They were, therefore, the first to clamor for the ‘welfare state,’ which they expected not only to shield them against emergencies but to keep them in the professions and callings they had inherited from their families. Since an outstanding characteristic of the century of free trade was the access of the Jews to all professions, it was almost a matter of course to think of the Jews as the representatives of the ‘applied system of Manchester carried out to the extreme,’fn38 even though nothing was farther from the truth.
