that the Jews who remained behind should serve in the Russian army instead of those of their brethren who had become citizens of the free American Republic.  The “evasion of military duty” and the annual shortage of a few hundred recruits, as against the many thousands of those enlisted, was charged as a grave crime against that very people towards which the Government on its part failed to fulfil even its most elementary obligations.  Reams of paper were covered with all kinds of official devices to “cut short” this evasion of military duty by the Jews.  On one beautiful April morning of 1886, the Government came out with the following enactment: 

The family of a Jew guilty of evading military service is liable to a fine of three hundred rubles ($150).  The collection of the fine shall be decreed by the respective recruiting station and carried out by the police.  It shall not be substituted by imprisonment in the case of destitute persons liable to that fine.

In addition, a military reward was promised for the seizure of a Jew who had failed to present himself to the recruiting authorities.

By virtue of this barbarous principle of collective responsibility, new hardships were inflicted upon the Jews of Russia.  Since the law provided that the fine for evading military service be imposed upon the family of the culprit, the police interpreted that term “liberally,” taking it to include parents, brothers, and near relatives.  The following procedure gradually came into vogue.  In the autumn of every year, the Russian conscription season, the names of the young Jews who have completed their twenty-first year are called out at the recruiting station from a prepared list.  When a Jew whose name has been called has failed to present himself on the same day, the recruiting authorities issue an order on the spot imposing a fine on his family.  The police then appear in the house of his parents to collect the sum of three hundred rubles.  In default of cash, they attach the property of the paupers and have it subsequently sold at public auction.  In the case of those who possess nothing that can be taken from them the police insist on their giving a signed promise not to leave the town.  Their passports are taken from them, so that, not being able to absent themselves from town to earn a living, they are frequently left to starve.  If the parents are dead or absent, the brothers and sisters of the culprit, and then his grandfathers and grandmothers are held answerable with their property.

Thus, a large number of Jewish families were completely ruined, merely because one of their members had emigrated abroad, or, as was frequently the case, had surrendered his soul to God in his beloved fatherland itself, and the relatives had failed to see to it that the dead soul was stricken from the recruiting lists.  Yet, despite all these efforts, there still remained a considerable number of uncollected fines—­“arrears,” as they were officially termed—­to the profound regret of the Russian Jew-baiters, who had to look on while the victims were slipping unpunished from their hands.