of whom 40,000 are engaged in agricultural work.
5. Approximately two-thirds of the entire Jewish population in Palestine is concentrated in the cities and reside in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Jaffa.
6. A total of 170 new industrial developments were established in 1934, mainly by new arrivals. All of them are showing satisfactory progress, although they are hampered by the difficulty of obtaining skilled workers.
BROUGHT $50,000,000
The Agency’s memorandum estimates that $5,000,000 in new capital was brought into Palestine by Jews during 1934.
In the covering letter accompanying the memorandum Mr. Sokolow emphasizes that the year 1934 in Palestine was remarkable for its economic development. Mr. Sokolow points out that the number of Jewish immigrants admitted into Palestine under the labor schedule is inadequate to meet the ever growing needs of the Palestine labor market. He complains that the Palestine government has not given sufficient reason to the Jewish Agency for reducing the number of visas requester for Jewish immigrants, whenever such requests have been submitted.
LABOR NEED UNDERESTIMATED
“The shortage of labor in Palestine, which has lasted three years, proves that the government underestimates the actual needs for Jewish labor,” Mr. Sokolow states in his covering letter. “The effect of the labor shortage has been to cause a discrepansy in wages between those working in towns and those in the villages. As a result of this descrepancy in wages Jewish labor is flocking to the towns.
“There is no greater peril to the Jewish National Home than if a one-sided, predominantly urban occupational composition of Jewries of the Diaspora were to be reproduced in Palestine,” Mr. Sokolow warns the Mandates Commission.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
Mr. Sokolow’s letter also demands that in addition to larger Jewish immigration, the Palestine government should be urged to do the following:
1. Open its civil service to more Jews.
2. Increase its aid to Jewish education in the country.
3. Assist in marketing of Palestine oranges abroad.
4. Place the large areas of Palestine land still available in the hands of Jewish colonization agencies.
Mr. Sokolow’s letter praises the Palestine government for assisting the Jews in obtaining the concession of the Tuleh region, located on the Palestine-Syria frontier.
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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.
