Present-Day Economic and Social Conditions 255
constructive history than in Egypt. Immediately after the First
World War the Histadruth trades-union organization, which al-
ready played an important part in the life of the Jewish community,
sought to foster trades-unionism among the Arabs, partly in a
genuine attempt to organize the Arab workers in a way which they
themselves found good, partly to eliminate the competition of
cheap unorganized Arab labour, and partly perhaps in the hope of
stimulating among the Arabs a class-struggle which would cut
across and weaken the Arab anti-Zionist national movement.
Whatever the motives, the Zionist attempt to create a parallel Arab
trades-union movement had little success, and in 1925 the inde-
pendent and anti-Zionist Palestine Arab Workers' Society was
formed. By the outbreak of the Second World War it had sonic
17,000 members in twenty branches, representing thirty-six craft
unions; under its aegis were operated a sick fund, a saving-bank,
six co-operative stores, and a co-operative tailoring-shop. Under
the leadership of Sami Taha, a 'decent steady trades-unionist',1 its
policy was generally moderate, in view of the still modest role of
industrial labour in the economic life of Arab Palestine, and it was
usually willing to negotiate with employers or with the govern-
ment Department of Labour for the welfare of its members. The
increased demand for Arab labour in wartime activities greatly
strengthened its bargaining powers; its demands became more
exacting, and it was more ready to enforce them through strikes.
Meanwhile in 1941 a group of young Arabs with Communist
leanings, disliking the influence in the Arab Workers Society of its
legal adviser, the wealthy lawyer Hanna Asfur, had formed a rival
organization, the Federation of Arab Trades Unions, with some
i ,500 members in Haifa and supporters in other towns. This group,
profiting from the more lenient attitude of the police towards left-
wing activities following the Russian entry into the war, began a
weekly newspaper Al-Ittihad, edited by its secretary Emil Tuma.
In August 1945 a major secession from the Arab Workers Society
occurred, the majority revolting against the influence of Hanna
Asfur and joining the Federation of Arab Trades Unions in a new
left-wing organization, the Palestine Arab Workers* Congress,
electing Bulos Farah, a product of the Comintern Training School
in Moscow, as one of their delegates to the International Trades
Unions Congress in Paris. In January 1947 the Arab Workers' Con-
1 He was murdered by an extreme nationalist, September 1947,