Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture Visits New Jewish Colonies

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

The Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture. M. Shlichter,during a recent tour of Southern Ukraine. visited the Jewish colonies there and in the course of his report now issued, he devotes considerable space to the question of the Jewish colonization work in Russia. “A large number of stories are being spread about the Jewish settlement work.” he writes. “such as the story that big merchants are settling on the land, using the land as a sort of adjuct to their other work of trading in the towns. Their families, it is said, have stayed behind in the towns and are carrying on their trading as before. It is also said that the Jews do not work the land them serves, but use hired labor. On the basis of my personal observations in the course of my tour, during which I visited a large number of Jewish colonies. I catego###ally deny these absunilibels, the Minister declares. We visited an area of 13.000 desiatin of land on which there are at present 63? Jewish farms. The farm movement on this are started at the end of 1925. By July 1st of this year 82 per cent of the entire families of the settlers were actually on the land. This shows that there can be no question of the members of the families of the settlers having remained behind in the towns to continue trading.

“There are of course ex-traders and ex-artisans among the Jewish famers. It is just these classes of Jews who. because of historic reasons are the interest classes of the Jewish population and ### the majority of the population of the Jewish towns in the Ukraine. It was they who suffered most from the change in the economic conditions of our country. It is true that among the new settlers there are a few persons who were previously big murchants, but these are #### as. In the Jewish agricultural district, about 25 persons were disfran chised because they had been big troders, only three becuase they eneaced in t########