Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1893 — Jewish Colonization. [ARTICLE]

Jewish Colonization.

The Jewish Colonization Association's first report of the progress thus far made in settling Jewish refugees, cliieiiy from Russia, in hospitable lands, shows that up to the 20th of last September some £300,000 of the original capital of £2,000,000 had been expended, half of it in the purchase of land and the other half in settlement of families on the land. The colonies have chiefly been established in the Argentine Republic. One has been formed in Canada, 330,000 acres of land in all have been purchased and about 1,000 families have been settled. The council of the association believes the undertaking can be made self-supporting, and established on a financially sound basis. Five hundred families will henceforth be settled every year, and it is believed that when the success of the scheme is clear there will be a large emigration of self-supporting families. Each of the families settled by the association receives 100 acres, and £l6O for building, plant, etc., which they are expected to repay in ten years. Comment is made, that while all this is excellent, Baron Hirsch’s noble scheme can make, scarcely a perceptible impression on the mass of Jewish distress in Russia. It would take, it is urged, an emigration of 60,000 Jews a year merely to keep down the natural increment of population, if calculated at one per cent, per annum.