material forces for the attainment of our goal.
For this purpose we have our institutions which need only be increased and enriched in order to be equal to the tasks imposed upon them. When we awoke the nation and appointed the way for it, we also created practical institutions for the storing up of our means and for practical action. Through these institutions we can now unfold great activity in all directions and this in fact should be the chief subject of your deliberations and conclusions.
I believe I may give expression to a confiedent hope by saying that in the practical era now dawning, our brethren in America who so well support practical endeavors with success and conviction, will be found in the forefront of the situation.
With hearty Zion's greeting.
DAVID WOLFFSOHN.
FROM WARBURG.
In view of the fact that our Palestine Land Development Co. Ltd., has not even one stockholder as yet in the United States, although over a year has passed since it began its practical activity in Palestine, we regard it needful to acquaint the participants of your convention this year with the causes to which our company owes its rise as well as with the aims it pursues.
You are aware, gentlemen, that under pressure of want to which the Jews of Russia, Roumania, Galicia and the Bukowina are subjected, as well as through the influence of the Zionist movement some thousands of Jews annually come from those countries to Palestine, in order to find there a home. As many hundreds of thousands of Jews stand ready in eastern Europe to emigrate. Many of the immigrants or of intending immigrants are possessed of slight or moderate property. Almost all are able and willing to work and are inspired with a keen desire to settle in Palestine on their own land and, support themselves by means of agriculture.
Why is it then, in spite of the great supply of willing laborers and, in part, of Jews with means, the agricultural colonization of Palestine by Jews makes much slow progress? Prolonged observation in Palestine has shown that in the main the following obstacles have blocked progress of colonization:
I. While the Jew who wishes to begin an agricultural life in Palestine requires for his purpose a piece of land of 2 to 3 hundred dunam, it is possible to obtain from the Arabs only large tracts of several thousand dunam. 2. The complexity of the Turkish land laws. This makes it impossible for the recently arrived immigrants for Europe to comprehend the legal questions involved in the sale of a piece of land and often scares him entirely from purchasing. 3. The poor mode of cultivation hitherto practiced by the Arabs with their primitive Arabian plows. This makes it necessary to work the soil for a year or two in European fashion before it can be transferred to the colonist. Besides this preparatory cultivation it is necessary to provide roads and wells. All these operations cannot be carried out by the individual with his slight means.
The obstacle might indeed be removed by the combination of a large number of persons in the common purchase and fit-