Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1914-02-14
CRAFT IN PERSIA.
Officials Pay For the Privilege of
Fleeing the Public.

w -
motherland. Persia, is not yet quite
awake to the possibility of a mans
serving the public for certain fixed
salary and taking nothing more. In
Persia they take it for granted that
every officeholder will "gouge" people
whenever he gets a chance.
There are no lawyers in Persia, sc
there are no jokes about lawyers ap
petite for gold and silver. If you have
ever had n costly lawsuit on your
hands you may think that makes mat
tiers simpler, but getting into trouble
means being squeezed for money,
wrung for money, as IL you were a
! piece of wet cloth in washerwoman' s
4 strong grip.
This is how It is managed: First,
you see. the governor of a city or of a
| province never has a definite salary
from the state-not at all. On the con-
| trary, he pays the state treasury sew
eral thousand dollars more or less for
the privilege of being governor and of
making what he can out Of the enter
prise. He is not an elected officer; he
| is more like a 'concessionaire" at one
of your big expositions. who offers a
large sum for chance to run n res
| taurant or to provide ice cream soda or
candy.
The governor Cor mayor of Il large
1 Persian town may have perhaps 100 to
$50 employees under him. OF these
/ only n few house servants Cook.
coachman and the like have fixed
wages. The incomes of the others de-
pend upon the amount OF money which
they can help turn into the great
mans hands in the form of fines and
taxes. You can guess whether the
| neiShbors are fond of themi
Suppose now you live in Persia. You
have leased n piece of ground or you
have sold some goods and the other
| man does not pay. You dun him,
Then you threaten him. Then you go
to the governor and make a complaint.
An officer arrests your debtor and
takes him before the governors sec
rotary for examination. Possibly he
can convince that important parsonage
that IL is not Just debt. If he can
not do that he would better put all his
wits to work to convince the secretary
that poverty makes it quite impossi-
BILE to pay up.
This is where many of the $50 under
employees get their chance. A large
part of their occupation is hunting up
facts about everybody's property,
everybody's business, everybody's in
come. They know an amazing num-
Der of things which your debtor sup
posed were safely secret. They pro-
duce information whenever informa-
ton is wanted.
Your mans pretense that business is
bad and that he is all but bankrupt is
brushed aside, and he is made to pro-
duce an amount of money consider
ably larger than the original debt.
Made" to produce it? Yes. There
are shocking things that can be done
to him If he hesitates too long, and he
knows it. So, like n child aware that
there IS an ugly stick waiting in the
corner, he usually does not hesitate
too long. He saves his skin and hands
over the money. You get maybe so
to 90 par cent to satisfy your claim
that is, the officer of justice practi-
caIly collects from you something for
his own services. The rest goes to the
governor and such of the employees
as may be considered in the case.
Perhaps you have a shop in the town
bazaar or market place and some poor
good-for-nothing steals a chicken that
was hanging on the wall. If woman
was the thief she is most likely fined
possibly whipped If she has no money +,
TO pay a fine. If the culprit is n man
they punch Il hole through the car
tilage of the lower end OF his nose, put |
n cord through the hole and lead him /,
in this painful disgrace all around the |
bazaar. The officer collects as he goes |
along a few cents from this shopkeep. |
er and a few cents from that one as |
an acknowledgment of the officers |
service in publicly exposing a thief. /
Naturally it often happens that some
robbery occurs or some
body is brutally murdered, and the
guilty one is unknown. Then the gov
ernor's detective agents set to work.
may be arrested on suspicion
and examined either as the probable
or as a witness. If the sus-
pect has plenty of money he can al
ways prove his innocence or his igno-
rance by paying cash to the examining
though. since there is no regu-
lated tariff In such matteSs, the pro-
ceeding may be quite expensive.
II the suspect is too poor to make
things right with the examiners or too
to tell what he knows-nnd
am afraid. II he really
loes not know anything to tell-they
iave some third degree" methods
to make a man say some
hing. One such method Is what they
all the "bastinado." 1t is whipping
he soles OF the bare feet with slen-
Ter rods. Often live Goals from pipe
ire put on the shaven head OF prls
,ner to make him confess. Sometimes
= But no. Probably you would not
are to hear any more along this par
ocular line. Persian inventions in this
department. of criminology are clever
n their way. but not things to de
cribe in fun detail.-Leon Modem Il,
Sc- York World.