Page:A Jewish State 1917.djvu/35

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THE JEWISH QUESTION
19

OTHER CLASSES OF DWELLINGS.

I described before only workmen's dwellings built by themselves, and omitted all mention of other classes of dwellings; these I shall now touch upon. The Company's architects will build for the poorer class of citizens also, being paid in kind or cash; about a hundred different types of houses will be executed, and, of course, repeated. These beautiful types will form part of our propaganda. The soundness of their construction will be guaranteed by the Company, which will, indeed, gain nothing by selling them to settlers at a fixed sum. And where will these houses be situated? That will shortly be demonstrated in the description of local groups.

Seeing that the Company receives, as it were, ground-rent and not house-rent, it will desire as many architects as possible to build by private contract. This system will introduce luxury, which serves many purposes. Luxury encourages arts and industries, paving the way to a future subdivision of large properties.

Rich Jews who are now obliged carefully to secrete their valuables, and to hold their dreary banquets behind lowered curtains, will be able to enjoy their possessions in peace "over there." If they cooperate in carrying out this emigration scheme, their capital will be rehabilitated there, and will have served to promote an unexampled undertaking. If rich Jews begin to rebuild their mansions in the new settlement, where they are no longer surveyed with envious eyes, it will soon become fashionable to live over there in beautiful modern houses.

SOME FORMS OF REALIZING NON-TRANSFERABLE PROPERTY

The Jewish Company is the receiver and administrator of the non-transferable goods of the Jews.

Its methods of procedure can be easily imagined in the case of houses and estates, but what methods will it adopt in the transfer of businesses?

Here numberless processes may be found practicable, which cannot all be enlarged on in this outline. But none of them will present any great difficulties, for in each case the emigrating business proprietor will settle with the Company's officers in his district on the most advantageous form of liquidation.

This will most easily be arranged in the case of small employers, in whose trades the personal activity of the proprietor is of chief importance, while goods and organization are a secondary consideration. The Company will provide a certain field of operation for the emigrant's personal activity, and will substitute a piece of ground, with loan of machinery, for his goods. Jews are known to adapt themselves with remarkable ease to any form of earning a livelihood, and they will quickly learn to carry on a new industry. In this way a number of small traders will become small landholders. The Company will, in fact, be prepared to sustain what appears to be a loss in taking over the non-transferable property of the poorest emigrants; for it will thereby induce the free cultivation of tracts of land, which raises the value of adjacent tracts.

In a larger business, where goods and organization equal, or even exceed, in importance, the personal activity of the manager, whose larger connection is also non-transferable, various forms of liquidation are possible. Here comes an opportunity for that inner migration of Christian citizens into positions evacuated by Jews. The departing Jew will not lose his personal business credit, but