Finally, the Cultural Zionists may be said to find representation in all parties, for the furtherance of spirituality is inseparably bound up in the aims of every Zionist.
The Financial Institutions of Zionism
THE financial instruments by which the practical Zionist aims are seeking accomplishment are (1) the Jewish Colonial Trust,[21] incorporated as a limited company in London (1899) with a capital stock of $20,000,000 and a paid-up capital of $1,324,000; (2) the Anglo-Palestine Company,[22] an offshoot of the Colonial Trust, with a paid-up capital of $500,000, which finances Zionist undertakings in Palestine, and declares annual dividends of 4 1-6 per cent.; (3) the Anglo-Levantine Banking Company,[23] the financial institution of the Zionists devoted to their undertakings in the remainder of Turkey, with a capital of $125,000 declaring 6 per cent. returns; (4) the Jewish National Fund,[24] whose object is to acquire land in Palestine as the inalienable property of the entire Jewish people, with a capital of $650,000 raised by individual contributions; (5) the Palestine Land Development Company,[25] with a registered capital of $87,500, organized for the purpose of (a) acquiring, improving, and dividing into small holdings large Palestinian estates, (b) laying out and cultivating intensive crops, (c) systematically settling and training agricultural laborers in Palestine.
Of late the Jewish Colonization Association, which is backed by the forty-million dollar fund of Baron de Hirsch, is co-operating with the Zionists in the purchase of Palestinian land to be administered by the Palestine Land Development Company.[26]
The actual achievements, which these instruments have been the means of effecting, may be summarized in two classes—Palestinian and non-Palestinian. In both fields, the several branches of Zionist aims have borne fruit.
What Zionism Has Accomplished in Palestine
PALESTINE in 1880 contained 30,000 Jews, who studied the Law, wailed at the Wall, and lived miserably on the alms (the Chalukah) of pious Jewry at large. In 1911 the Jews comprised 100,000 out of a total population of 700,000. In Jerusalem are 50,000 Jews, 7,000 at Tiberias, 8,000 at Safed, and 10,000 at Jaffa. A large proportion, it is true, are settlers of the Ghetto type, but the young generation is rapidly being changed by the growing school-system.[27]
Numbering about fifty, Jewish agricultural colonies extend the length of the Holy Land and support some 5,000 Jews in their yield of olives, dates, wine, sugar, cotton, grain, and cattle. Broad streets, clean homes with gardens, and orchard land characterize the standard of living in the colonies, as machinery and agricultural school students characterize their modern standard of gaining their livelihood.[28] A constantly increasing number of emigrants are streaming into the Holy Land, although the Zionists are devoting their main endeavors toward firmly establishing the resident inhabitants and bettering their condition. On April 3, 1914, the London Jewish Chronicle reported the emigration from the single port of Odessa as numbering 250 persons a week.[29]
In 1886, $1,800,000 of trade passed out through Jaffa, the port of Palestine; in 1909, the value of the exports rose to $7,500,000.[30] Rischon-le-Zion, the oldest colony and containing 500 inhabitants, annually produces, alone, more than a million gallons of wine.[31]
The schools of the older class—Talmud Torah and Yeshibah—still dominate; but, following the example of the Alliance Israelite, a modern type of school with a modern curriculum taught in Hebrew has been established in every colony, and culminates in a Gymnasium at Jaffa as the principal national educational institution. The attendance of the colonial schools number about 1,500, and in the Talmudic schools number several thousands. The Mikveh Israel Agricultural School, near Jaffa, is the center of vocational instruction in Palestine, and aids materially the work of the colonists. Funds for a Hygienic and Technical Institute have likewise been started to further practical education.[32]