The Portland daily press., 1886-06-25
MODERN PERSIA.
The Corrupt Land which Mr.. Wins
ton Hastens to Leave.
Anxiety of the Shah to Have AmerI-
cans Build Railways.
MODERN PERSIA.
New York Times.


Progress and all material Improvement are
| impossible in Persia under the present state
of things. The existing government Is OF
| the Shah, by the Shah, for the ohah-that
and nothing else. The higher Offices are all
| farmed out to men more or less In the favor
| of the Shah or his fayorite relativesand eour-
| tiers They change hands whenever IL Is
the pleasure of the Shah. If man has the
favor of the Shah he can commit the most
despicable acts, can be guilty OF bestial VICES
can extort money out of those in his power
| by the most cruel methods, and enrlch MIN
| self at the expense of the country, can let
| his Province go to complete waste ana ruin'
| and no one will be there to hinder him.
1t stands to reason that the tax collector,
under such circumstances, is inyarlaDiy
man open to arguments, and the more peo-
pie with persuasive tomanes he excuses from
taxation, the more people unable to bribe
him have to make up for it. The most terri
BILE acts of cruelty are frequently practiced
by these men in the exercise of their func-
tions after this fashion: heard of ease
few days ago in the neighborhood Of Koum,
where small landholder had been lashed
to a stake and thus left exposed to the broil-
ing sun without food or drink for days till be
betrayed the hiding place of his neighbOr-
his son-in-law-who had ran away to evade
paying taxes. The victim afterward died
from the effects of this treatment. All such
occurrences are made light of by the Persian
officials as not worthy your breath or notice.
Many governors when they come into Office
are loaded down with debt and probably get
the Office from the Shah to restore themselves
financially. OF course they make haste to ro-
tripVp their fortunes and
ticular how they do it, Zil-es-Sultan, for in
stance, eldest son of the Shah, and governor
of Southern Persia, tortured, killed and exc
cuted with the most refined cruelty, many
people in his district who would not beggar
themselves to accommodate him. He used
to seize and buy up all the grain in a certain
Province, when q famine threatened, and
then sell it at his own price-an enormous
one-when the hard times had come By
such means as these the man has become ex-
tensively wealthy-he is thought TO be worth
100000 t0mans (S22, 600, ,0O0l-and now pos
es occasionally as philanthrOpist. Yet the
only officials in his pay who receive their
salary regularly and uncurtailed even now
are the soldiers, and these are paid by him
because he means to try and make himself
the successor of his father by force.
And as this corruption and vampire sys-
tenn prevails in high places, it also it does in
the lower and lowest Everything goes by
bribery, trickery, and crooked means. You
cannot engage servant but what he has to
either the man who first suggested this par
tlcular candidate to you or your head servant
or both. OF course he gets square with you
by stealing from and cheating you from the
first to the last day he is in your employ.
The Persian calls all such profit arising from
a more or less troubled and impure source
by peculiar name, 'modakhil," which may
be rendered commission" and you do not
eat mouthful of bread, you cannot buy a
horse or a cigar without your servants get
ting their modakhil cut of it. The Persian
does not like any place, no matter If the hon
est remuneration be large, where he has no
for example, often tried to make their en-
ployes go without modakhil by paying them
a corresponding increase in salary, and max
ing a special agreement to that effect, but 1t
does not work. Their men get their modak-
hill as of old, and the higher pay besides.
Thus from top to bottom corruption reigns
supreme.
a country with q government such as this,
with bribery and all sorts Of dishonesty
deeply ingrafted, cannot prosper. Yet there
are other things, such as the lack Of means
of communication, for instance, to make Per
sia go down deeper and deeper into the mire.
There are no roads here at all, merely the
thin tracks made by the camels and mules
that have tramped over the rocky soil for
thousands of years. These tracks often lead
IN Z1gZag lines from one place to 6feGther,
and quite eccentric on the whole. Frequent
ly the track is not distinguishable. OF course
there is no railroad. 1t has been talked Of
during late years. however, to build road
several roads, in fact-but nothing tangible
has yet come of it all. 1 suppose you know
about the grant made by the Shah to Baron
Reuter-, of London, some ten years ago. 1t
was very comprehensive, little too much
so perhaps, for it included not alone the sole
right to build railroads, but gave away near
ly every other franchise as well-telcgraph,
too-agalnst percentage on the gross re-
ceipts. A contract was made and el5,0O0, l
believe, was deposited by Baron Reuter- in
London bank as a guarantee of good faith,
but the Shah broke his word and has since
been vainly urged to come to time. The
e15,000is still in bank. Since then the Rus
slams were granted a similar franchise once,
but nothing came of that either AS last
of late to draw American capital into Persia
for railroad building purposes, but without
avail so far am happy to say. Two or
three schemes of that kind have broken down
when hardly beyond the budding stage, and
the bursting of the last bubble of this kind
happened but two months ago. The Ameri-
can surveyors and engineers, who had got
ten as far as London, went home again. The
trouble is that no railroad would pay here.
The PersianS, too, have the same idea about
America that the Europeans have, viz: that
there are too many nabobs in our country,
and that it Is boon to humanity to relieve 80
them of at least portion Of their PactOlian
stream. That is why they have lately tried
to inveigle Americans into becoming rail-
road builders here. l have told those Per-
slams that / have talked with very frankly
that, although there undoubtedly is good
deal of money in America, our capitalists
were in the habit of not throwing their
money away, and wanted first to know If
there would be reasonable prospect OK hav-
ing good return for their coin, which did
not believe to be the case in the present in
stance