BIELTZY:
District town of the government of Bessarabia, Russia. At the census of 1897 the population was 18,526, including over ten thousand Jews, most of them engaged in handicrafts, but some in agriculture and commerce. There were at the same date 1,188 Jewish artisans (25 per cent of them tailors or tailoresses). In the neighborhood of Bieltzy there are many Jewish farmers, cultivating their own or rented land: 50 of them raise tobacco on rented farms covering about 405 acres of land. The economic condition of the Jews has grown worse since the government monopolized the liquor trade (1896), in which 300 Jewish families were engaged.
In 1898, 200 Jewish families petitioned for charity at Passover, and also for coal during the winter. There is a Jewish hospital, a poor-house (maintained at an annual expense of 3,700 rubles), and a Talmud Torah, attended by 135 pupils. The statistical information given here was supplied by the Jewish Colonization Association of St. Petersburg, Russia.
