Summary
The commission whose Report of the Experts Simpson’s 1930 report relies on throughout: Strahorn’s soil survey, the Experts’ Table I, Dr. Elwood Mead and his Associates on the power and principles of the General Federation of Jewish Labour, and Sir John Campbell’s Report on the Jewish Settlements in the same volume (Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, lines 445, 2841-2895).
Details
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Simpson draws on Dr. Strahorn’s soil survey (p.143-236 of the Experts’ Report) and reproduces Strahorn’s soil map as Map No. 4 of his own report; Strahorn’s figure for the plains, 4,055,002 metric dunams, is close to the Director of Surveys’ 4,094,000 for the same area (lines 445, 589-613, 685-733).
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The viable-holding figures Simpson sets side by side in Chapter VI include the Joint Palestine Survey Commission’s 160-dunam minimum dry farm, with 240 dunams safer, and the Experts’ 160 to 320 dunams by soil (lines 1485-1535).
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The Experts’ Report Table I (p.72), as updated by statements supplied by “Dr. Kuppin” (as printed), is among the statistical bases Simpson examines in Chapter V (lines 1155-1250).
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Henriques on the Huleh drainage (Experts, p.400) is quoted in Chapter VII (lines 1791-1945).
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The question of the power, the principles and the activities of the General Federation of Jewish Labour was discussed by Dr. Elwood Mead and his Associates at pp.51-53 of the Experts’ Report: they found the rate at which colonies were founded, the selection of settlers and the organisation and equipment of the Colonization Department largely influenced, if not controlled, by the Federation, and their major conclusion No.4 was that the Department of Agricultural Colonization be reorganised under officials committed to self-sustaining agriculture rather than to a new social and economic order. In the same volume (p.436), Sir John Campbell’s Report on the Jewish Settlements found that effective practical control had passed from the Palestine Executive to a political organization. Simpson concludes that these extracts describe the position in 1930 “with remarkable accuracy” (lines 2841-2895).
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The Jewish Agency’s July 1930 memorandum relies on the Commission’s Report for its regional areas, while reading its “irrigable” category as conditional on water being available: the Agency experts put Maritime Plain water actually available at economic depth at 1,117,000 new dunams against the Commission’s 2,354,500 old dunams of irrigable soil, and argue against Strahorn’s 300,000-dunam ceiling for irrigated plantation, proposing 500,000 dunams suitable for citrus (Palestine: Land Settlement, Urban Development and Immigration, PDF p.27-30).
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The memorandum quotes the Commission on the Huleh as “the largest and potentially most valuable body of agricultural land in Palestine” (Report p.61), uses Henriques (pp.400, 401, 406) and Strahorn (pp.179, 183) on the Huleh and Beisan, and sets the Commission’s 30,000 irrigable dunams for the Lower Jordan Valley (p.22) against its own 252,000-dunam cultivable area suited to date palms (PDF p.37-49).
Related pages
Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development, Lot viable, Histadrut, John Hope Simpson