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 |_U I
 
 
 Che Commercial ■ 
 future of Palestine. 
 
 DEBATE AT THE ARTICLE CLUB, 
 
 Opened by Mr. ISRAEL ZANGWILL. 
 NOVEMBER 20, 1901. 
 
 The Rt. Hon. LORD SUFFIELD, G.C.V.O., K.C.B., P.O., in the Chair. 
 
 m} 
 
 LONDON I 
 
 GREENBERG & CO., 80, CHANCERY LANE, W.C. 
 
 PRICE ONE PENNY.
 
 (Reprinted by permission from "COMMERCE," November 27, 1901. j 
 
 She Commercial 
 future of ?alesUwe, 
 
 3*5 
 
 ^dX'K^y 
 
 My Lord Suffield, Your Excellencies, and Gentlemen,- — ■ 
 
 Despite the kinds words I have just blushed under, I am sure 
 that some of you are as shocked to find the commercial future of Palestine 
 opened up for debate as others are to find the theme attacked by a 
 professional purveyor of imaginative wares. Commerce, however, is 
 not necessarily divorced from imagination. And I am not here thinking 
 of trade advertisements by pen and pencil. Doubtless the ordinary 
 routine of business makes scant call upon the imaginative faculty, but 
 the creation of new business certainly demands it. (Laughter). 
 
 " The commercial future of Palestine," Mr. Augustine Birrell writes 
 me, " I trust it has none." No doubt many of you have a lurking 
 sympathy with Mr. Birrell's sentiment, and having myself tasted the 
 charm of the life in tents, having seen Laban driving his , flock afield as 
 he did four thousand years ago, having watched Rebecca tripping from 
 the well with her pitcher on her shoulder, having made the Oriental 
 salutation on breast and brow to Arab sheiks jogging along on camels, or 
 dangling one-sided from their slow Arab steeds, having plodded the 
 ruined cities and the desert <dead as the moon, I can understand the 
 desire to keep unchanged this primitive historic world, the cradle of 
 religion. Mr. Birrell doubtless fears that Jeremiah will cease his lamen- 
 tations and start jerry-building. (Laughter). 
 
 This danger must be risked, for if, ,as half the world believes, 
 Palestine is to have a glorious future, it is impossible that this future 
 can lack an industrial basis. Elijah was fed by ravens, but the bread 
 they brought him must have been baked by someone, and we know 
 the raven's habits. There is no warrant in Holy Writ for imagining 
 that Holy Land is synonymous with Lazy Land. The holy Sabbath itself 
 depends on the six working days. 
 
 And Palestine is not only a dream-place. In these picturesque 
 ruins people have to live. And these ruins are not, as is imagined, the 
 ruins of a primitive pastoral country, but the ruins of a great civilised 
 State. To rebuild the roads would only be to restore the great Roman 
 roads of the second century A.D. The [researches of the Palestine 
 Exploration Society have shown us ancient Jerusalem, " glorious with its 
 palaces, its gardens, its citadel, its castle, its courts, and its villas." wel- 
 coming at the Passover two million visitors. And it is not only the 
 
 2117879
 
 Roman Jerusalem that lies below the present soil : there are three Jewish 
 Jerusalems, besides the Herodian, the Byzantine, the Saracen, and the 
 Jerusalem of the Knights of St. John. The society, by its explorations 
 and exhumations, has demonstrated the vast population, the fertility and 
 riches of Palestine, and the greatness of the cities which had been 
 considered small and unimportant. When Jesus wandered among the 
 hills and valleys of Galilee He did not wander in a rustic world. " The 
 land," says the late Sir Walter Besant, " was densely populated ; there 
 were schools in every town ; there was a wealthy society ; there was a 
 Romanising section ; there was a Judaising section ; there were every- 
 where Rabbis, merchants, centurions, legionaries, townsmen, and 
 peasants." It was a country that even Rome could not easily hold. 
 The great Jewish leader, Bar Cochba, actually won the Kingdom back 
 for a period, and to quell his revolt, the Roman Bobs or Kitchener, 
 Julius Severus, was summoned by Hadrian from suppressing the less 
 formidable rebellion of the savage, woad-stained Britons. (Laughter 
 and cheers.) 
 
 But many centuries earlier, while Rome itself was an obscure village, 
 Isaiah was denouncing the luxury of his people. 
 
 It is not a primitive, pastoral people whose ladies are lashed by 
 Isaiah for " walking with stretched-out necks and wanton eyes, walking 
 and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet." Peasants 
 have not these changeable suits of apparel, the mantles, and the wimples, 
 and the crisping pins, the glasses and the fine linen, the hoods and the 
 veils. 
 
 Even considered as a pastoral country, Palestine is no longer the 
 " land flowing with milk and honey." " Consider the lilies," said Jesus, 
 and, indeed, there are still wonderful wild-flowers and patches of mar- 
 vellous fertility. But where are the beautiful fruit-gardens, which 
 Josephus mentions around Caesarea? Buried three hundred feet beneath 
 .and-dunes. Where are the olives of the Mount of Olives? Jericho, the 
 land of palms, has not a single palm, and there is no balm in Gilead. 
 The artificial water system — for Palestine, with its few rivers, depends 
 largely on irrigation — has decayed ; the springs are choked up ; the 
 trees felled, Arab women wrench off what branches remain, while goats, 
 to keep which was considered by some Rabbis as damnable as to conceal 
 armed robbers, wander everywhere, eating away the vegetation ; dis- 
 forestation has diminished the rainfall : " Upon the land of my people 
 3hall come up thorns and briars," said the prophet Isaiah. " Lebanon is 
 ashamed and hewn down, Sharon is like a wilderness, and Bashan and 
 Carmel shake off their fruits." 
 
