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No. 9. | Vienna, 1st March 1901. | Fifth Year

A Relief Action in Aid of the Distressed Jewish Population in Galicia.

The World Union of the Israelitish Humanitarian Societies "B'nai B'rith" is planning a relief action in aid of the distressed Galician Jews. Guided by the correct perception that even a partial alleviation of the Galician Jewish distress requires a far-reaching organisation, the Austrian Union of the "B'nai B'rith" intends to attach to a Central Relief Society (with its seat in Vienna) branch societies throughout the world, in order to render the material and spiritual forces of all Jews willing to work and ready to help serviceable to its action. To the "B'nai B'rith" alone there belong, it is said, 25,000 members, who will for the greater part doubtless join the relief societies. By that alone the action presents itself from the outset as capable of life.

Upon the object of the relief societies the statutes of the society say:

§ 1.
The Relief Society for the distressed Jewish population in Galicia has for its object to improve the material position of the Jews in Galicia and to raise their level of culture so far as may be possible.

§ 2.
This object shall be striven after, in particular, by:

1. The creation of work and other means of gain for the Jewish population of Galicia, the establishment of home industries, of central buying and selling depots for industrial and agricultural products, and, should occasion arise, the subventioning of industrial undertakings still to be founded.
2. The establishment of technical trade schools, the creation of stipends for handicraft apprentices, and the arrangement of lectures by itinerant teachers.
3. The procuring of cheap and easy credit for industry, for handicraft, for husbandry and commerce, through the establishment of loan banks.
4. The turning to agriculture.

As is known, the Fourth Zionist Congress gave the Zionists definite directives upon the question of the economic raising of the Jews, which are to form the foundations of an economic programme for the Zionists of all countries. These directives relate to the training of the masses for the economic struggle and to provision during work and in the time of unemployment. They run:

1. Training for the economic struggle:
   a) Preparation for the calling chosen, become necessary through the closing of the public schools against Jews.
   b) The creation of trade associations and trade unions.
2. Provision during work and in the time of unemployment:
   a) Provision for sickness, invalidity and old age.
   b) The finding of employment and insurance against unemployment.
3. Measures for economic emancipation:
   a) The making possible of self-production (productive co-operative societies).
   b) The opening up of markets for this production.
   c) The creation of credit co-operatives, loan banks, raw-material co-operatives and consumers' unions.

One sees: what the Zionists plan and prepare in economic respects for all countries, and in part also demand in their Cultusgemeinde programme, is on the whole what the "B'nai B'rith" likewise plan for Galicia. We can therefore assuredly greet their undertaking only with sympathy, even if we must assume that its founders indulge in over-bold hopes with regard to the success of their action. We need not first set forth and demonstrate to Zionist readers that the Galician Jewish question, like the Jewish question of all other countries, can never and by no means be solved through relief actions which are not Zionist in their ultimate aims. The way which we go is clearly marked out: we desire to sustain the poor Jewish masses of the people by the unfolding of a social-political activity (in the widest sense of the word) so long until the Jewish question finds its solution in the establishment of a Jewish homestead.

For the greater number of the "B'nai B'rith", doubtless, the Galician relief action is first and last object. They believe in the possibility of the solution of the Jewish question