News Brief

A gala celebration on the occasion of the opening of the first Jewish textile factory in Bobruisk, was held on Sunday. The factory is cooperative and employs sixty former Nepmen.

The building for the factory was furnished by the government, while the Ort, society for the promotion of trades and agriculture among Russian Jews, and the New York Bobruisk Landsmanschaft supplied $2,500 worth of machinery on five years’ credit.

The organization of a cooperative shoe factory in Bobruisk has aroused enthusiasm among the workers. One hundred and fifty Jews, former Nepmen, will gain employment in the factory.

The Ort is now building a starch factory in the town Shtshedrin, White Russia, machinery worth $1,350 being furnished by the New York Shtshedrin Landsmanschaft. The Ort is also working out a plan for establishing a clock factory at Yelisavetgrad, the New York Landsmanschaft participating to the extent of $10,000 worth of shares.

The Uman Landsmanschaft in Toronto, Canada, has directed an investigation into the possibility of erecting a share-holding factory at Uman. Interest displayed by a number of American Landsmanschaften in the possibilities of erecting factories for Jews is shown by the number of inquiries coming from New York societies of former residents of Chernobil, Smiela, Zlatopol, Gornostai and Ivanovka. All of these townships have room for brick, rope and other factories which could be opened with Landsmanschaften assistance by purchasing shares.

A proposal has been received from a New York Jewish paper manufacturer. Isaac Gilman, who promised $5,000 annual assistance if a shareholding paper factory for Jewish workers (Continued on Page 4)

Conflict within the Jewish farm collectives is reported from the Odessa region over the requirement that the crop be sold to the government. “We will not give our wheat away,” say a number of farmers within the collectives, while others insist that the wheat be turned over to the government. This requirement applies only to collectives and does not include the colonies supported by the American Jewish Agro-joint.

The conflict is strongest in the colonies Friling, Nitgedaiget and Kotovsk, where it threatens to split the collectives. The majority have indicated a desire to quit the collectives, saying, “We entered the collective last year because the poor crop compelled us to seek assistance and credits which the government grants only to the collectives. Now we have a good crop and therefore want to be independent. We do not want the collective to control our crop and our income.”

The tendency against delivering the crop to the government is noticeable even among the young Jewish Communists who, the “Emes” complains argue that the government fixed too low, unjust prices.

In the Kalinindorf region, where the harvest was not so good as in Odessa and the Crimea, the struggle is not keen, as the colonists have less, and in some cases almost nothing, to deliver. Dissatisfaction with the low prices prevails.

Because during the last few years the wheat crop was a failure in the Ukraine, the Jewish colonists there are now determined not to plant wheat this autumn. The government has begun a campaign to counteract this tendency, explaining to the Jewish colonists that wheat is the most profitable crop for the peasant and for the government.

The crop of the Jewish colonies in the Odessa district, which the government requires to be turned over, amounts to a quarter of a million poods, whereas the amount from the total crop in the region is half a million poods.

In some colonies the colonists are burying their harvest during the night, or grinding it, preventing the government taking the wheat for winter seed.