 Under this curse Palestine has slept for centuries. But now its 
 sleep must end. The great Powers are awake — not only Russia and 
 Germany, but the greater powers of steam and electricity. A hundred 
 years ago the " Times " could record with open mouth : " There is to be 
 a railway through the whole of Surrey." Now there is a railway 
 through the whole of Siberia, and we have just reached the jubilee of the 
 submarine cable. Can Palestine escape? Palestine, the very centre of 
 the earth round which group themselves Europe, Asia, and Africa! 
 
 It forms the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean. It is near the 
 Suez Canal, it leads to the fat land of Mesopotamia and the coveted 
 Persian Gulf. It is strange that as yet it seems to be omitted from the 
 problem of Asia. It is never mentioned in statesmen's year-books, or 
 newspaper leaders, or magazine articles. This is the more strange that, 
 historically, Palestine has always been a coveted country. " The very 
 earliest monumental information which we possess," says Major Conder,
 
 "s'hows us how the powers of Egypt and Chaldea strove for Lte pos- 
 session. . . And this contest between the Towers of the north and the 
 south for the possession of Palestine has gone on ever since, with 
 intervals of independence when the combatants had for a time ruined 
 each other. The latest recurrence of such events was witnessed when 
 Napoleon failed to conquer Palestine." 
 
 Writing of his people at the beginning of the Christian era, 
 Josephus says: "We neither inhabit a maritime country nor do we 
 delight in merchandise, but, having a fruitful country for our habitation, 
 we take delight in cultivating that only." It is true the ancient Jews 
 were a fighting pastoral people, like the Scotch Highlanders, and that 
 Sidon and /Tyre, the great ports on the N.W., were left in the hands of 
 the Canaanites, the Phoenicians; yet how vast a commercial development 
 would accrue to a modern Palestine from its central position, may be 
 gauged from the ancient glories of Sidon, so nobly pictured in the 
 Recessional of the Prophet Ezekiel. 
 
 Let me read you one-third of his 27th chapter, which I recommend 
 to you in bulk: — 
 
 " Tyrus, O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a 
 merchant of the people for many isles, Tarshish was thy merchant by reason 
 of the multitude of all kinds of riches ; with silver, iron, tin and lead, tiny 
 traded in thy fairs. 
 
 Javan, Tubal and Meshech, they were thy merchants : they traded the 
 persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market. 
 
 They of the house of Togarinah, traded in thy fairs with horses and horse- 
 men and mules. 
 
 The men of Dedan were thy merchants : many isles were the merchandise 
 of thine hand : They brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony. 
 
 Syria was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of the wares of thy 
 making : they occupied in thy fairs with emeralds, purple and broidered work, 
 and fine linen and coral and agate. 
 
 Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants; they traded in 
 thy market, wheat of juinnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil and balm. 
 
 Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, 
 for the multitude of all riches ; in the wine of Helbon, and white wool. 
 
 Dan also, and Javan going to and fro, occupied in thy fairs ; bright iron, 
 cassia and calamus, were in thy market. 
 
 Dedan was thy merchant in precious clothes for chariots. 
 
 Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs and 
 rams, and goats ; in these were they thy merchants. 
 
 The merchants of Sheba and Raaniah, they were thy merchants : they 
 occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and 
 gold. 
 
 Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and 
 Chilmad were thy merchants. 
 
 These were thy merchants in all sorts of things, in blue clothes, and 
 broidered work, and in chests of rich apparel, bound with cords and made of 
 cedar among thy merchandise. 
 
 The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market; and thou wast 
 replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas 
 
 Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, 
 thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men of war. 
 that are in thee, and in all thy company which is in the midst of thee, shall 
 fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin." 
 
 We may be sure that politicians will soon wake up again to the 
 importance of Palestine, and again the struggle will revive. For " the 
 future," as the Seaond Mrs. Tanqueray says, " is only the past entex-ed by 
 another gate." (Laughter and applause.) 
 
 That the terrible Eastern Question is not dead but sleeping was 
 vividly brought home to us the other day by the Franco-Turkish episode. 
 I have tried hard to get a clear view of how the great game stands now ;
 
 for with the fate of Turkey the futirre of Palestine is of course bound 
 up. But diplomatists disagree, and you cannot even rely upon their 
 lying. (Laughter and " Oh !") 
 
 It would appear that Russia, its unwieldy bulk at length unified 
 by its Siberian and Trans-Caspian Railways, is bound to absorb not 
 only Manchuria but most of Central Asia. When she has swallowed 
 Persia — and Iran is already surveyed for Russian railways — Turkey will 
 come dangerously near her maw, and Turkey is already in pawn to her 
 through the unpaid war debt. 
 
 France and Russia kiss each other on both cheeks, yet their 
 interests clash in the Levant, where France has an ancient interest in 
 Syria, which land she expects for her share when Turkey comes to be 
 ca? - ved out. Here her Catholic missionaries jostle the Russian, and 
 f h rough Russian influence, French schools and institutions have been 
 getting the worst of it. Hence the recent demands of France upon 
 the Porte. 
 
 Germany, which, according to the British Consul, is the only country 
 that; seriously makes an effort to push her trade in Palestine and hei 
 commerce in the Persian Gulf, has already successfully challenged the 
 claim of /France 'to be the protector of the Christians of the East. 
 England is necessary to her as a counterpoise to Russia. She tried to 
 make her profit of the recent trouble, and by a loan of four millions to 
 get the concession of the Bagdad railway out of the hands of France. 
 Although nominally at strife with France, Turkey secretly prefers these 
 concessions should fall to the French capitalists ; whose demands have less 
 political grab in them than those of Germany, the devouring advance 
 of which Turkey is beginning to feel. At the moment, however, Germany 
 is impeded by her own economic crisis. 
 
