|
"Can the Jew become a successful farmer?" is a
question which seems in the minds of most people almost as
difficult to answer in the affirmative as was the query, "Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" asked by incredulous
Jews in the days before the measure of agricultural instinct they
possessed had been stifled by the restrictions, the oppressions
and the herding into ghettoes of the Middle Ages.
A Gentile was walking aimlessly through the East Side, in the
neighborhood of Seward Park the other day. Men were gathered along
the curbs selling willow wands in full leaf, and strips of palm
leaf carefully swathed in burlap. Other men, with long beards,
fathers in Israel, were seen everywhere carrying twigs of willow
or wrapped palm leaves. It was the beginning of the Feast of
Tabernacles, the festival when the orthodox bring back to mind the
days when the Jews lived in groves and gardens in huts in
Palestine and gathered the fresh grapes from the vineyards and
rejoiced in the blessings of the land. The visitor was thinking of
the significance of the survival of this peculiar relic of ancient
times, and the desperate and pitiful efforts which the Jew makes
to reproduce the scenes of his early history with a few green
twigs and a little leafy booth on the roof in the quarter of the
city which is furthest removed from any resemblance to a land of
fruitful fields. Suddenly his eye was arrested by a sign. It was
on the side of a building of a style of architecture in striking
contrast to that of the populous tenement houses which surrounded
it. The sign was the announcement of an exhibition showing what
had been accomplished by Jews in this country as farmers, and the
opportunities in this direction open to the East Side Jew. It was
to open in the building of the Educational Alliance on that
day--the day on which a comparison of the joys of a life in the
country with the close, steamy atmosphere of the sweatshop and
three-room tenement apartment would most appeal to the minds of
the Jews of that quarter. The sign, in relation to the question of
the success of the Jew as a farmer, was like Philip's answer to
Nathaniel's query of long ago, "Come and see."
AN OPTIMISTIC EXHIBIT. Climbing a flight
of stairs, he reached the door of the small exhibition hall, and
entering found himself in a room full of optimistic proofs. There
were many signs in English, as well as in the "curve and angle"
Hebrew characters, explaining the exhibits. There were photographs
innumerable showing Jews ploughing the fields, hoeing rows of
flourishing vegetables, milking cows, making cheese and gathering
flowers from the gardens about six-room houses. Men with Hebraic
faces stood in the shadow of stalks of prize corn which rose to
almost twice their height. "Sammy" and "Ikey" and David and "Aby"
were portrayed learning "dog paddle" in real "swimming holes."
There were photographs of large New England farmhouses, with
Jewish families, the owners, standing on the grass in front. Most
of the houses had none of the dilapidated appearance that one
connects with the abandoned ancestral homes of old New England
families, although such most of them were said to be. Dozens of
pictures showed families whose names end in "sky" holding picnics,
and loading hay, and doing other things of a like nature. A sign
said that there were Jewish families in Alaska, Canada, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma,
New Mexico, Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Washington. He
was informed that it was known that in the United States there
were at least 1,382 farmers of the Jewish faith. They and their
families, aggregating 7,481 souls, were now cultivating farms
covering 125,434 acres, and valued, with the chattels, at
$2,716,649. The visitor was astonished at
discovering that in Connecticut there were between four hundred
and five hundred Jewish farmers. Some of them had gone to
Connecticut to work in factories and, finding abandoned farms in
the neighborhood, had bought them. Others had followed them to the
country. A young man in the exhibition hall, who proved to be the
head of the Board of Education of Woodbine, a Jewish farming and
industrial community in Southern New Jersey and the head of the De
Hirsch Agricultural School there, said he was the son of a Jewish
farmer of Connecticut and a graduate from the Storrs Agricultural
College of that state. There were several
cards telling what a number of this new type of Yankee farmer
possessed and what they made their possessions yield them. There
was one farm at Ellington, consisting of 260 acres, which was
valued at $12,000, and on which there was a mortgage of $6,500. On
it were thirty-five cattle, three horses, poultry and, surprising
to relate, three pigs. Last year the owner made $4,000 from his
landed possessions. Hew was not the only farmer on the list owning
porkers Others of less annual income reported the presence of pigs
on their estates, without telling why they harbored these animals,
so abhorred by the Jew, or indicating what they did with them.
Most of the farms were not so ostentatious as this one, which
headed the list.
JEWISH IMMIGRANTS EARNING $550 A YEAR ON A FARM NEAR THIS CITY.
There was Abraham Goldstein, who had invested $300 and signed a
mortgage of $1,250, who was making an income of from $500 to $600
a year out of milk, eggs, butter and fruit and adding to his
receipts by keeping summer boarders in his nine room house. With
two exceptions, all of the houses had over six rooms, one having
as many as eighteen, and few had fewer than eight rooms, into
practically all of which the sunlight poured on every pleasant
day. WOODBINE'S PROGRESS.
