Without parallel in the annals of Jewish colonization here is the new project near Hightstown, N. J., because the proposed settlement is to combine industrial and agricultural features.
When in a few weeks construction begins on 200 homes, a school and other community buildings on the 1,300-acre tract of land, prominent among the new structures will be a clothing factory.
With the assistance of the Subsistence Homestead Division of the Department of the Interior, the Association for Jewish Farm Settlements is sponsoring the venture. Gerson Zybert, former Alderman of Warsaw, Poland, is the association’s executive secretary, who in all his years of experience in this field, embracing every part of the world, has never encountered a Jewish industrial-agricultural settlement. He ought to know after ten years with the ORT. During the war he was connected with the JDC and in 1922 served as the Hias vice-commissioner for Europe. He has filled many similar posts, in addition to serving as a Warsaw alderman for the past fourteen years and being a member of that city’s cabinet of seven.
MANY APPLY
Already some 2,000 applications are in, after the announcement that two hundred families would be accommodated at the enterprise. An exacting questionnaire will lay bare the qualifications of the applicants. Tailors are in demand as well as people with farming experience. Their health, character, size of family will be looked into. Small families are preferred, but this will not be insisted upon very strenuously if other demands are met, Zybert declared.
Particularly significant in this proposed influx of would-be settlers when one considers that the government requires each to make an outright payment of $500 and $2,500 within twenty years, in addition to four per cent. interest.
No one over forty-five is to be admitted initially. The settlers’ families will have individual four or five-room homes, each with an acre of land for cultivation, thus leaving over 1,000 acres for communal agriculture. There will be fifteen types of modern buildings, eliminating drabness of appearance. Social halls, a schoolhouse, a factory, homes, and other buildings will lend variety. The government has granted a $500,000 loan for the colony, which is situated midway between New York and Philadelphia, eight miles from the Pennsylvania Railroad station, and three miles from the nearest bus stop. A government representative is on the board of directors.
The colony is to be self-supporting. Each settler will receive a salary for his labors. Great interest has been aroused by the project on the part of Jewish leaders, Zybert said, quoting the recently-received letter from Professor Albert Einstein:
“There is no doubt that an external force in times past has been the reason why the larger portion of the Jewish masses has been concentrated into city trades and occupations….Therefore, a movement like your association, to return some of the Jewish masses to the original means of production, is in the interests of the Jewish community as a whole and should be supported by every intelligent person.”
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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.
