Palestine]
aries, and before the war employed three or four thousand women and girls), but also in the Lebanon, at Jerusalem, Nazareth, Jaffa, Aleppo, and other places.
There are also a number of miscellaneous industries, of which the following deserve mention:—
Oil and soap production. Olive oil. Most of the presses in use are still of the primitive wooden kind, and slow and wasteful in working, though during the last 20 years many have been replaced by iron screwpresses or hydraulic machines; in 1911 there were already about 80 of the last in the Lebanon. The number of oil presses in the country is not ascertained, but may well be 600-800, employing on an average 10 workmen each. There is also a large native factory at Tripoli engaged in the chemical extraction of oil from the refuse olive cake, which when not so utilised is burnt as fuel. A second factory of this kind was installed shortly before the war at Beirut by an English firm. The extraction of edible oil must take place very soon after the olives are gathered, the tendency to ferment being accelerated by the native method of knocking the berries from the trees with sticks. Less than half of the 22,000 tons produced annually, representing a value of some 25,000,000 frs., is fit for food or export, the remainder being used for soap. The oil is at present hardly equal in quality to the best European.
Sesame oil is produced as an article of food at Aleppo and Damascus, but chiefly in the mutessariflik of Jerusalem, where there are some forty small factories at Jaffa, Ludd, Jerusalem, Ramle, &c., each capable of treating 150-200 kg. of sesame daily, from which about 45 per cent. of oil is extracted by primitive methods. Better results are obtained by two Jewish factories at Jaffa, working with hydraulic presses. Unpressed sesame is made into a popular sweetmeat. The pressed cake is used as fodder, and also by the poor for food.
