Lieutenant-Governor Herbert H. Lehman of New York State received an ovation when he rose to deliver the first address of the afternoon session. He is a vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, and was for many years chairman of its European Reconstruction Department, under whose direction the work of reconstruction in Eastern Europe has been conducted. He is a member of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and an honorary chairman of the Allied Jewish Campaign.
Since 1921, he said, with the exception of the famine period in Russia, ninety percent of the funds collected and expended by the Joint Distribution Committee have been used in the larger channels of the upbuilding of health, the homes and the economic stability of the peoples abroad.
“From the very inception of the work of the Reconstruction Committee, the activities followed three main lines,” Lieutenant-Governor Lehman said. “First, the rebuilding or reconstruction of homes destroyed by the ravages of the war; second, the equipment or the rebuilding or creation and maintenance of trade schools—schools for vocational training and work shops; and third, and most important of course, was the activity of creating or reorganizing the vast network of loan societies through Eastern Europe, Russia and Palestine. The Joint Distribution Committee, through its Reconstruction Committee, has in the period which I have mentioned, helped to reconstruct and rebuild over 12,000 homes that had been destroyed or so badly injured that they were useless for occupancy. It has organized or maintained over three hundred trade schools and workshops, giving training to more than 20,000 boys and girls, who in turn in many instances, became teachers of crafts within their communities, thus providing artisans of ability, training and experience in larger numbers to the countries in which the work was done.”
Speaking of the credit work carried on by the Joint Distribution Committee, Mr. Lehman said that it covers nearly the entire map of Eastern Europe, and that Credit Associations or branches were organized even in such widely separated localities as Salonika, Vienna, Adrianople and Constantinople, besides those in Poland, Lithuania, Roumania and Russia.
SAYS CREDIT WORK HAS GROWN
“This work has vastly grown in every year since its inception,” he declared. “For instance, October 1, 1929 we had 712 separate credit cooperatives as compared to only 482 on December 31, 1926. The number of members in these cooperatives, exclusive of Russia and Palestine, on October 1, 1929, were 320,000 as compared to 123,000 less than three years previously. Assuming that there are on the average five members to a family, it is fair to assume that somewhere between a million and a half to two million people in Eastern Europe, exclusive of Russia, have benefited from the work and the cooperation and help of this chain of credit cooperatives—a vast number of people.”
Lieutenant-Governor Lehman further showed that in Poland alone there have been granted in the form of small loans during the first half of the year 1929 the sum of $21,000,000, and all the cooperatives affiliated with the Joint and scattered throughout the countries of Eastern Europe, have granted in the year 1929 loans in the amount of over sixty million dollars.
“The Joint Distribution Committee,” Mr. Lehman pointed out, “has not over the period of its years of operation in any way confined itself to work in Eastern Europe and Russia. During the period under discussion there has been expended in Palestine mainly for reconstructive purposes the sum of nine million dollars. The main agencies for economic reconstructive work in Palestine, as you know, are the Central Bank of Cooperatives, the Kupath Milveh, and the Palestine Economic Corporation. Of the money advanced to cooperatives by the Central Bank and by the Kupath Milveh to the small tradesman, professional worker, artisan, over 97½ percent have been repaid within a reasonable time of the date of maturity.
“It is because I love, as you do, the free institutions of this country, that my admiration and my desire to cooperate in Palestine is so great; because I have learned the blessings of security and peace, and because I want to see in Palestine as in this country, the right to worship accorded, to work unmolested and with every possible opportunity for the development of the individual and the community, I have been eager to see Palestine a place of security and inspiration for all those who want to live there in peace and in amity, a place where they can with pride and satisfaction toil to build up and restore a country of wonderful and lasting traditions,” Mr. Lehman said in conclusion.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
