealt. The oldest bill of exchange extant was drawn by a Jew—one Simon Rubens. The promissory note was a Jewish invention, as was also the check "payable to bearer."
An interesting bit of history attaches to the "payable to bearer" instrument. The Jews' enemies were always stripping them of their last ounce of wealth, yet strangely, the Jews recovered very quickly and were soon rich again. How this sudden recovery from looting and poverty? Their assets were concealed under "bearer" and so a goodly portion was always saved. In an age when it was lawful for any pirate to seize goods consigned to Jews, the Jews were able to protect themselves by consigning goods on policies that bore no names.
The influence of the Jew was to center business around goods instead of persons. Previously all claims had been against persons; the Jew knew that the goods were more reliable than the persons with whom he dealt, and so he contrived to have claims laid against goods. Besides, this device enabled him to keep himself out of sight as much as possible. This introduced an element of hardness into business, inasmuch as it was goods which were being dealt in rather than men being dealt with, and this hardness remains. Another tendency which survives and which is of advantage in veiling the very large control which Jews have attained, is of the same origin as "bearer" bills; it permits a business dominated by Jewish capital to appear under a name that gives no hint of Jewish control.
The Jew is the only and original international capitalist, but as a rule he prefers not to emblazon that fact upon the skies; he prefers to use Gentile banks and trust companies as his agents and instruments. The suggestive term "Gentile front" often appears in connection with this practice.
The invention of the stock exchange is also credited to Jewish financial talent. In Berlin, Paris, London, Frankfort and Hamburg, Jews were in control of the first stock exchanges, while Venice and Genoa were openly referred to in the talk of the day as "Jew cities" where great trading and banking facilities might be found. The Bank of England was established upon the counsel and assistance of Jewish emigrants from Holland. The Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of Hamburg both arose through Jewish influence.
There is a curious fact to be noted in connection with the persecution and consequent wanderings of the Jews about Europe and that is: wherever they wandered, the center of business seemed to go with them. When the Jews were free in Spain, there was the world's gold center. When Spain drove out the Jews, Spain lost financial leadership and has never regained it. Students of the economic history of Europe have always been puzzled to discover why the center of trade should