The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-07-07

thousands upon the lands, and their fat
sides glisten under the tropical sun as they
MUNICH the sweetest and iuciest of clover.
The air Just now is as pure as that OF Salt
Lake.
ALL NATURE SEEMS TO SMILE,
and the only poor thing upon the scene is
man.
Outef the 6,5OOOOO people of Egypt, fully
6, GO0,0 coo are peasants. They are known
as ''fellahs." They are the tillers Of the
soil, and they are the people who do the
work and make the money which pays the
immense yearly debt of Egypt. These
''fellahs'' are the ancient Egyptians. They
have been oppressed throughout the ages
until they have no spirit left in them, and
they are happy if they can get enough to
keep themselves alive You see their mud
villages everywhere, and they slave from
morning until night in the fields. Inelr
| houses are rarely more than ten feet hlgn,
and often not more than eight feet square
In an Egyptian village the houses are bullt
close together. There are no pavements,
gas lamps nor modern improvements OF
any kind. The furniture of each house
consists of few mats, sheep skin, cop
per kettle and some earthenWare potS:
| The bed of the family is a ledge OF mud
built in the side of the room. There are
no windows, and the cooking IS usually
done out of doors in little earthen, pot
| like stove The fuel is of dried cow,
camel or buffalo manure, and the food OF
the family is a mixture of sorghum seed,
millet and beans ground up into flour and
baked into sort of a big, round, fiat cake.
/ A large part of the food of the fellahin con-
sists of greens, and / watched one eating
a turnip yesterday. He began at the tip
of the root and ate the raw indigestible
vegetable to the very end of the green,
leaving not a vestige of it. l have seen
! +bar, aofincr o1Ovar onH told that thew
seldom have any meat. Out of the milk of
the buffalo and COW, they make sort of
curd-like cheese, which is extensively
used They use no knives, forks nor spoons,
and at supper they have, in addition to
their vegetables, a sauce of onions and
butter, into which they dip pieces of bread
and eat it.
| THESE EGYPTIAN PEASANTS
wear little or no clothing while working in
the fields and here in Cairo the apparel of
the men consists of a long blue gown which
comes to below the knees and brown
skull cap of wool. The women have gowns
of blue Gotten, and the better classes of
them cover up their faces with long veil,
which is fastened just under the eyes so as
to hide the lower part of the features. Be
tween this veil and the cloth-head dress
there is brass spool about three inches
long, on each side of which the eyes show
out. Some of the girls are beautiful, but
imagine that many of them look better with
their wells on than off. The Egyptian eye
is large, black and sensuous. The eye
lashes are very long on both lids, and the
edges of the eye-lids are often blackened
with kohl The eye broWS are straight and
smooth and never bushy. The cheek bones
are high. the forehead is receding and the
nose somewhat inclined to tiatness. In the
country you find much darker women than
yoI do in Cairo, and l see scores OF them
working in the fields without wells These
fellahin are MOhammedans, and they be-
lieve that Christians will be eternally
damned Very few of them attain riches
and but few rise to power. Arab Pasha
was ''fellah," and he was one of the few
exceptions to this rule.
1t is no wonder they remain poor. They
have been taxed for ages to such an extent
that they could barely live. Ismail Pasha,
the last khedive, would, I am told, often
collect taxes twice a year, coming down
upon the farmers for a second sum after he
had demanded their regular amount. If
they were not able to supply it, the tax
gatherers sold their stock at auction, and
he had the right to make such as he pleased
work or him for nothing. At present
there are about five million acres of land
under cultivation in Egypt, and there is al
agricultural population OF more than foul
millions. This gives less than one and one
fifth acres per person, and the take:
, amount to from four to nine dollars al
acre The best lands of Egypt pay 80 az
acre. and this is only one form of Egyptian
taxation.
JUST OUTSIDE OF CAIRO,
there IS government Office, through which
every piece of produce brought into the
city for sale must pass, and every article is
taxed. The farmer who brings donkey
load of grass to the city for sale must pay
a percentage on its value before he can go
in with it, 1t is the same with chicken
or pigeon, a basket or vegetables, or any
thing that the farmers raise. Then there
is tax upon date trees amounting to $500
a year, upon salt of more than million,
upon tobacco and slaughter houses, and in
fact upon everything under the Egyptian
sun. The donkey boy here pays tax, the
doctor pays a tax, the store keeper is
taxed, and there is in addition to this a
general tariff of about per cent. on all i'm
ports. There are taxes on sheep and goats,
which are paid whether the animals are
sold or not There are taxes on wells, taxes
on fisheries, and taxes paid for lands which
Egypt once owned, but which she gave up
with the loss of Soudan. 1t is no wonder
that the Egyptian people are poor. 1t is a
wonder that they can exist at all.
;; The bulk of this money goes out of the
country, and the natives of Egypt are
growing poorer instead of richer Such
taxation said our consul general to me to-
day, would create revolution in the
/ United States, and there is hardly coun
try in the world which would stand it.
/ Not dollar of all the money which is thus
collected is expended in public or private
, improvements among tne hard-worked,
over taxed people, from whom it has been
Wrung."
Egypt pays every year more than three
million dollars to Turkey. Why she con-
tinues to do this is not well understood the
worlC over If England and Europe would
shake their heads she could throw off the
Turkish yoke, but the Sultan of Turkey
owes some large sums to the European
bankers The European bankers want this
So. OOO, GOO, and it comes to them through
the Sultan. This is
ONE WAY IN WHICH THE RoTHsCHILDs GRIND
the fellahin The total revenue collected
last year was nearly fifty million dollars,
and of this more than twenty million went
to pay interests upon debts, which were en-
tered into by the Egyptian government in
the past.
New York contains about four times as
much farming land as Egypt. Suppose the
farmers of New York, irrespective of the
capitalists and town people, had to pay a
tax of 1925, 100000 a year they would be as
heavily oppressed, in proportion to their
lands, as are the Egyptians. If they had
to pay a tax of from four to nine dollars an
acre they would have to mortgage their
crops, and if in addition to this they had to
pay import and export taxes, and taxes on
their sales, the result would be an almost