Down in Southern New Jersey, he learned, there is a village of
Woodbine, containing a population of more than two thousand,
settled by Jews. Here is the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School
for Jews. At Norma, Rosenhayn, Carmel, Alliance, Brotmanville and
Garton Road, in the neighborhood, are colonies of Jews, including
more than 250 farmers. Scores of pictures showed them picking
peaches, gathering grapes from their vineyards, cultivating sweet
potatoes and shipping them to market. The Jewish farmers of this
neighborhood, he found, had formed a union to protect their
interests. Shipping through the union they secure better freight
rates, for they can ship in quantities.
They also secure better prices, for they can
market their goods through one man instead of competing with one
another. A pamphlet described the National
Farm School at Doylestown, Penn., which was established several
years ago for the training of young Jews in the science of
agriculture, and which has been commended by President Roosevelt
and Secretary Wilson of the Department of Agriculture. Several of
its former students are employed by the department, and it is
turning away applicants for admission every year.
The exhibit also contained information about the educational,
the religious and the social opportunities for Jews in each of the
neighborhoods where Jewish farmers have settled. The Jew is
anxious to have an opportunity to visit the synagogue
occasionally, facilities for the education of his children and a
chance to marry his daughters to Jewish young men. An isolated
Jewish farmer would be cut off from the former and when his
daughters mature into marriageable maidens, they too would be cut
off from opportunity for mating with their co-religionists.
Up to the roof garden of the Alliance Building the visitor
climbed. There he found in a booth made of green boughs the fruits
of several Jewish farms. There were stalks of prize corn, mammoth
prize pumpkins and squashes, with the names of the growers grown
into them. There were bunches of asters, evidently gathered from
the beds of the farms.
JEWISH IMMIGRANTS MAKING $350 A YEAR IN AN EAST SIDE SWEATSHOP.
(By courtesy of the Consumers' League.)
The visitor thought of the contracting picture
presented to the mind of the Jewish immigrant who chanced to be
standing at his side. On the East Side this serious faced
representative of the flood of tens of thousands of Russian,
Rumanian and Austrian Jews pouring into the overcrowded ghetto and
the producing members of his family together were earning on an
average $7 a week, or a little over $350 a year, bending over the
ceaselessly whirring sewing machine of the sweatshop. He was
spending a quarter of these earnings for the use of three or four
rooms and the privilege of becoming a victim of the "white
plague." Out of the remainder of the family of seven was being
fed, clothed and warmed. On the farm was a comfortable house,
roomy enough to accommodate his family and summer boarders
besides. He could secure fresh vegetables, and there was an income
of at least $500 or $600 a year. Was the exhibition a painting of
a promised land unattainable to those whom it would most benefit?
The visitor turned to one of the directors of the exhibition:
"How do these men with their beggarly incomes, buy farms?" he
asked. FAIR CHANCE FOR ALL.
"We have worked it all out," he replied, "so that any man who
shows a desire to leave the ghetto and take up the life of a
farmer can begin with a fair chance for making a success of it.
Our scheme is founded on business principles, and no effort is
made to force a man to leave the city. The desire must find
expression in a request before we will aid him in this direction.
Our desire is to develop successful colonies which will serve as
examples and centres which will be congenial. Every successful
farmer is an additional argument for leaving the city, and every
successful Jewish community is a discourse on that subject.
Assured of the right surroundings, the path is made easy for the
sweatshop worker to leave the old conditions and enter the new.
"We do not buy him a farm and start him off without knowing
whether he will be a success or not. We test him for a year. A
couple of years ago the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid
Society of this city bought the Indian Head Farm, at King's Park,
Long Island, containing five hundred acres of land, spending
something over $33,000 for it. When a man asks for an opportunity
to become a farmer we send him out to this test farm, as we call
it. He must spend a year there, learning the various operations of
farming under modern conditions. He is permitted to take his
entire family with him, and half a double farmhouse, containing
five or six rooms, is assigned to him. For this he pays a rental
of $1 a week. He has the free use of a piece of land for a garden,
in which he can raise vegetables. Some of those who have been
there have had cows also. We encourage him to make use of our
facilities in this way, for it aids him in securing knowledge and
encourages him to continue the occupation. The man and any
children beyond school age work on the farm under the supervision
of a skilled man, the superintendent. For this work he receives a
dollar a day, so he starts with a better income than the average
immigrant secures in the ghetto. If he sticks to the work for a
year and shows promise of being a successful farmer, we buy a farm
for him valued at $1,200 or $1,300 in a Jewish colony and lend him
$500 in addition for the purpose of purchasing implements and
stock and establishing himself. He pays for the farm and returns
the loan, with interest, in moderate installments. Not all of
those who go out to the test farm prove themselves good material,
Some stay only long enough to learn how a hoe handle feels in
their unaccustomed hands and turn their faces back to the crowded
city. One day is long enough to satisfy some of the would-be
farmers. Others stay as long as three months and then quit.
