Report to the ... Zionist Congress and to the Council of the Jewish Agency in ... · 1935-08-01 · 8.1935 · p. Seite 438

instances, when the work was of an urgent public importance, such as the new Power House of the Palestine Electric Corporation at Haifa, or the extension works at the Dead Sea, the necessary labour force could only be recruited by dint of special organisation and moral pressure. The Dead Sea Works lost again, in the half-year under review, 23% of their personnel. The development of industry continued to be hampered, certain industries being particularly handicapped by the. utterly inadequate supply of woman labour. There were more resignations of Jewish policemen and railwaymen, lured away by higher wages elsewhere. Altogether the mechanism of economic life in this country of immigration was reversed and instead of labour pressing on the resources of employment, the dominant factor of the situation has been a pressure, growing in scope and intensity, of the forces of development upon a limited labour supply. The result has been not only a quantitative damage, measured by slower progress than otherwise possible and by restricted opportunities, but a fundamental qualitative change. What has been witnessed for the last year in the economic life of the Jewish community is a structural transformation threatening to sap the basis of a healthy development of the Jewish National Home and to recreate in Palestine the very dangers and evils from which immigration into Palestine was intended to save the Jews. In its memorandum on labour requirements for the schedule period April—October, 1935, dated March 12th, 1935, the Executive again stated : The Jewish Agency has to take note with deep regret of the failure of its efforts to induce the Government to admit immigrants of the working class in such numbers as would effectively relieve the labour shortage. The Executive considers that its forecasts of labour requirements have again been borne out by the facts of the situation which reveal a wide discrepancy between the supply of immigrant labour and the demand. The principal effects of the labour scarcity continue to be (1) an abnormally high wage-level in the building trade, forcing industry to raise wages out of proportion to its capacity and luring away workers from agriculture; (2) delay of urgent works and the consequent check to development; (3) loss of Jewish positions in the police, on the railways, in public works and other services; (4) a state of virtual compulsion for employers willing to employ Jews to resort to Arab labour; (5) an inordinate increase of Arab labour in Jewish undertakings, especially in agriculture, but also in the building and other trades; (6) an increased influx of cheap labour from the neighbouring countries. All these phenomena seem never to have been manifested in a more acute form than at the time of writing. 5. In the manifesto which it issued immediately after the 18th Congress the Executive placed the attainment of an increased rate of Jewish immigration in the forefront of its programme. Two members of the Palestine Executive proceeded from the Congress to London to convey, in conjunction with the London Executive, the views of Congress to the Colonial Office, laying particular stress on the subject of immigration. At the same time, the member in charge of the Political Department in Jerusalem returned to Palestine to conduct the negotiations on the autumn schedule of 1933, the grant of which was then impending. The application for that schedule had in the meantime been' submitted by the Provisional Executive, which had acted during the Congress period. The total applied for amounted to 24,500. The High 438