panics, the United States
alone absorbed more than 100,000 emigrants, over 42,000 of whom
succeeded in arriving the same year, while 76,000 were held back in
various European centers and managed to come over the year after. The
following two years show again the former annual ratio of emigration,
wavering between 30,000 to 35,000.

The same fateful year of 1891 gave rise to a colonization fever even in
quiet Palestine. Already in the beginning of 1890 the Russian Government
had legalized the Palestinian colonization movement in Russia by
sanctioning the constitution of the "Society for Granting Assistance to
Jewish Colonists and Artisans in Syria and Palestine," which had its
headquarters in Odessa. [1] This sanction enabled the _Hobebe Zion_
societies which were scattered all over the country to group themselves
around a legalized center and collect money openly for their purposes.
The Palestinian propaganda gained a new lease of life. This propaganda,
which was intensified in its effect by the emigration panic of the
"terrible year," resulted in the formation of a number of societies in
Russia with the object of purchasing land in Palestine. In the beginning
of 1891 delegates of these societies suddenly appeared in Palestine _en
masse_, and, with the co-operation of a Jaffa representative of the
Odessa Palestine Society, began feverishly to buy up the land from the
Arabs. This led to a real estate speculation which artificially raised
the price of land. Moreover, the Turkish Government became alarmed, and
forbade the wholesale colonization of Jews from Russia. The result was a
financial crash.

[Footnote 1: The first president of the Society was the exponent of the
idea of "Antoemancipation," Dr. Leon Pinsker, who occupied this post
until his death, at the end of 1891.]

The attempt at a wholesale immigration into destitute Palestine with its
primitive patriarchal conditions proved a failure. During the following
years the colonization of the Holy Land with Russian Jews proceeded
again at a slow pace. One colony after another rose gradually into
being. A large part of the old and the new settlers were under the
charge of Baron Rothschild's administration, with the exception of two
or three colonies which were maintained by the Palestine Society in
Odessa. It was evident that, in view of the slow advance of the
Palestinian colonization, its political and economic importance for the
Russian-Jewish millions was pract