{"value"=>"<p>Correspondence, financial statements, memoranda, reports, minutes, printed matter, photographs, maps, and drawings.</p> <p> Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank, Ltd. (PMCB) was organized in 1922 (as, simply, Mortgage Bank) by the Palestine Cooperative Company, Inc., at a time when no mortgage legislation had been enacted in the country. With the takeover of that company's assets in Palestine by PEC, the bank become another of its subsidiaries, in the same way as had Central Bank.</p> <p> PMCB was the first institution to provide mortgage loans in Palestine; but its pioneering work was not bounded by lending activity. The bank was involved in the construction as well as the financing of low-cost housing for workers, in both rural and urban areas. From the outset of its operations, PMCB began establishing means of governing relations between borrowers, lenders, and contractors. It was also the first to set standards for construction: for example, that houses must be planned by architects, competitively bid for by contractors, and supervised in their construction by qualified experts. Last but not least, the bank required that the purchase price of the resulting home be within the financial means of the owner.</p> <p> Toward that end, standardized houses, whose design was the result of prize competitions among architects, were built in groups of 25 or more, so that costs could be brought down and the savings passed on to the buyers. All phases of a housing project, from the preliminary drafting of plans, to financing and construction and the provision of public amenities, to the organization of the new community's settlers, were closely administered by PMCB.</p> <p> With respect to rural settlements, the aim was to enable agricultural workers to own their own home, along with a plot of ground for raising their own food. PMCB supplied loans to borrowers of the lowest economic strata, who had been denied loans from existing credit cooperatives whose funds were provided by PEC through the Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions, Ltd.</p>"}