The organizers of these societies evidently relied on some miraculous assistance from the outside, such as the _Alliance Israelite_ of Paris and similar Jewish bodies in Europe and America.

Under the immediate effect of Ignatyev's statement to Dr.Orshanski in which the Russian Minister referred to the "Western frontier" as the only escape for the Jews, the Russian-Jewish press was flooded with reports from hundreds of cities, particularly in the South of Russia, telling of the formation, of emigrant groups.

"Our poor classes have only one hope left to them, that of leaving the country.

'Emigration, America,' are the slogans of our brethren"-- this phrase occurs at that time with stereotyped frequency in all the reports from the provinces.
Many Russian-Jewish intellectuals dreamed of establishing Jewish agricultural and farming colonies in the United States, where some batches of emigrants who had left during the year 1881 had already managed to settle on the land.

A part of the Jewish youth was carried away by the idea of settling in Palestine, and conducted a vigorous propaganda on behalf of this national idea among the refugees from the modern Egypt.