Petition to President William H. Taft from the Jewish residents of the Lower East Side.

(AMERICAN-JUDAICA).

9th April

New York

1911

This document is the reply of residents of three streets in the so-called Jewish ghetto of New York to slanderous remarks by William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of New York, and so here seeking to vindicate their reputation in the President’s eyes. Williams’ annual report had tendentiously stated that “The new immigrants, unlike that of earlier years” are from “poorer elements…backwards races with customs and institutions widely different from ours,” incapable of assimilating, unlike earlier immigrants, and “possess filthy living habits and are of an ignorance which passes belief and…the English language is almost unknown.” To respond to this calumny, an extensive report repudiating this charge with social, business, educational and literary statistics are here offered. Included is everything from the number of residents in this high-density zone—33,883, of whom 90.3% were Jewish—and their precise occupations, to the number and types of library books taken out yearly. Extensive data about immigrant Jewish life in the Lower East Side, their productivity and the process of Americanization.