 Austria, herself threatened by Pan-Slavism, threatens to insist on the 
 autonomy of Macedonia, in which the Sultan's rule is said to be nominal, 
 and meantime makes strong demands concerning compensation and the 
 founding of schools and institutions. But the Sultan has a high regard 
 for the Emperor of Austria, and does his best to meet his views. 
 
 Italy left out of it quietly quintuples her shipping to Palestine, and 
 puts on a line of steamers, while Belgium assumes the control of the 
 Customs of Persia and establishes her officials at the chief ports on the 
 Persian Gulf. 
 
 England would really be the best ally of Turkey against the all- 
 sweeping advance of Russia, for if the Holy Cities of Islam should ever 
 fall into the hands of Russia, India and Egypt would be threatened 
 by the influence Russia would thus obtain over the fifty million Mussul- 
 mans of India, and the ten millions of Egypt. England therefore rather 
 makes up to Turkey ; but Abdul Hamid unreasonably hates England, 
 so he prefers to lie low and say nothing. 
 
 For myself, as an English citizen, I can say there is no country 
 under whose sphere of influence I would more willingly see Palestine fall, 
 and the warning of Laurence Oliphant in 1880 is still seasonable: — 
 
 Political events in the East have so shaped themselves thai Palestine, and 
 especially the provinces to the east of the Jordan, owing to tlioir geographical 
 position, have now become the pivot upon which of necessity they must ulti- 
 ma t civ turn. Situated between the Holy Places at Jerusalem and the Asiatic 
 frontier of Russia, between the Mediterranean and the Keel Sea. between Syria 
 and Egypt, their strategic value and political importance must be apparent at a 
 glance; a'ld the day is probably not far distant when it may he found that the 
 
 mo-t important interests of the British Empire may be imperilled by the neglect 
 to provide in time for the contingencies which are now looming in the imme- 
 diate future.
 
 Watching the great game can anyone doubt that whoever wins and 
 whoever is overlord of Palestine, there is one sphere of influence Palestine 
 cannot escape falling under — and that is the sphere of modern industrial 
 civilisation. (Hear, hear.) And as to what will be the paramount 
 Power practically my own opinion is that the Turkish Empire will long- 
 remain to the Turk, for before the holy places of Islam could fall into 
 the hands of the infidel, the countless millions of Islam, black, white, and 
 negroid, in North Africa, in India, in China, in the Sahara, in the 
 Soudan, already secretly organised, would unite in one of the bloodiest 
 Holy Wars in history. The Sultan will always be at least the suzerain 
 of [Palestine, and I can say positively the present Sultan is in sympathy 
 with its inevitable development. 
 
 We have seen the political signs of this development. Are there any 
 commercial symptoms? 
 
 " Has oil been struck in Ephraim ?" Mr. Andrew Lang writes me, 
 "or do the gleanings of the grapes of Eshcol make a sound Burgundy?" 
 No, oil has not been struck in Ephraim, but it has been squeezed from 
 olives, and the value of the export rose from £1,350 sterling to £9,110 
 in 1900, a rise by weight of over half a million pounds. Some of the 
 oil is very rough, but it goes to Prance, where it is mixed with the French 
 oil, and under the name of French olive oil goes all over the world. 
 (Much laughter.) 
 
 As for the grapes of Eshcol, they may not make a sound Burgundy, 
 but they make an excellent Sauterne, which received the gold medal 
 at the Paris Exposition last year. These grapes also go out as Malaga 
 muscatels in chests painted with Spanish bull fighters and 'bewitching 
 Senoritas. (Laughter.) 
 
 The greatest export of Palestine is, strange to say, soap, which was 
 in 1899 more than a third of the total exports, £125,750 out of a total 
 of £316,158, while in 1900 it fell to £44,550. The Consular Report 
 does not explain. The only possibility is that the number of the Jews 
 in the country had increased, and that they used up the soap themselves. 
 This soap, by the way, is chiefly made at Nablous, the ancient Shechem, 
 the most fanatical Mohammedan town in Palestine — which maintains 
 the connections between cleanliness and godliness. (Great laughter.) 
 
 In the unexplained wobbliness of soap, the staple export of 
 Palestine is oranges, worth about £75,000 a year. Jaffa oranges, which 
 are sometimes as large as ostrich-eggs, are superior to the Spanish fruit, 
 and command a higher price ; but the recent over-stocking has led to a 
 fall in price. The gardens have also suffered from hailstorms, and the 
 value of orange gardens has recently fallen ; but the growers are extend- 
 ing their plantations in the hope of better times. The orange develop- 
 ment was due mainly to the rapid and direct communication by steam 
 vessels with Liverpool, established in 1892. Last year was the first to 
 show a loss in the trade. 
 
 The other exports in the order of their importance are water-melons, 
 sesame, lupines, and a small amount of maize, wool, hides, colocynth, 
 bones, etc. Quite a new vegetable export was started last year, when 
 Palestine gave the world beans (laughter), though only 520 quarters, 
 valued at £575. 
 
 The imports for the last two years remain stationary — approaching 
 £400,000. The balance of trade was against Palestine last year to the 
 tune of nearly £120,000. 
 
 Where does the money to pay come from? Partly from the 14,500 
 pilgrims who came to Palestine during the year, and — mark the dis- 
 tinction — the 3,000 tourists, mainly American. As pilgrimages and
 
 8 
 
 commerce are not entirely unconnected, it may be worth stating that 
 there were 500 Germans, 550 Austrians, 650 Egyptian Copts, 1,100 
 Armenians, 1,500 Greeks, 6,700 Russians, and 3,500 other pilgrims. 
 
