(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)
A detailed report on the work of the Ort (Society for Promoting Agriculture and Handicraft among the Jews) during the past three years, from January 1923 to 1926 is given in a booklet which has just been issued here by the Ort Federation.
In the period covered by the report there has been a big development in the whole of East European Jewish economic life from a chaotic state of affairs to a systematic organized work Twenty-eight practical training courses for adults and a model workshop for cabinet-making were established during the period. The number of master and journey-men workers attending the Ort Institutions for adults increased sevenfold. The total number of students in the Ort Institutions numbers 5,670.
In agriculture the Ort during the period assisted 3,500 Jewish families with credit aid and technical advice, making a total with those so aided since 1920 of 13,500 families.
The Federation gave the first organized and material assistance to the pioneers of the Jewish colonization movement in Russia who settled in 13 newly founded agricultural settlements between Balta and Odessa. Nearly 1,800 artisans and workers (5,000 since 1920) were supplied with machinery and tools.
Two special institutions were created during the period, the Jewish Reconstruction Fund whose object is to concentrate the funds of the Ort for the purpose of providing credit aids for agricultural workers and artisans and to secure a strictly business conduct of the transactions, and the Cooperative Tool Supply, Limited, which purchases and distributes on credit tools and raw materials.
The total funds at the disposal of the Ort for the period of the report amounted between 1920-23 to a sum of $369,365. During the period 1923-26, this sum was almost double reaching the amount of $780,000. The sum raised by the Ort Federation itself during the period of the report amounted to $420,000, five times the amount of the previous three years.
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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.
