The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-07-28
THE TURK IN HIS CAPITAL.
How 40 Grow Rich ON Unpaid Salaries
Taxes Paid When You PIeasc-The
toms OIhcials

Fire Departmcnt-CompIa Gus
toms OIhciais.
Strange, passing strange" unused
the inspector of revenues, however he
may be properly called in the Turkish
language as he frowned suspiciously
upon the struggling shoulders before
him. mot one gun, not single pistol
sold this twelve month. Your stock
numbers precisely the same as last
year. and then twas the same story as
the year before and the year before
that, and so back to the days of the
great inventory when the Padishah
commanded that all the weapons in the
city should be coented How happens
this, Sirrah? Do you sell no tirearms"'
"Ah, no, Effendim! Business is so
very bad, you see. Not one pistol will
Gnsqurs or Osmanli buy, While l grow
ever poorer and poorer. What times
these are! And yet, Effendim, if your
EXcellency would but condescend to
accept one little present in token Of my
humble appreciation of that courtesy
that never fails-ah, 50! Selam alley
kum!''
Such the dialogue one may fancy ex-
changed between the dealer in firearms
in Constantinople and the official in
spector who calls once a year and in
ventories his stock, in order both to as
sess taxes and to determine that the
law prohibiting the importation of ri
fies or revolvers has been strictly OBJ
served. To be sure, everybody knows
that these weapons are constantly be-
cL,N
attractive and prominent street corners
in the Turkish capital. Everybody,
too, except the officials officially, knows
that the forbidden goods afford a lucra-
tive traffic to numbers of smugglerS
and the mates of the ships in whose
care they arrive without formality of
manifest, relieving prying customs Of
ficers of the unpleasant duty of confis-
cation.
We are told that to translate a Turk
ish book one must begin with the last
page and to get the meaning of each
sentence must turn first to the closing
words. So, too, the true inwardness of
many things Turkish will only begin to
appear to the visitor after a stay of
many weeks and as disclosed by the
many sidelights certain to be thrown
upon life and business by the friends
one is quite sure to make. The frag
ments of gossip recorded here were so
CLEANED during a prolonged stay last
winter in the land of the unspeakable
Turk and pretend to be neither pro-
found nor perhaps accurate in detail; in
fact are offered for naught else than
what they are, everyday gossip. They
Nv sat otl1 11a,r
came to the writer from friends, Eng
lish, French, German, Greek Armenian.
Jewish, Turkish-all that conglomerate
population that goes to make up the
chief charm to the stranger of a stay in
the Levant All seem matters of COM
mon knowledge in Constantinople, ana
one accepts them as appropriately true
after bearing them a score of times
over from twenty sources. BY the way
why the "unspeakable Turk" Is he
really so bad as all that?
Many are the stories that come to
him who waits for a month or six weeks
in Constantinople. Other commerce
than that in firearms is regulated by
law. The bakers. for example, are
commanded to sell only loaves of a
prescribed weight under penalty of con-
fiscaton of their entire stock Think
you that this carries aught of terror to
their crafty souls? They still go on
baking underweight loaves, asserting
that it is cheaper to suffer an occasion
al confiScation than to be habitually
honest. So it happens that when the
supply of bread in the barracks runs
short, out sallies an inspector in full
confidence that the first loaf he tests in
the first shop on his list will be short
weight and thus put in his hands the
whole stock. Thus are troops fed at a
minimum of expense, while the baker
philosophically shuts up shop, to re-
sumo as soon as his ovens can turn out
another supply of altogether similar
loaves.
Thackeray-apropos of Becky Sharp, |
was it not?-takes one chapter to tell
ing "How to live on nothing a year"
The employees of the Sublime Porte
have not only solved the problem, but
some Of them can also demonstrate /
How to get rich on nothing a year"
Salaries? Yes, there are salaries,
promised, paid enthusiastically and |
in part. For the rest--well, the man
must live, his childyen must have bread, |
his rank demands certain expenses; |
what would you? If he robs right and |
left it is no more than his superiors do. |
oye, even to the exalted rank, and thus
comes to be quite the proper thing
And so arise any number of abuses and /
bakshiSh covers a multitude of sins
supports families in luxury and works
when one wishes to escape am
noyance or to bother some other fellow.
AS for the payment of salaries, the gov
eminent is three years in arrears just
now, asserts common gossip. But if
the cash is not available the Porte can
issue its paper promise and can and
does decree that such scrip shall be le-
gal tender in payment on account of
taxes levied on real estate up to fifty
per cent. of their total amount What
matters it that but small part of the
army of employees of his majesty own
real estate can they not take their scrip
to any money changers and there sell it
at a discount? 1t is clearly most I'M
fortunate for them that these financial
sharks manifest so little interest in the
that they are only willing
to cash this paper at a discount of
about eighty per cent But on the 9TH
ar hand, what Il beautiful opportunity
bis affords to the capitalist who does
)wn houses or ground, even though he
De not one of the favored employees of
he government II can huV thiS sscrip |