One of the early programs of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, an umbrella organization of Reform congregations, was to encourage new immigrants to leave the inner-city ghettos and settle in agricultural colonies. In 1881 the Union established an Educational and Agricultural Fund, which was to be financed by the sale of 200,000 certificates at a price of five dollars each. To publicize the campaign, the following year the executive board of the Union authorized the printing of 15,000 copies of an eight-page pamphlet containing this facsimile of a certificate. With just 1,108 certificates having been sold in a ten-year period, in December of 1891 the fund was judged a failure and the Union’s Annual Report records that the “Secretary was instructed to cancel and destroy the . . . Certificates which had not been disposed of.” 

Date: 1882

Place: Cincinnati

BM197.U52 1882 (Abraham and Deborah Karp Collection)