The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-07-06

places in Palestine, but this only is of
 the heart"
 Selma Lagerlof, the Swedish novelist, visited the colony once, spent a day with
 number of Swedes who form part of
 the colony's membership, and went away.
 Six months later, the colony received a letter from her in whict. she told them
 that she had written book suggested
 to her by her visit to the colony. It was
 her novel, Jerusalem" and those who
 have read it may imagine how the col
 ony touched her heart. But stranger
 than the fact that we have had a book
 written about us,' MT. Spafford told me,
 lis the fact that none of us has ever
 read it. Somebody sent us a copy in
 Swedish and somebody later sent us
 copy in English, but the opening chap
 ters of it were so bizarre that none of
 us ever got farther into it than the first four pages"
 The industrial organization of the col ony aims at being as nearly self-suffi-
 cient as possible. All the ordinary work of the colony is performed by its own
 members, even to it's dentistry, one of the
 members having taken up the study of dentistry solely to be of use to his fellow
 members. The lower grades of work, such as ,scullery work, are performed in large part by the colony's Arab depend- ents and much of the work in it's vege- table gardens is performed by the natives whom it feeds and clothes and educates. It occupies at present one large build ing which contains the living quarters of most of it's members and seven smaller dwellings, all grouped on both sides of
 the Nablus road quite inconspicuously. And it's own members and it's dependents perform all it's work.
 It makes its living chiefly through the photographs of Palestine for which it is by this time close to famous. When 1t was started, weaving, carpentry and other
 trades were taken up. but some 15 years ago, it was presented with a small ca mera. The lens was taken out of 1t and a larger camera was built in its own carpentry shop. Efforts were made to take one or two pictures to order, and these proved so successful that Fr. Yes ter, who conducted an olive-wood soul venir and photograph shop in Jerusalem entered into an arrangement to use all
 of the conoy's output of photographs. The colony had barely gotten it's work under way to satisfy the demand for pictures
 at Vester's store when a German photog-
 rapher acting in the interests of a Ger
 man illustrated newspaper, secured the colony's help in getting photograph of the Rabbi of Jerusalem who had made it a rule never to allow his photograph to be taken. In return for the photo graphs of the rabbi the German left the colony his camera So the. colonys large business in photographs was begun. Since that day, Vester has joined the
 colony, his shop has become the Amerf-
 can colony store and the colony's photog- rapher has covered Palestine like blan-
 ket There Is today hardly a spot in Palestine which the colony has not "done" either in photographs or lantern slides.
 The first year that it took over Yes
 ters shop, the profits of the shop dou-
 bled. The second year they doubled
 again. The third year they doubled
 again and the colony became chiefly de-
 pendent on the shop for its income. The
 fourth year the war began, the shops S income was cut off and the colony was
 left almost without a cent of income.