CHAPTER VII 



A CALL TO THE LAND 



TN January, 1889, my husband received letters from 

 old friends in New York saying that large funds 

 had been donated to America by Baron de Hirsch, of 

 France, the money to be used in settling Jewish immi- 

 grants on the land as farmers. Dr. Kaplan, Herman 

 Rosenthal and Selig Rosenbluth had been asked by 

 the Committee appointed to administer the Fund, to 

 join them and help them with their great task. They 

 were representative of the intelligent Russians of the 

 East Side. The members of the American Committee 

 of the Baron .de Hirsh Fund were among the best 

 known persons in New York. Such men as Jacob 

 Schiff, Dr. Julius Goldman, Judge M. S. Isaacs, the 

 late James H. Hoffman, Oscar Straus, Henry Rice, 

 William B. Hackenburg and Judge Meyer Sulzberger, 

 of Philadelphia, served on the Committee. 



A month later another letter came asking my husband 

 to give in writing his ideas upon the subject of "Farm- 

 ing for the Russian Jew." With great enthusiasm 

 indeed he took up this task. The old dream that like 

 a flame smouldered in his heart blazed up, and that 

 never-forgotten "Back to the Land" cry awoke in him 

 again. The Russian Jew, who of necessity has become 



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