 These pilgrims, besides their expenditure for food and lodging, 
 purchase in the bazaars cruciform flowers, mother-o'-pearl mementoes, 
 and olive-wood carvings. One of the largest items of the national income 
 is baksheesh — (great laughter) — together with huge sums received in 
 charity by the Jewish inhabitants from all parts of the world. 
 
 The chief need of Palestine, judging by the imports of Jaffa, seems 
 to be cotton goods, and after that coffee, sugar, rice and flour. 
 
 Last year there was an enormous rise in the importation of cotton 
 goods from £61,500 to £115,050. This seems to be another index of a 
 rising population — a soap-using population, clothed in cotton and ad- 
 dicted to coffee. (Applause.) 
 
 * The best customer of Palestine is England. England, however, only 
 sells to Palestine half as much as she buys from it. France, on the 
 other hand, sells to it about as much as England buys, while buying 
 considerably less. 
 
 As regards shipping, there were more Turkish vessels entered and 
 cleared at the port of Jaffa an 1900 than all the others put together. 
 But 421 of these 443 Turkish vessels were sailing, and the whole 443 
 only amounted to 25,998 tons. 
 
 The best index that Palestine is going ahead is that there were 
 148 more ships last year than the .year before, with an additional tonnage 
 of nearly 100,000. And the best index that England is going back in 
 these waters is the decrease of her shipping by 27 vessels and over 
 11,000 tons, while every other great Power increased hers. Germany 
 doubled her shipping, sold 4.5 per cent, more, and bought (20 per cent, 
 more; while her line, the Deutsche Levante Line, has done better 
 business than the new Italian line through the wine exported to 
 Germany by the Jewish colony at Rischon-h le-Zion, the great depot of 
 which is at Hamburg. 
 
 In fact, though the actual relations with Prance are the most 
 important all round, though the Messagerie boats are of the largest 
 tonnage navigating the coast, and France has railway interests in 
 Syria, it is Germany that is now pushing her way most markedly in the 
 Holy Land. It will be remembered that the Kaiser himself was a 
 pilgrim. (Laughter and cheers.) 
 
 A new German bank, the Deutsche Paliistina, was established in 
 Jaffa a short time ago, and has attracted many clients by facilitating 
 their business transactions more than any other bank in the place. 
 
 The Germans have also introduced oil engines for irrigation. But 
 the British engines are now coming more into request. Otherwise our 
 country seems to be neglecting her opportunities and her future political 
 necessities. 
 
 There are German wine settlements at Jaffa, Sarona, Jerusalem and 
 Chaifa. 
 
 It is doubtful, however, whether, despite the optimism of Consuls 
 and the Gold Medal of the Jewish colonies, Palestine has a future as a 
 wine country. The competition is too keen. It might do better to 
 produce raisins, in the production of which it could almost rival Cali- 
 fornia. The Arabs themselves are a great raisin-consuming people. 
 
 Lately, a start has been made in the Jewish colonies with tobacco, 
 with the assistance of an expert who, beginning on a small scale, achieved 
 highly successful results, the planters earning 20 times as much as for 
 their land sown with corn. Should the developmenl continue, factories
 
 9 
 
 will be built, and the poverty-stricken population of Safed would find 
 employment in sorting, manipulating, and fermenting the tobacco. 
 
 Many similar developments are doubtless possible; the sugar-cane 
 might be restored to the Jordan valley, and camphor to the slopes of the 
 Engedi. Sugar could be made from the figs of the wild cactus. The 
 ruins of sugar-mills show that the crusading Christians cultivated it 
 successfully. The olives, which are half wasted by the crude process of 
 extracting the oil, might be scientifically treated, and, moreover, soap 
 could be made from the refuse. 
 
 Hides are at present exported to France, and re-imported as saddlery, 
 etc., twice eight per cent, being paid for duty. This leather might be 
 made in the country. 
 
 Then there are mineral treasures, the newly-discovered deposits on 
 both sides of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. " The salt deposits of the 
 Dead Sea could be developed into an industry,'' says a German mining 
 engineer. There are also the bitumen springs of Nelic Musa, containing 
 30 to 40 per cent, of asphalt; there is petroleum in great quantities; 
 but the most important of all deposits is phosphate. " The Dead Sea is 
 a mine of unexplored wealth," said Laurence Oliphant, twenty-two years 
 ago. And now our German engineer rediscovers that " the immense fields 
 of phosphate to the East and West of the Jordan need only better means 
 of traffic and communication to ensure their development." 
 
 Ah, yes, here indeed we touch the spot. 'The great hindrances to the 
 commercial future of Palestine are the almost total absence of roads, 
 railways, harbours, and water power. But even here, note the develop- 
 ment ' by leaps and bounds." Ten years ago, there were practically no 
 roads. Now there are half-a-dozen. The most ambitious road now 
 building, only begun in 1900, is that between Jerusalem and Nablous, a 
 thoroughfare which, despite the vast amount of traffic, has been only a 
 camel path for centuries. It has been built as far as Bireh, about 29 
 miles, 19ft. 6in. at its extreme width, at a contract price of =£5,000. 
 There were only two bidders, both Armenians, which seems to show that 
 the Armenian does get something out of the Turk. (Laughter.) Mahom- 
 medans do not engage in such work. 
 
 As for the railways, there is the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway, the French 
 Beyrout to Damascus line, while a projected British line will, unless the 
 opposition to it of the French line be successful, make a connection with 
 the Persian Gulf, opening up the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris, the 
 richest of the ancient world. Then there is the Sultan's project of a 
 railway from Damascus to Holy Mecca, to which Mahommedans are 
 everywhere subscribing, and for which a Belgian firm has already a 
 contract for rails. The Russian railways which almost skirt North 
 Persia, and which are already planned through Persia, must ultimately 
 send out branches to meet those of Asiatic Trukey. With more internal 
 railways in Palestine, the scattered villages would become towns again. 
 
