ABSTRACT
Prior to the coming of capitalism, land constituted the basis of economic power and social prestige. With the rise of commerce and industry, the economic arrangements of the Middle-Ages declined, and capital began to contest the position which land had so long pre-empted. The North became more and more industrialized, and capital began to play an increasing role in "the settled use and wont" of its economic life. In the foregoing observations, no especially disruptive influence has been assigned to the Negro race or to the campaigns waged with perfervid zeal by abolitionists in behalf of the Negro. The financial prowess of the Jewish capitalists is often cited for Negro emulation. But the existence of a large population of poor Jews who—no more than Negroes, the occasional object of Jewish capitalists' charity—have escaped the wage-earning class merely because of the existence of Jewish financiers, is usually ignored.
