During the 19th century, the Jewish population increased in Erez Israel, and Sir Moses Montefiore among others formulated plans for settling Jews on the land. The Mikveh Israel agricultural school was founded in 1870 and a little later the first Jewish colonies, Moza and Petah Tikvah sprang up. In 1881, the American consul in Jerusalem noted that 1,000 Jewish families were earning their livelihood from agriculture. Colonization gained new strength from the First Aliyah in 1882, and from then and until today the extent of Jewish agricultural settlement has been constantly expanding. Agricultural use of the land began with the Jewish Settlement of 1878. The development of agriculture was characterized by the penetration of active Western forces into a backward, primitive agricultural economy, and their revolutionizing influences on the fabric of life and economy. The transformation was both economic and technological. Extensive investment of capital, transition to modern agriculture both at home and abroad, and new technical methods that raised the productivity of labor and the fertility of soil, combined to shift the emphasis from primitive self-sufficient farming, based on low productivity and cheap labor, to a highly commercialized, modern agricultural industry. The new ventures upon which Jewish settlers embarked wrought fundamental changes in the character of the country's agriculture.