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MENNONITE EMIGRATION TO PENNSYLVANIA.
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ever, in Holland, one-half of the fare must be paid and additional provisions, etc., secured, viz.: twenty-four pounds of dried beef, fifteen pounds of cheese, and eight and a quarter pounds of butter. Indeed, they were advised to provide themselves still more liberally with edibles, and with garden seeds and agricultural implements, linen, shirts, beds, table goods, powder and lead, furniture, earthenware, stoves, and especially money to buy “seeds, salt, horses, swine, and fowls,” to be taken along with them. All of these things would indeed cost a large sum, but what did that signify in comparison with the luxury which was promised them? Should not the Netherland brethren quickly and gladly furnish this last assistance? So thought the Palatine brethren. It is not to be wondered at, however, that the “committee on foreign needs” judged differently. They knew how much exaggeration there was in the picture painted by the English agent. They thought they were not authorized to consent to a request for assistance in the payment of travelling expenses, since the money was intrusted to them to be expended alone for the persecuted, and the brethren in the Palatinate were then tolerated; they feared the emigrants would call for more money; and in a word they opposed the plan most positively, and explained that if it was persisted in no help need be expected. Their objection however accomplished nothing. In reply to their views, the committee received information, March 20th, that more than a hundred persons had started, and three weeks later they heard from Rotterdam that those already coming numbered three hundred, among whom were four very needy families who required 600 f. for their passage, and that thirty others were getting ready to leave Neuwied. Though the committee had declared positively in their letters that they would