Antwerp, and London, imploring to be transferred to the United States or to the Argentinian colonies.  Everywhere relief committees were being organized, but there was no way of forwarding the emigrants to their new destination, particularly to Argentina, where the large territories purchased by Hirsch were not yet ready for the reception of colonists.  Baron Hirsch was compelled to send out an appeal to all Jewish communities, calling upon they to stem for the present this disorderly human avalanche.

Ere long Baron Hirsch’s dream of transplanting millions of people with millions of money proved an utter failure.  When, after long preparations, the selected Jewish colonists were at last dispatched to Argentina, it was found that the original figure of 25,000 emigrants calculated for the first year had shrunk to about 2500.  Altogether, during the first three years, from 1892 to 1894, the Argentinian emigration absorbed some six thousand people.  Half of these remained in the capital of the republic, in Buenos Ayres, while the other half managed to settle in the colonies, after enduring all the hardships connected with an agricultural colonization in a new land and under new climatic conditions.  A few years later it was commonly realized that the mountain had given birth to a mouse.  Instead of the million Jews, as originally planned, the Jewish Colonization Association succeeded in transplanting during the first decade only 10,000 Jews, who were distributed over six Argentinian colonies.

The main current of Jewish emigration flowed as heretofore in the direction of North America, towards the United States and Canada.  In the course of the year 1891, with its numerous 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.