 Under continuous competition from the "sudiți", traditional guilds ("bresle" or "isnafuri") faded away, leading to a more competitive, purely capitalist environment.This nevertheless signified that, although the traditional Greek competition for Romanian merchants and artisans had become less relevant, locals continued to face one from Austrian subjects of various nationalities, as well as from a sizeable immigration of Jews from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and Russia—prevented from settling in the countryside, Jews usually became keepers of inns and taverns, and later both bankers and leaseholders of estates.In this context, an anti-Catholic sentiment was growing, based, according to Keith Hitchins, on the assumption that Catholicism and Austrian influence were closely related, as well as on a widespread preference for secularism.