New Britain herald., 1914-05-30
Jewish Farmers in Connecticut.
(New London Day.)

The first Jews to take up agricul- ture in Connecticut did so in New London county. One of them was a New London man. The very first ven- ture upon the soil made by persons of the Hebrew faith and blood was in 1891, when three families who had been assisted to employment in a Norwich woolen mill saved up money enough to buy abandoned farms near the Rose. The next year Haymin Pankin, employed in a mill in this city, bought a farm in Chesterfield. These purchases were all made with the assistance of the Baron de Hirsch fund. In the same year assisted Jews esta blished the Colchester colony. Everybody in this vicinity knows how those colonies of agriculturalists have grown and how the individual mem- bers of them Mave prospered. All over the state more and more Jews are getting onto the land and are maintaining themselves there. Some of them are becoming well-to-do.
 It would be ridiculous to claim that the Jewish farmers of Connecticut are among the best farmers in the state. It would be unreasonable to expect any such thing. The point Is that they are going upon the lana and staying there and that they are not crying for help. They are mak- ing a beginning. and it is traditional of the race that once it gained a foot hold it has never fallen back until forced to- by the prosecutions, confis- cations and outrages with which its history for hundreds of years has been marked, but which it will never ex- perience in this land. t-
 The impulse4that sends the Jew to the soil is precisely the same that sends the American, the s Irishman,z the German or the Pole to the soil It is the instinct to establish himself as his own man on ihs own little kingdom, the inborn human desire for a real home. It is the best andt most honorable impulse that ani- mates man in any age or any coun- try. It Is the true love of freedom and of the land.
 If at the beginning of racial az ricultural life, made after hundreds of years of debarment from owner ship of the soil the Jewish farmers do not always exhibit the same fa- cility for farm operation and farm labor that is exhibited by the de- scendants of true peasant peoples; if in some instances the Jew displays what appears by contrast to his neighbors as a lack of adaptability and farm sense,' there is nothing sur prising or discouraging about it. If at once he is not able to rid himself of the commercial and industrial hab- it's of many centuries, and som etimes appears to his hereditary agricultural neighbor to be inefficient, it should be rem mem bered that he is starting away back where his neighbours ancestors started many, many generations ago, and that his task is not only to make a farm but to make himself and his inherited characteristics all over again in new mold.
 Judged in this light, which is the only fair light, the Jewish farmers in Connecticut have performed and are performing wonders. It is extremely doubtful If any other race of people on earth. laboring under the same handicaps of racial experience and deprivation of opportunity could have done as well. It is quite certain none could have done better.
 The Jews as q whole are far from being our best farmers. But they are getting to be better farmers, and by and by they are going to bring to bear on the science of agriculture the same progressive, daring, enterprisins