Greement with Soviet Government on Further Jewish Colonization Work Under Rosenwald Plan Now Being P

Work on completing the details of ## agreement to be concluded with ## Soviet Government for the extention of Jewish colonization work in Soviet Russia under the Julius Rosen## plan for which he pledged the ## of $5,000,000, is being hastened, James N. Rosenberg, chairman of the Agrojoint announced. Dr. Joseph A. Rosen, Dr. Bernard Kahn and Mr. Joseph C. Hyman, secretary of the Joint Distribution Committee, are now in Berlin completing the detail work.

Up to date an amount somewhat in excess of $7,300,000 was subscribed toward the $10,000,000 fund, Mr. Rosenberg stated, expressing the hope that the rest will soon be forthcoming to complete the fund.

The chairman of the Agrojoint invited the attention of American Jewish leaders to a table of figures made public recently by the Soviet Government containing official data on the progress of Jewish colonization work in Russia during the past fourteen years. In 1913 there were 52.758 Jews on the soil. These were the old colonists whose forebears had been permitted to go to the soil by the Czars Alexander and Nicholas. In 1927, the report shows over 165,000 Jews on over 1,200,000 acres. This means that over 6.3 percent of the Russian Jewish population (of 2,600,000 souls) are now farmers. Less than one-half of one percent of the total sown area of Soviet Russia is occupied by the Jews.

“Beginning with 1924, the total number of Jewish agricultural population and the area of the land tilled by it have been showing a rapid increase.” the official report states. “This remarkable progress of the back-to-the land movement of the Jewish masses is explained by the fact that in the fall of 1924, there were founded two special Jewish organizations entrusted with the carrying out of the tremendous task of establishing the Jewish population of the Soviet Union on the land. These two organizations are the Ozet (Society for the Agricultural Settlement of the Toiling Jews in the U. S. S. R.) and the Comzet (Committee for the Agricultural Settlement of the Toiling Jews), the former a volunteer, the latter a governmental organization. As a result of the activities of these organizations, 16,159 Jewish families were settled as agriculturists in the course of three years, 1925 to 1927, on an agricultural area of 798,700,” the report states.