The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-06-09

! tillers of the soil. If the dirt isrich its productivity Is always reflected in
 the prosperity of the farming commu-
 nity. This Is not true of Egypt. The soil of the Nile valley has responded literally to every tickling of the hoe for seventy centuries, yet the vast ma jority of thoss who farm Its fertile acres today live in mud huts. The ex- planation lies partly in the fact that the population of Nileland has always been dense. but in q greater measure the condition of the Egyptian farmer is due to his having been oppressed by
 despotic rulers and unequal taxation enough the reign of Ismail Pasha, who reduced the feilaheen to the greatest extreme of poverty, opened the way for the ultimate deiiverance of the
 Egyptian farmer from everlasting bondage.
 In a purely agricultural country It is difncult for bad government to bring about ruin to the people as long as the tyrant Is unable to raise funds save oy extorting money from his subjects When oppression becomes intolerable there Is a change of government and quick recovery. It was when Ismaii Pasha learned how to borrow money in Europe. upon his country's T. o. U. that collapse resulted and the people found themselves under debt which their descendants must pay. But for 1000 years before Ismails reign, bad government had always made the fafm- CTS the bearers of the financial bur
 dens of Egypt and slaves to system
 of graft, beginning with the headmen
 of villages and extending to the throne. Today the English point with pride to the fact that the fsllah approaches the dawning of a better day.
 ~~I., A "a logged with the ''courbashy when he protested against paying ruinous taxes, part of which the tax collector stole and the rest of which went to the Khedive. Even so recent q ruler as Ismail used the courbash whenever he needed money. The farmer was also driven by the whip to labor upon pub
 lie works or till crown lands. or the lands of court favorites, without pay. Nowadays taxes are levied as they are in European countries, and the system
 of graft Is obsolete. All that Is left of the corvee, the system of enforced labor, is that the fellaheen must guard their dykes during the season of inun- dation. The introduction of perennial irrigation has greatly reduced the need for labor on the dykes. It is believed that within a few years 1t will not be
 necessary to call out the corvee ex- oept in seasons of exceptionally high Nile. In 1901, for the first time in the history of the country. no coryee was called out north of Cairo
 But up to the present time the ben- ef1ts that have accrued to the Egyp- tians have not visibly affected the na- ture of farming operations. While there are exceptions to the rule, the Egyptian farmers methods are the same today that they were during the
 first dynasty. Looking upon the re- markedly preserved features of Rameses or a Seti in the National Mu- scum in Cairo, 1t is difficult to realize that thousands of years have passed since the rnummies of these kings were wrapped. Looking from a car window at the Nile valley farmer growing his crops, 1t is more difficult to realize that this is the twentieth century and that he is cultivatlng land that grows from two to four crops year
 Along the canals that convey water from the Nile to the farms there are seen the same devices for lifting water that were In use when the earliest monuments of Egypt were builded. The shadoof Is . contrivance consisting of a pole which rests upon 2 pivot. with bucket at one end andsa weight at the other. The man at the shadoof dips water from the canal bucketful by bucketful, tipping the bucket into 8 smaller canal fifteen feet above the level of the larger one. He works for 10 cents day two piasters in Egyp- tian money, and never goes on strike for higher wages. He seldom misses a days work and rarely proves unre- liable in any way. From countless generations of oppressed ancestors he inherits patience, humbleness and hab- it's of hard labor. He lifts some l,600 tons of water during the dry season. When the weather Is warm he wears nothing more than loin cloth and his
 wardrobe Is not expensive at apy sea- son. He and his family live upon
 what the average American working
 man would spend for tobacco.
 Another apparatus for lifting water to the fields Is the screw of Archt- modes. The name suggests it's ancient
 origin. It Is a wooden tube with a
 spiral hange inside. Turned with .
 crank it brinks a stream of water to a level about two feet higher than its lower end The more prosperous farm CTS employ water wheels. The patient
 water buffalo. turning the water wheel without being driven, is as dependable, and almost as poorly fed, as the fellah who works at the shadoof. He too in- herits the instinct of unceasing toll. Sometimes two buffaloes, or buffalo l and a camel, are used to turn a water . owners, for the most part Turco- -Egyp- tians, who are using steam pumps, but the farmers who employ modern meth
 ods of getting water from the irriga- ton ditches are still small minority. One advantage possessed by the Nile valley farmer ia that he does not have to walt upon rain. Like the man who 1 cultivates the reclaimed soil of the ir- l riEated Southwest, he can count upon | e certain quantity of products repre- senting the net result of soil and sun. and water applied in the right quanti- | ty and at the right time. But during l the period of the greatest inundation 1 the Egyptian farmer must be upon his | time is a vast lake thinly veined with dykes. Myrtads of waterfowl make l their home in this lake, while the 1 farming people live upon mounds and make the dykes their roads. Violent | changes of temperature in the desert | cause sudden windstorms in the valley. | An unprotected dyke may be washed away or the water encroaching upon a
 village may cause the mud huts to
 erumble. Each village headman is un-
 der the responsibility of calling out hIs | fellow villagers at the right time to guard the dykes. Bundles of millet | stalks are used to strengthen them on | the windward side when the waves are
 pounding them. The picture presented | today to the visitor In Egypt Is a real l life reproduction of the pictures of | dyke guarding carved upon monuments
 dating back to Rameses the Great.
 The well-to-do farmer in Egypt Is
 described as "a man who rides horse" | His poorer neighbor Is content to ride
 a donkey the size of Western burro,