Nineteen thousand Chicago Jews took part in the last relief drive. If we consider every one of the nineteen thousand relief subscribers as the head of a family of five, it would appear that ninety-five thousand Jews in Chicago participated in the relief drive.

There are between three and four hundred thousand Jews in Chicago. There are between seventy and eighty thousand Jewish families in Chicago. The last relief drive was organized magnificently. All the communal workers of the city and all the representatives of large and small organizations participated in the drive. After all the effort, struggle, hard, ceaseless labor, we succeeded in reaching, for relief purposes, only one out of every four Jews. Considering the number of Jews in Chicago, at least fifty thousand Jews should have participated in the drive--actually only nineteen thousand took part.

Chicago gave more than its quota to the relief. Originally its quota was one million dollars, later it was raised to one and one-half million dollars, but Chicago actually gave a million and eight hundred thousand dollars. If at least eighty per cent of all the Jews in Chicago had participated in the relief drive, then Chicago would have given not a million and eight hundred thousand dollars, but five million dollars.

Why were not at least twenty thousand more Jews in Chicago reached for relief purposes?

Chicago has about thirty thousand Jewish workers who can give nothing or very little. Just the same, we believe that if the Jewish workers of Chicago were especially organized for the relief drive, they would have given something. When thirty thousand Jewish workers are organized for a definite philanthropic purpose, they can accomplish a great deal, irrespective of their individual contributions. Among our workers there are many idealists, men of great souls. Many Jewish workers of Chicago, when they were properly organized, collectively 3or individually, would have surprised our rich people with their spirit of sacrifice and idealism. The fact that the People's Relief Committee is not doing anything and is broke is not the fault of the Jewish workers; it is the fault of a few politicians who have discredited and destroyed the People's Relief Committee.

But even if we were to eliminate entirely the Jewish workers from our calculations, there still should have been more than nineteen thousand relief subscribers in Chicago. The question arises: where are the great Jewish masses of Chicago who cannot be reached even by as brilliant an organization of a campaign as the last one was?

In 1907, Prince Buelow, chancellor of the German Empire, called for new elections to the German Reichstag. He knew the strength of the opposition parties very well; he knew exactly how many members they would elect to the Reichstag because the German political parties are stable, and political landslides did not happen in imperial Germany the way they often happen in democratic countries.

When Prince Buelow was asked why he dissolved the old Reichstag and what 4guarantees he had that the new Reichstag would differ from the old, he replied: "I will not appeal to the voters because they have already decided how to vote. I will appeal to the nonvoters, to those who never participate in any election; they are the great mass of nonparty people and I will draw them into the campaign." The result of the election was that two million people who had never before participated in any political election, were drawn into that political campaign and they gave the new Reichstag an entirly different complexion. The Social Democrats and the Catholic Center lost about sixty deputies. The sixty newly elected deputies were not in opposition to the government, and, with their help, Prince Buelow continued to rule.

Every nation has a party of indifferent citizens, a party of nonvoters. We Jews have a party of nongivers and it is our strongest party, strongest numerically but not morally. This party of nongivers is the strongest in Chicago.

There are tens of thousands of Jews in Chicago, often well-to-do and rich Jews, 5who are absolutely dead as far as Jewish life is concerned. They never give a cent to any charity. They are a dead mass, a dead weight.

The Jews in Chicago who give, give plenty, and often they give more than their means permit. If Chicago does not give as much as it should, it is due to the fact that we have such a large party of nongivers here, a party which is numerically larger than the party of givers. Of course in other cities, particularly in New York, the party of nongivers is larger than in Chicago, but even in Chicago it is large enough.

Every civic worker in Chicago is asking himself these questions: How can we transform the party of nongivers into a party of givers? How can we reach every Jew in Chicago in behalf of Jewish charity and Jewish public affairs?