The result was a financial crash.
[Footnote 1: The first president of the Society was the exponent of the idea of "Antoemancipation," Dr.Leon Pinsker, who occupied this post until his death, at the end of 1891.] The attempt at a wholesale immigration into destitute Palestine with its primitive patriarchal conditions proved a failure.

During the following years the colonization of the Holy Land with Russian Jews proceeded again at a slow pace.

One colony after another rose gradually into being.

A large part of the old and the new settlers were under the charge of Baron Rothschild's administration, with the exception of two or three colonies which were maintained by the Palestine Society in Odessa.

It was evident that, in view of the slow advance of the Palestinian colonization, its political and economic importance for the Russian-Jewish millions was practically nil and that its only advantage over and against the American emigration day in its spiritual significance, in the fact that on the historic soil of Judaism there there rose into being a small Jewish center with a purer national culture than was possible in the Diaspora.