Mrs. Rose Jacobs, member of the Jewish Agency Executive, newly-arrived from Palestine, urged stockholders of the Palestine Economic Corporation at its meeting in the Hotel Astor tonight to expand its capital stock to “increase confidence in Palestine and help to salvage Jewish material resources.”
Other scheduled speakers were Julius Simon, president of the Corporation; Dr. Maurice B. Hexter, former member of the Jewish Agency Executive, Robert Szold and Charles J. Liebman.
“The development of world affairs and the conditions that now prevail among Jews everywhere make it incumbent upon the Corporation to expand its facilities so that it may become a factor for conserving large amounts of American Jewish capital for the benefit of Palestine,” Mrs. Jacobs said. “There are in the banks of Palestine considerable idle funds waiting to be put into circulation; also, I am told, large amounts of Jewish money of Eastern and Central Europe ready to flow into Palestine — all waiting for a responsible organization like the Palestine Economic Corporation to take the initiative — into properly ordered investment.”
Declaring the great need of the moment was to inspire confidence of potential investors, she said that therein lay the opportunity of the corporation again to show the way to the hesitant Jewish public of America. “Immediate and substantial increase of the capital stock of the Palestine Economic Corporation would, I believe, increase confidence in Palestine and help to salvage Jewish material resources.”
Mr. Simon declared that “if normal conditions are reestablished in Palestine in the reasonably near future, much of the damage done to the economy of the country in the last two years is reparable.” He declared that the Jewish population had an adequate internal reserve of capital, manpower and markets to resume its forward course as soon as conditions were stabilized.
Mr. Szold reported that Palestine Potash Ltd., had in 1937 increased its sales 55 pep cent over the previous year. Bernard Flexner, chairman of the Corporation’s board of directors, who presided, paid tribute to the late Felix M. Warburg, one of the founders of the Corporation and its honorary president.
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