"كتيّب سوريا (بما في ذلك فلسطين). لندن: إدارة استخبارات الأركان البحرية، يونيو ١٩١٩" [و‎‎٩‎٧] (٧٣٨/١٩٨)

INCREASE AND DECREASE
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have also migrated especially to America owing to the
difficulties placed in the way of their cultivation of tobacco,
which for a time had brought them great prosperity. The
Government monopoly rendered both sale and purchase by
private contract risky, and while no tobacco was allowed to
be used which did not bear the Government stamp, the price
which the authorities paid the producers was insufficient to
render the cultivation remunerative. After the monopoly
had been in existence ten years, the land owned by the
villagers had been sold to the merchants of the towns, or
had become the property of money-lenders, while the culti
vators had emigrated to America.
Statistics of the total number of the emigrants are not
obtainable. In 1905, when the process had been going on
for at least thirty years, it was calculated that a quarter of
a million Syrians had emigrated during that period, about
a quarter of the whole number going to the United States,
50.000 to South America, 25,000 to Central America, 10,000
to Australia, the rest to Africa, India, the Philippines, &c.
In 1914 calculations varied from 570,000 to 1,000,000 ;
the latter figure was, however, thought to include children
born to the exiles.
For the Argentine Republic there are official figures.
According to th^se the years 1880-90 together brought some
1.000 Syrian immigrants. From 1890 to 1897 the numbers
did not exceed 100 annually, until the last year, which brought
1,000; 1906 brought 7,000 ; and 1909 over 7,000. The
proclamation of the Ottoman constitution in 1908 did not,
as might have been expected, reduce the immigration but
rather increased it; this increase being due partly to the
confusion which followed on that proclamation, partly to the
objection to the military service which the Constitution
enforced on the Christian and Jewish subjects of the Porte.
It is asserted that the Syrian immigrants into Ameiica
rarely take any part in agriculture, preferring trade. In
Argentina the original immigrants all followed this occupa
tion, chiefly taking goods to villages where there was a lack