The shortage of labour caused by the failure of the recent Jewish emigration campaign has resulted in many children of 10 and 12 years of age being employed by their parents to aid in sowing and other farm work, M. Merezhin, the Jewish Communist leader, writes in the Yiddish Communist organ “Emess”, where he appeals to all the organisations concerned with the Jewish farm movement to endeavour in every way to induce a minimum of 3,500 adult Jews to go to the Crimea and assist with the harvesting campaign.
Thousands of adult workers are wasting their time in the towns of White Russia and the Ukraine, he argues, while in the Crimea they have to resort to child labour. We must not permit such a shameful state of affairs to go on for one minute longer, he cries. We must give our fields, gardens, vineyards, our Kolkhozi and Sovkhozi, the necessary number of workers at once. It is criminal to let great mechanised and electrified farm enterprises go begging for labour to operate them.
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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.
