(E) GENERAL REMARKS
Syrian industry, as appears from the foregoing review, is at present very one-sided. Apart from agriculture, only silk-spinning in the Lebanon, the textile industry in the same district and at Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, and the production of olive oil and soap at Antioch, Tripoli, Jaffa, &c., can be said to have attained any real significance. Mining is negligible, and the absence of a home supply of both coal and petroleum has been a serious hindrance to the development of manufactures. The country therefore depends greatly upon foreign imports, and its purchasing power is much affected by the quality of the harvest and similar natural factors. Agriculture, upon which everything else hangs, has been handicapped by lack of security, adverse conditions of land tenure, and a vicious system of taxation, and has remained, except in certain favoured districts, in a backward condition. The removal of these blighting influences is the prime need. Among more special means of agricultural improvement, drainage and irrigation have already been referred to (p. 101). The various forms of arboriculture successfully practised in the Jewish settlements might be extended with advantage; in the uplands of Judaea, in particular, an adequate yield is hardly to be obtained from cereals. An assured market is, however, a necessary preliminary; the dangers of neglecting this precaution have been well seen in the experiences of the Jewish colonists in wine production. Within certain limits (cf. p. 100) something may be hoped from a more extended use of machinery.
Trade and commerce have naturally been profoundly affected by the war. In some directions, indeed, the country has profited; for instance, in the improvement of roads, more especially in the south. But there is a longer tale of loss. Apart from such obvious results as the withdrawal of labour, the losses both of men and animals and in parts the serious depopulation due to
