Jewish Agricultural Colonies In the Western governments

The Jewish Encyclopedia  Funk and Wagnals 1951

and placed in quotes: i.e." pp 255-256 "

    "In the western governments the Jewish agricultural Colonies were founded after the publication of the edict of 1835. There the Jews were permitted to settle on government as well as on private lands, and for founding colonies wealthy Jews were rewarded with the title of honorary citizens. I 1848, 158 families comprising 946 persons, settled on government lands. Eleven years later (1859) the settling of Jews on such land in the western governments ceased entirely; and in 1864 they were deprived of the permission even to settle on private lands. In 1870 there were 34, 475 Jews settled in the Agricultural Colonies in the western governments, distributed as shown in the following table:

"The above numbers have since considerably decreased.

    "The preceding table, published in "Statisticticheski Vremennik Rossiskoi Imperii" (Statistical Annals of the Russian Empire), 3d series, part 2, edited by V. Alenitzyn, St. Petersburg, 1884, shows the extent of land owned and leased by Jews in western and southwestern Russia in 1881.

    "The following two tables have been compiled by the Odessa Society for the Aid of Jewish Agriculturists and Artisans in Syria and Palestine. No. I. shows that in 1896 neatly 97,000 Jews in Russia were engaged in agriculture. Besides these colonists who were grouped in settlements there were numerous single families occupied in agricultural pursuits, as shown in table No. II.

I.—Jewish Agriculturists in Russia, 1896.

II.—Jewish Workers on Plantations in Russia, 1896.

    "There were also about 1,800 Jewish field-laborers employed in 1896 on about 25 different estates in Bessarabia, Grodno, Kherson, Kiev, Podalsk, and Poltava.

III.—Jewish Agricultural Colonies in Russia in 1898-99. (Data Collected by the Jewish Colonization Association.)

Table of settlements in the Western Governments