Economic guidance was accorded last year to 2,379 European and American families by the American Economic Committee for Palestine, according to the annual report of Robert Szold, chairman of the board of directors.
These middle-class families number approximately 10,000 immigrants and prospective settlers in Palestine with known capital resources of more than $16,500,000, and potential capital estimated at over $20,000,000, Mr. Szold announced, pointing out that 1,486 of the families were actually in Palestine, and the remaining 893 corresponded with the committee’s Palestine Bureau.
The organization is devoted to the encouragement of private initiative in the industrial, commercial and agricultural upbuilding of Palestine. Its American headquarters are located at 522 Fifth avenue. It publishes the Palestine Economic News.
“The prosperity prevailing in Palestine,” Mr. Szold said, “is in no small measure due to the immigration of a considerable number of middle-class settlers possessing adequate financial resources and extremely valuable and successful industrial and commercial experience. Their orderly economic acclimation in Palestine is being facilitated by the activities of our Tel-Aviv Bureau which, under the direction of our Palestine representative, Mr. Rehabiah Lewin-Epstein, is acting, on behalf of the major development, business and farming organization of the country, as the central clearing house for immigrant economic information.
SIGNIFICANCE OF WORK
“The significance of the 1933 work of our Palestine Bureau will be more completely understood when it is realized that the 2,379 ‘capitalist’ families guided by the American Economic Committee for Palestine brought or can bring with them into Palestine what under Palestine conditions is deemed large productive capital and that that capital can give and is giving employment to very many additional new immigrants.
“Many of the 2,379 families were German refugees and the jobs of many additional German immigrants are based on the capital of these middle-class families. Of the 2,379 families, 1,282 or fifty-four per cent, were from or in Germany. The peak of the committee’s activity with and on behalf of German immigrants was reached in the second half of 1933 when the Bureau afforded guidance to 1,882 families, of whom 1,136 were from or in Germany, as compared with a total of 497 families with 146 from or in Germany in the first six months.
RESULTING EXPANSION
“The activities of these middleclass settlers have resulted not only in a remarkable expansion of existing economic undertakings in Palestine but in the establishment of new factories, trading firms and farms. The new undertakings include establishments already in operation or about to be launched for the manufacture of cement products and other building materials, chemicals, aluminum, apparel, drugs, metals, furniture, ice, leather, paints, shoes, textiles, toys and woolens.
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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.