 Some of Palestine is still amazingly fertile, and has borne unaided 
 the same crop for forty centuries. Canon Tristram, who championed 
 for colonisation the rich arable land of Moab, reported that its ancient 
 reservoirs and conduits were still practically unimpaired. Laurence 
 Oliphant, in whose Jewish Colonisation Schemes the then Prince of Wales 
 was interested, as well as the Princess Christian, was enraptured with 
 the land of Gilead, the sub-tropical country east of Jordan, amid which 
 the hot springs of Callirrhce and the romantic scenery would furnish a 
 hygienic resort. The entire Plain of Sharon, according to Thompson, 
 seems to cover a vast subterranean river, and this inexhaustible source of 
 wealth underlies the whole territory of the Philistines. But even the 
 bleaker portion can be redeemed.
 
 10 
 
 With the re-afforesting, the re-cultivation of the hill-terraces, the 
 planting of eucalyptus trees in the marshy districts so as to allay fever, 
 and the complete repair of the system of aqueducts and cisterns, with 
 the construction of i*oads, railways, harbours — Jaffa can only be ap- 
 proached in small boats — and last, but not least, with the improvement 
 of law and order, Palestine would regain its ancient prosperity, and, 
 reaping the profit of its central position, become again the emporium of 
 the Levant. Yes, the Promised Land is still a land of promise. But, 
 for all this development, two factors are necessary, labour and capital. 
 Where are these to come from? 
 
 Even given capital, we know how the dearth of labour cripples the 
 development of even such countries as Canada or Rhodesia. Palestine 
 has but a small population of Arabs and fellahin and wandering, law- 
 less, blackmailing Bedouin tribes. Is there any likelihood that labour in 
 sufficient quantities would be attracted to Palestine? Yes, there is a 
 people to the masses of which Palestine is the only attractive country 
 (hear, hear), a people so bowed down by ages of suffering that it only 
 demands a field in Which to labour, and to work out its own destinies, 
 safeguarded from the terrible persecution which has been its lot for 
 centuries. Now or never it may come to its own again, for soon 
 Palestine, which has been " To Let " for so many centuries, will have 
 the board taken down, and the opportunity of regenerating in one and 
 the same process the ancient land and the ancient people will be lost 
 forever. I have sketched the state of the land, may I beg your patience, 
 while I sketch briefly the state of the people. (Great applause.) 
 
 Forget the rich Jews of the great capitals whom you may know, and 
 think of the Jewish masses. The total Jewish population of the world is 
 11^ millions. 
 
 Of these six millions are in Russia, that is to say, considerably more 
 than half. 
 
 The centre of gravity of the Jewish problem is therefore in Russia. 
 There are 1,800,000 in Austro-Hungary, over a million in the United 
 States, over half-a-million in Germany, nearly half-a-million in European 
 and Asiatic Tux-key, and over a quarter of a million in Roumania. 
 
 The Jewish population of Great Britain and Ireland is insignificant, 
 about 150,000, so that British Jews do not count in the great problem; 
 and all the fears of the well-to-do' that they will be hustled out of 
 Piccadilly into Palestine are unfounded. (Much laugh'ter.) We know 
 the stock joke that if the Jews returned to Palestine, Rothschild would 
 apply for the post of Ambassador at Paris, but in those dark Dreyfus 
 days when " mort aux Juifs" was scribbled on the walls, the post could 
 scarcely have been so enviable. 
 
 In all the countries of the earth then, Jews are living — not as para- 
 sites, but in that other form *>f biological union known as symbiosis 
 (living together for mutual profit). An animal and a plant, or a bird and 
 a beast, may contribute to each other's existence. Thus the crocodile 
 is said occasionally to open its jaws to allow a small bird to fly in and 
 pick its teeth, and destroy the parasites. This will serve for a rough 
 image of the history of the Jew in Gentile environments, if we imagine 
 the crocodile frequently snapping down its jaws at an unfair moment, 
 and then shedding tears over the accident. (Great laughter.) I propose 
 to concentrate attention on Russia, the greatest Jewish centre, and 
 Roumania, the unhappiesfc. 
 
 A.S throughout, I shall avoid Jewish witnesses. There was staying 
 at Sandringham tin other day, the guest of His Majesty, Prince Demidoff 
 de San Donato, who, himself a great employer of labour in Russia, has
 
 11 
 
 consecrated a book to the study of the Jewish masses. In passage after 
 passage he dwells upon the lamentable economic position in which the 
 Jews are placed by their artificial enclosure in the Pale. 
 
 The Jew is unfortunately prolific. It is a principle of his religion. 
 And so he multiples by an improvident reliance on Providence, without 
 this expansion being permitted any outlet. Russia, that vast continent 
 of famine-stricken peasants, with fatal folly, clogs the circulation of 
 the best industrial blood in the country. With the rouble-purchasing 
 power gone down ten per cent., the peasant population, which is fed 
 by the harvests, increased ten per cent., Russia berself is a land of 
 paupers. How terrible then to be that pauper of paupers, the Jew ! The 
 Pale is already the portion most thickly populated. 
 
 While the average of persons to the square mile in Russia is fifteen, 
 in certain provinces of the Pale, there are 2,730 Jews to the square mile. 
 
