The Newberry herald and news. (Newberry, S.C.) 1884-1903, 1890-03-06

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ling. But it sustains another loss,
which, if any of you think ofsettling in
that country to raise wheat, you should
bring into calculation, and that is
the tax collector stands by when the
winnowing is going on, and takes
tenth of the cleaned grain for the
taxes. Now, this would not be so bad
if he stopped here. But the collectors
are a set of rascals banded together to
cheat the farmers, and are aided by the
government through oppressive laws
and dishonest administration. This is
the way they do it -
When the Sultan turns his attention
to the financial affairs of the Empire,
he gets his secretary of the treasury to
calculate how much money will be
needed for the expenses of the gov
ernment for the coming year. Then
he goes to the rich bankers in Constan-
tinople and gets them to advance it
in bulk at the beginning ofthe year.
Now, you all know how much more
you will spend when you have
pocketful than if you had to make a
note or draw a check, or borrow it of
somebody. So the sturdy old spend
thrift runs through With a whole
years allowance in less than six
months aud has to "skin" along the
rest of the year as best he can.
But those dozen Constantinorle bank
ers did not loan him that money
for nothing. Oh, no! He gave them
in exchange the privilege of collecting
the taxes for the whole empire for the
ensuing year. This they farm out or
underlet toa hundred persons through
out the realm. And these to five
hundred and the latter to two or
three thousand, until finally there
will be a collector for almost every
acre, and they come swooping down
like swarm Of Egyptian locusts and
take everything they can lay their
hands upon. And so the farmers, in
self-protection, try to hide their pro-
ducts. I saw them harvesting wheat
when in the milk, and asked my drag
oman what they did that for. He
| said that they were going to bury it
so the taxgatherer would not seize it.
The government, as I have said, by
appropriate legislation for it strictly
orders farmers not to thresh their grain
before the collectors are ready. And
this means more eXtortion, because
these officers are notoriously open to
bribery, the whole system being the
most corrupt upon the face of the
earth.
Then, when you consider that their
laws are arbitrary and shifting, de-
pending upon the whim of single
man, while ours are stable and relia-
BILE, enacted by ourselves, through our
chosen representatives ; and when you
think of their aboninable filth as
against our thorough and scientific
methods and processes when you con-
trast their ploughs with ours, and their
sickle, or plucking up by the roots,
with a Mccormick reaper, and their
treading cut and winnowing, with
modern threshing machine, and their
little grinding stones with one Of our
Touring mills, and their robber tax
collectors, who hound the farmer down
and take from him all they can find,
with our gentlmanly officers, whom We
hunt down and settle with, and when
you think af a good many other things
I could remind you of if I wasn't
afraid of your secretary. who has linn
tied me to twelve minutes, you'll prob
ably conclude as did, that America is
a good enough country for any man to
live in and farm and die and be- buried
in when it comes to that.