Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania · 4 September 1927

CP-1927-002

To Salvage the Dead Sea’s Colossal Mineral Treasures

Twelve Hundred Thousand Million Dollars in the Great Holy Land Lake Where Wicked Sodom and Gomorrah Stood and Lot’s Wife Was Turned to Salt — And Four Powerful Syndicates Battle Over the Right to Take It Out

King Features Syndicate

Transcribed from the clipping

“British and American syndicates are engaged in a lively fight for the concession to explore the mineral resources of the Dead Sea… And in New York and London, business men are saying that they expect to salvage potash, bromine, gypsum and magnesium to the value of nearly $1,200,000,000,000 before they are through. That is almost exactly 290 times the British War debt to the United States. Dr. Thomas Herbert Norton, of New York, heads the American syndicate bidding for the concession. There are three others, but the British Chemical Trust is generally picked to win. Palestine is a British mandate, and the Palestine Government is administered by Englishmen… The concession which will be granted by the Palestine Government will safeguard the interests of the natives. It will not give an unrestricted monopoly. The bulk of the surplus profits will go to the Government itself, for reinvestment in Palestinian industry. The holders of the concession will be obliged to agree to furnish fertilizer to the farmers of Palestine and Transjordania at cost. Part of the wealth realized will be spent in establishing vocational training schools in which natives will be trained to take important posts in industry and public life… Black Arabs today dig for salt at the bottoms of the lagoons along the shore, sometimes forming little companies to market the product, or banding together in cooperative groups.… Fascinating country, all of it, the Holy Land. And destined, so the London financiers say, to bloom again. In the meantime, the Dead Sea country is sparsely inhabited. Most of the natives are Arabs who farm a little and rove a little. Tomorrow the Dead Sea may hum with trade… Zionists are taking a keen interest in the oil development, and this later project to salvage the wealth of minerals in the sea.”

Photograph caption

“Black Arabs, a Strange and Little Known Race, Dredging by Hand the Salt Deposited by the Dead Sea in the Shallow Water of Its Shores, as They Have Done for Centuries.”

Context added by this archive

A full page on who will be permitted to extract a trillion dollars from the Dead Sea. The people already working it appear twice: once in a photograph caption as a strange and little known race doing by hand what they have done for centuries, and once in the text as natives to be trained for important posts once somebody else owns the concession.

Cite this item

"To Salvage the Dead Sea’s Colossal Mineral Treasures," Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 4 September 1927. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1927-002. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1927-002

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• Glory Of Ancient Palestine May Be Restored By JewsThe News Journal · 13 March 1927 · the same year
• Bishop Dunn Denies Modernization of Palestine by Jews Reduces Sanctity of Holy LandBuffalo Jewish Review · 29 April 1927 · the same year
• World Zionist Org. Seeks Palestine Economic FactsWisconsin Jewish Chronicle · 20 May 1927 · the same year