 By the May laws of 1882, 50,000 Jews were driven back from villages 
 to the towns, and there the race is prisoned, as Professor Mandelstamm 
 puts it, like " the dumb animal of Mep'histo, led around by a bad spirit 
 in a .circle of waste land, whilst all around flourish beautiful green 
 pastures.'' And there the physique of the race is corroded, and the Jew 
 becomes nothing but " skin, bone, and brain." Of course there is a 
 comfortable minority of millionaires, manufacturers, and professional and 
 commercial men, but the overwhelming majority consists of small trades- 
 people whose profits hardly cover their taxes, artisans, factory hands, and 
 seekers of odd jobs. 
 
 Again, I take my facts not from a Jewish source, but from a general 
 source, and notifrom a British publication, but from a French, from the 
 current number of La Revue Blanche. 
 
 The average earnings in the workshops and factories of the Pale may be 
 considered famine wages ; the best are only 3£ to 4 roubles a week, or to 
 translate into English money, 8s. to 9s. a week. The most frequent wages are 
 from 5s. 8d. to 6s. 9d., inferior wages from 3s. 4id. to 4s. 6d. for men; women 
 and children rarely earn more than 13s. 6d. to 18s. per month, generally halt 
 this, and sometimes a quarter this. 
 
 The weavers of Dubrovno work twenty hours a day for 75 kopecks, or a 
 rouble (2s. 3d.) per week, and support families of from six to eight persons. 
 
 There are 4,000 weavers, and slack times are frequent. 
 
 The shop-keeping classes are often content with 4s. 6d. to 5s. 8d. a week. 
 
 At Berditchev the commercial profits have fallen to 2 per cent. 
 
 In Elisabetgrad, at Odessa, there are wooden huts in which, in a single 
 room 9 feet square, live two families, of six persons, without any door of 
 sepa'ation. The sanitary inspectors have counted 5,087 houses occupied by 
 Jews absolutely destitute. One thousand of these houses were cellars, and more 
 than two thousand without windows. 
 
 Forty-one per cent, of the Jewish families have only a single room, often 
 occupied by a dozen persons. 
 
 In 18<\7, of 60,000 patients in the hospitals, 33,000 were Jews. 
 
 The ditches of Homel contain 120 of these hovels, open to all the winds, 
 inhabited by more than 2,000 persons. 
 
 At Wilna thousands live in cellars two flights below the level of the streets. 
 
 At Sklov, out of 8,000 Jews, 7,000 are reduced to public charity. Jewish 
 workmen accept every where the roughest and most dangerous tasks ; every- 
 where they carry burdens. 
 
 In Lithuania they are masons. It is the Jews who make rafts out of tree 
 trunks. On the banks of the Dnieper may be seen Jewish dock labourers, 
 sometimes 60 to 65 years old, who pass 13 to 14 hours a day in the water up to 
 the waist, unloading the boats, and only too happy to earn in the summer 
 season 6s. 9d. per week. 
 
 At Wilna are the Vachevniki, whose work consists in untying the trunks of 
 the rafts to make piles of them. They operate on horseback, and their occupa- 
 tion, which requires considerable courage and dexterity, is extremely dangerous. 
 There are 480 Vachevniki at Wilna, and they are all of them Jews. 
 
 The workers at Minsk are cobblers, bakers, and linen-makers. They have
 
 12 
 
 9s. to lis. 3d. a week for working 15 to 17 hours a day. Here are also 250 
 masons who get 4s. 6d. a week, and are idle nine months of the year. 
 
 The women are also at work in the tobacco and cigarette factories, where 
 they are nearly all Jewesses. They work 12 hours a day ; in the match factories 
 of Homel 13 and 11 hours. They compete bitterly with men for 25 to 30 
 kopecks a day. 
 
 At Wilna the stocking industry is nearly entirely in the hands of Jewesses. 
 Ihe-e gain an average of 18s. per month, with frequent slack seasons, and a tax 
 of 6s. 9d. a year for using a machine. 
 
 To sum up, the restrictive laws which paralyse the economic and 
 intellectual activity, the intolerance of officials and magistrates, the 
 fanaticism of the population, avenging their own misery upon their 
 poorer neighbours, the hostile measures, the crises of idleness, the famines, 
 make the Russian Jew's life intolerable. Hence the vast immigration 
 to the States and other countries — 800,000 have left Russia in the last 
 19 years. Here, 'then, is a vast labour force that might regenerate 
 Palestine. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 Let us glance more briefly at our other example : 
 
 It is the artificial factor that is almost entirely responsible for the 
 terrible condition of things in Roumania. 
 
 There the Jew cannot be a lawyer (decree of 1864), nor can he take part in 
 contracts for public works (1868), nor for lands sold by the State (1869). nor 
 may he be a chemist (1869), or a railway employee (1871), or sell tobacco (1872), 
 or be a money-changer (1881). 
 
 As many Jews were thus reduced to pedlars, peddling was forbidden m 
 1884, and 20,000 Jews deprived of their means of livelihood. In 1887 they were 
 excluded from the management of tobacco factories. In 1893 public schools 
 were closed to them. They could still be in some factories and workshops and 
 timber-yards, but tne latest law decrees that in every enterprise whatever 75 per 
 cent, of the employees must be of Roumanian nationality. Hence a wild, 
 disordered exodus in 1900 of starving thousands, with which the Jewish bureaus 
 of charity throughout the world have been unable to grapple. By the Treaty 
 of Berlin Roumania agreed to give its Jews equal rights; but the Powers look 
 on unmoved. 
 