"One man took his family out and spent an entire year. Three of
his children, two boys and a girl, the former twenty and seventeen
years old, respectively, and the latter about eighteen, were
employed on the farm besides himself. Together they received $14 a
week. At the end of the year he wanted to buy a 50-acre farm,
valued at $3,000. It was thought that that would be too much of a
burden for him, and that he could not work so much land to
advantage. It was suggested that he take twenty-five acres to
start with. He declined to accept anything less than his demand,
and returned to the city with his wife and family of several
children, leaving behind the oldest son, who refused to accompany
him. He went into the pushcart business and is making about $4 a
week. His daughter and the seventeen year-old son went into the
sweatshops again. His wife was taken sick and had to have an
operation performed. The daughter is now at home taking care of
her and the family. The boy was run over in the street and is in
the hospital. The income of the family, instead of being $14 a
week, with a rent of only $4 a month, is now the amount that the
head of the family can make with his pushcart. The rent is at
least twice as much as he paid in the country.
MODEL FARMS. "At some of our colonies we
have thoroughly trained farmers conducting model farms so that the
beginners can see for themselves what they ought to do and how and
when to do it, in order to make their farms successful. We have
one in connection with the Baron De Hirsch Agricultural School at
Woodbine, N.J., and another, owned by Maurice Fels, in the
neighborhood of the other South Jersey colonies. In December,
1904, A. W. Rich, the founder of the Milwaukee Agricultural
Association, purchased a quantity of land in the central part of
Wisconsin at Arpin and settled a colony of twelve families there
with a manager to conduct a model farm. "The
Jewish Agriculturists' Aid Society of America, with headquarters
in Chicago, looks after the Jewish farmers of the West. Many Jews
have bought farms without assistance from the aid societies at the
start, but have found themselves in need of funds. The aid
societies, which are backed by the De Hirsch fund in a large
measure, then lend money to these, taking mortgages on the
property as security. "The Jewish
agricultural school at Woodbine has been attended by as many as a
hundred persons at one time and the one at Doylestown to the limit
of its capacity. "The movement to clear out
the congested districts, of course, is only in its infancy. We are
laying the foundations, feeling sure that eventually they will
grow naturally. We hope the news of the farming possibilities will
reach Russia, for there are two or three thousand Jewish farmers
in Southern Russia. People here seem to think that the Jews are
unaccustomed to life in the country. One little girl who came to
New York from Russia exhibited her ignorance of this country by
remarking: " There are no trees in America like there are in
Russia, are there?" She had lived in the country all her life. The
Russian Jew thinks that New York is the only place in America. One
who was starting for Boston recently told his friends he was going
"somewhere out in the country--to Boston.'
"We believe that getting the Jew out into the country is the best
way to Americanize him. When he owns a little property, pays taxes
and finds himself in a position to have a responsible part in the
government he quickly becomes Americanized. What the farm does for
the Jew is illustrated in an instance related by Rabbi Levy,
secretary of the Jewish Agriculturists' Aid Society. In 1903 he
made an inspection tour through some of the Western states,
visiting the Jewish farmers. He came to Wilton, N. D., and found
there on a farm a Jew who had come from New York the year previous
with his wife and eight children. He lived like all the other
Jewish farmers in North Dakota, on a tract of 160 acres. Although
it was his first summer as a farmer, he had already made important
improvements. He had worked thirty-five acres, upon which he had
planted flax, grain, potatoes and garden truck. He was assisted in
the work by his eighteen year-old son and a daughter. The man and
his wife understood the circumstances. They knew that they had to
face a tremendous amount of work, but they were prepared for it.
The satisfaction with which they expressed their view of the
future and the joy with which they and their children worked, all
gave evidence that they were bound to succeed.
"The visitors noticed among the possessions of the family a
photograph which they had saved from the period of the ghetto
life. The family had been in the grocery business on the East
Side. The picture displayed the entire family arrayed in the
splendor befitting the family of an East Side grocer, and the
grocer in that part of the city is somebody. The father wore a
heavy chain and watch. The wife was well bedecked with earrings
and other jewelry and the children wore a fine display of lace and
ribbons. One of the visitors remarked on the fine appearance of
the family, and said that such finery would hardly be appreciated
on the farm where there was no one to see it.
"'It is very fortunate, replied the farmer's wife, 'that we do
not need that kind of thing now. There in New York we were working
for clothes and style and nothing else. Here on the farm we clothe
ourselves in order to work to create for ourselves a home.'
"There you have the contrast drawn between the artificial life
on the East Side amid squalid surroundings, and a home under
natural conditions." The Gentile left the
exhibition convinced that the question could be answered in the
affirmative. |