Fund for Promotion of Orange Growing in Palestine Set Aside

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

The sum of £ E20,000 has been set aside by the Palestine Corporation, Ltd., for the establishment of a mortgage credit institution for the purpose of advancing credit loans to Jewish and Arab orange growers. It is intended with this sum to develop an area of about 700 dunam of land.

The Palestine Corporation aims at assisting established farmers who have recently gone into orange growing, as well as established orange growers. The Corporation intends to release larger sums for additional loans in this new field of activity. It is estimated that 5,000 dunams of land were acquired during the past year to be developed as orange groves, of which about one-fifth has been acquired by persons newly arriving in the country without experience in agriculture or orange growing.

In the absence of such Government assistance as is rendered in South Africa by the Land and Agricultural Bank, the Corporation has decided to step in, believing that the importance of orange growing to the country cannot be over-estimated. Oranges have reached the high percentage of 40.8% of the total exports of Palestine, as compared with 25-30% of other agricultural produce, which has remained more or less stationary for a number of years. At present some 30,000 dunams of land are under orange cultivation, of which 12,000 dunams belong to Jews.

The area of 3,000 dunams acquired by the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association last year is to be partly cultivated. 1,509 dunams are to be planted with orange groves for the youths of Rishon-le-Zion and Ness-Ziona at the rate of 25 dunams per family. Pica tractors are now ploughing the land, and cultivation is to commence shortly.

The Arab Chamber of Commerce in Jaffa reports that the area of orange groves in Palestine is now 18,000 dunam. Prior to the war the orange crop amounted approximately to 1,750,000 boxes, but this was decreased after the war owing to the destruction of some of the orange-groves. Now the crop has prospered, and there are approximately 2,000,000 boxes annually. 18,000 workingmen are engaged in the annual harvest.

The melon crop is sold at from £ E20,000 to £ E30,000. The season is from June to September.

Hitherto unknown musical compositions of Jacques Offenbach, written during his youth, are included in a collection of original manuscripts of Isaac and Jacques Offenbach, which has just been presented to the library of the Jewish Institute of Religion, 40 West Sixty-eighth Street. The donors were Miss Isabelle Offenbach-Gruenwald and Mrs. Redlich, grandchildren of Isaac Offenbach.

East Side barbers, meeting Sunday in the Downtown Chamber of Commerce Building, prepared to test the constitutionality of the Sunday closing law.

Abraham Schlacht, an attorney, was retained and several barbers said that they would give Mr. Schlacht an opportunity to defend them by violating the law to test its validity.