 I am happy to say that Servia, whose Minister we have here to-night, 
 has done its duty. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 The agent of the " Alliance Israelite " gives some heartrending 
 reports. I take only one paragraph : 
 
 In the city of Ja-sy (the writer is M. Astruc. director of the schools at 
 Roustchuk), which contains more than 35,000 Jews, two-thirds, at least, are in 
 ne d of help. The dea f hs from starvation may be counted by the dozen, and 
 the number of graves in the cemetery is frightful. Enter into the hrSt house, 
 you will be told that for several days there has been not a bit of bread. For 
 over two wet's or more they are living on green fruit gathered m the 
 environs. Mount the worm-eaten stairs, you will perceive old men immovable, 
 stupefied, haggard, who listen to you without understanding, and who shed 
 tears a- they take the loaf of bread you hold out to bhem. Descend into the 
 cellars, where the walls ooze, where breathing seems impossible, where the 
 atmosphere is deadly, aid you will feel the tear- come hit') your eyes at the 
 sight of a dozen children, belonging to different families, clothed in a single 
 -hirt of the colour of earth, emaciated, Lifeless, groaning, but calmed suddenly 
 by a morsel of bread. To sum up again, while these pariah- are victims not 
 only of the economic crisis, hut of the laws oi boycotting, of exile and 
 contempt, the professors excite the Anti-Semitic students by speaking in their 
 lessons and [i otures "I the blood-suckers, vipers, and traitors of the Jewish race; 
 
 Finally, l< 1 me quote you from the private letters of an English 
 engineer: 
 
 Our coachman suffered much eft en :it the hands of the Roumanian peasants, 
 who would no1 sell hay or corn for the horses until we insisted. In fact, a 
 Roumanian dew engineer lived for a week on onions and nut-, as he could not 
 get anything -Ne to eal i i the Prutb Valley, the peasants refusing to sell.
 
 13 
 
 We always employed Jews, as they were the most honourable and indus- 
 trious of the two, besides the advantage of language, for all Kouinanian Jewe 
 talk a certain amount of German mixed up in their Yiddish. 
 
 The Jews do most of the work and trade, says the same writer, under date 
 November V2, 1901. The Roumanians are a lazy, gambling lot. 
 
 As far back as 1879 a Committee of Roumanian Jews wrote : " Our 
 powers of endurance are exhausted — let us leave the country and 
 journey to Palestine." 
 
 This then is the willing and patient labour force waiting the magic 
 pass-word to Zion. (Hear, hear.) Cheaper than coolies or Chinese 
 (applause) — for what other people would rush to a ruined land and take 
 part of their wages in religious emotion? 
 
 And not only is this labour force available for Palestine, every other 
 channel is being gradually shut to it. Even that famous statue of 
 Liberty in New York harbour is beginning to frown at the Jewish 
 immigrants, While England, to touch whose soil is to be free, grows restive 
 at the congestion and rack-renting in the East End of London. It is as 
 if the very finger of Providence pointed once more to Palestine. How 
 are the Jews of Hmis country to grapple with the new problem, save by 
 deflecting the stream of immigrants Zionwards? 
 
 True Palestine is tiny, yet — and this is, I think, a new point — 
 a hilly land, whose slopes can be cultivated and inhabited, is really much 
 larger than its nominal area, just as New York, with ilts sky-buildings, is 
 far larger than Manhattan Island. Yes, the land is good enough. Is the 
 labour good enough? 
 
 The present Jews of Palestine are satisfied so long as they can pray 
 t'leir way. Can Jews become agriculturists? Are not the colonies of 
 Baron Rothschild and Baron Hirsch failures? How will the Jews live 
 when they get to Palestine? These and countless other objections are 
 jmde by so-called practical Jews, who remind me of an old lady I know, 
 who has been house-hunting for years, but who can never suit herself 
 because the bouses are always so dirty and unfurnished, or workmen 
 are always hanging about. She is unable to picture them swept and 
 garnished ; and peopled not by paperhangers, but by her own family. 
 
 The praying Jews will be supplemented by Jews to whom labour is 
 prayer. If the present agricultural colonies are a failure, it is because 
 the millions have been spent in idealistic unpractical ways. The attempt 
 was made to produce a special breed, the Jewish peasant, regardless of 
 everything else. 
 
 Baron Hirsch's colonies in Argentina were put far from railways, 
 waiter and markets. How to sell the agricultural products no one 
 seemed to consider. Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Baron Hirsch 
 have spent more than a hundred million francs in their endeavours to 
 produce tableaux -vivants of Jewish peasants. These noble-minded Barons 
 are the greatest Art-Patrons the world has ever seen. Pauperisation, on 
 however magnificent a scale, can never be regeneration. Thus, the word 
 was suddenly given to all the colonies to grow roses, /and make attar of 
 roses. The most expensive machinery was at once supplied, but where 
 are those roses now? Had the perfume-makers commenced like the 
 Bulgarian peasant with a small boiler, costing from £3 to £4, they might 
 have gradually reaped success. 
 
 The Zionists have no such idyllic dream of a Jewish peasant popu- 
 lation. Although there must be a proportion of agriculturists, and 
 although in many parts of the earth Jews have proved themselves suc- 
 cessful agriculturists, the future of the Jews will not be exclusively
 
 14 
 
 pastoral. Tlie peasant has always been the butt of the townsman. Now 
 the Jew, a townsman for generations, is exhorted to sink to the level of 
 the peasant, whose poetry is more in the eye of the cultured observer than 
 in himseli. 
 
 Zionism, in my conception, proposes to make neither peasants nor 
 paupers, but to help the people as a whole iby the regeneration of the 
 land, and the creation of industries and railways, all of which should 
 in the long run pay for themselves. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 In Egypt the great engineering works of Sir William Garstin have 
 already doubled the cotton crop. The cost was seven million pounds, 
 but the annual gain is five millions. 
 
 But where is the capital to do such things in Palestine to come from? 
 Here is our last — alas, not our least — question. 1 cannot recommend 
 the Gentile capitalist to lock up his millions in the gigantic enterprise 
 of exploiting Palestine. The only possible method is a huge national 
 subscription of the children of Israel. For just as Palestine can only be 
 exploited by Jewish labour, so too only <a Jewish Chartered Company, 
 ready to take its percentage in religious and race feeling and the joy 
 of a people's salvation, can declare a satisfactory dividend for many 
 years to come. This subscription has passed beyond the stage of fantasy. 
 Walk down Walbrook, pass the door through which you go to banquet 
 with the Lord Mayor, and you will see a building as substantial and 
 practical as an alderman, with solid mahogany counters and green baize 
 doors. This is the office of the Jewish Colonial Trust, surely the most 
 remarkable financial movement the world has witnessed, a company 
 with 120,000 Hebrew shareholders, drawn from every country on earth, 
 the latest shares being taken up by Algiers, Tunis, Argentina, Cuba, and 
 India. After some four or five years' agitation by the great Zionist 
 leader, Mr. Herzl, of Vienna, a quarter of a million pounds has been 
 amassed, and this has enabled the Trust to declare itself ready to begin 
 work. But, alas ! how little it is compared with the two millions Dr. 
 Herzl demanded, or the seven millions which the Hirsch trustees are 
 frittering away ; or compared with the millions which the Jewish 
 millionaire minority is well able to supply. 
 
 Mr. Rider Haggard, witnessing recently the wailing of the Jews at 
 the Temple wall in Jerusalem, asked : " Why do they wail, when a few 
 of their financiers could buy up the country?" Mr. Pinero, in his latest 
 play, has defined the financier as \a pawnbroker with imagination. (Much 
 laughter.) Alas, our Jewish pawnbrokers have no imagination. And 
 so they are leaving it all to the poor. Seventy-five per cent, of the 
 shareholders are in Russia — imagine, in Russia! — a dozen of these 
 wretched families clubbing together for a £1 share ! Of the remaining 
 25 per cent. Roumania supplies ten. You see how justified I was in 
 selecting these two countries as supplying the future labour market. 
 The man in the street, ignorant of the part, the Jew has played in the 
 world's history, imagines that the world owes the Jew nothing but 
 money. At any rate, he always speaks of "going to the Jews!" I am 
 afraid we Jews shall now have fco go to ithe Christians. Not so much for 
 their money as for their sympathy. (Hear, hear.) We must appeal to 
 them to be true Christians, and help to end tin's tragedy nf the Wander- 
 ing Jew. 
 
 The Sultan i- with us— I 9ay it boldly — ready to treat with us and 
 help us — has he not given lengthy audience to Dr. Herzl? But .even if 
 he actually restored us our anoieril Land, we should not- have the means 
 of regenerating it since our millionaires stand aloof, and Baron ITirsrh's 
 gigantic bequest is spilt in a hundred different directions — a Niagara
 
 15 
 
 turned into garden fountains. No wonder the trustees shrink from 
 publishing a balance-sheet. 
 
 The legend says that the Wandering Jew wanders because he refused 
 to lallow Christ, bowed down with the burden of the. Cross, to rest a 
 moment at his door. Now the Jew, fainting from his long wanderings, 
 under the weight of his cross, turns to the followers of Christ. What 
 he asks is so little. He demands just one morsel of the earth for his 
 own, a country no larger than Wales, that could be tucked away and 
 forgotten in the United States. "Restore," he begs, "restore the country 
 without a people to the people without a country." (Hear, hear.) For 
 we have something to give as well as to get. We can sweep away the 
 blackmailer — be he Pasha or Bedouin — we can make the wilderness 
 blossom as the rose, and build up in the heart of the world a civilisation 
 that may be a mediator and interpreter between the East and the 
 West; for we 'have wandered in every land, and are rich with every 
 human experience. " Help us, then," he cries, " in a project which 
 shines like a star over the welter of materialistic politics, help us to our 
 national redemption, so that, perchance, once again the law shall go 
 forth from Zion, and the -Word of righteousness and justice from Jeru- 
 salem." (Sustained applause, amid which Mr. Zangwill resumed his 
 seat.)
 
 THE JEWISH QUESTION. 
 
 Publications by 
 
 GREENBERG & CO., 
 
 80, Chancery Lane, 
 
 LONDON, W.C. 
 
 Alien Immigration. 
 
 For JEWISH STATISTICS bearing upon the Question and a 
 SPECIAL ARTICLE upon the subject, see 
 
 THE JEWISH YEAR=B00K 
 
 FOR 5662 (1901=2). 
 
 Edited by Rev. ISIDORE HARRIS, M.A. 
 
 OF ALL BOOKSELLERS, PRICE 2s. 6d. 
 
 (Or Direct of the Publishers, Post Free, United Kingdom, 2s. lOd. ; Abroad, 3s.). 
 
 JUST REPRINTED. Price Id. Post Free, lid. 
 
 How Jews Live. 
 
 REPORT UPON THE 
 
 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF JEWS. 
 
 A Side-Light upon ALIEN IMMIGRATION. 
 
 By Prof. Dr. MAX MANDELSTAMM (Kiew). 
 
 JUST PUBLISHED. Price 6d. Post Free, 7d. 
 
 ZIONISM: 
 
 JEWISH NEEDS and 
 
 JEWISH IDEALS. 
 
 By J. De HAAS. 
 
 In this BROCHURE Mr. De Haas gives a compre- 
 hensive yet succinct account of the present state of 
 Jewry, and the causes that have brought it to its 
 present Social, Political and Religious condition. 
 
 GREENBERG & COMPANY, 
 
 80, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 Printed by Tire Colimbub Company, Ltd., Columbus House, 43 and 43a, Fetter Lane, London, E.C.
 
 
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