[401] The Permanent Way (in kilometres).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
_Year_ | _Europe_ | _America_ | _Asia_ | _Africa_ |_Australia_
----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------
1840 | 2,925 | 4,754 | -- | -- | --
1850 | 23,405 | 16,064 | -- | -- | --
1860 | 51,862 | 53,955 | 1,393 | 455 | 376
1870 | 104,914 | 93,193 | 8,185 | 1,786 | 1,765
1880 | 168,983 | 174,666 | 16,287 | 4,646 | 7,847
1890 | 223,869 | 331,417 | 33,724 | 9,386 | 18,889
1900 | 283,878 | 402,171 | 60,301 | 20,114 | 24,014
1910 | 333,848 | 526,382 | 101,916 | 36,854 | 31,014
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Accordingly, the increase was as follows:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| % | % | % | % | %
1840/50 | 710 | 215 | -- | -- | --
1860/70 | 102 | 73 | 486 | 350 | 350
1870/80 | 61 | 88 | 99 | 156 | 333
1880/90 | 32 | 89 | 107 | 104 | 142
1890/1900 | 27 | 21 | 79 | 114 | 27
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[402] Tugan Baranovski, _Studies on the Theory and History of Commercial
Crises in England_, p. 74.
[403] Sismondi, _Nouveaux Principes_ ..., vol. i, book iv, chap. iv:
'Commercial Wealth Follows the Growth of Income', pp. 368-70.
[404] Engineer Eyth, a representative of Fowler's, tells us: 'Now there
was a feverish exchange of telegrams between Cairo, London and
Leeds.--"When can Fowler's deliver 150 steam ploughs?"--Answer: "Working
to capacity, within one year."--"Not good enough. Expect unloading
Alexandria by spring 150 steam ploughs."--A.: "Impossible."--The works
at that time were barely big enough to turn out 3 steam ploughs per
week. N.B. a machine of this type costs £2,500 so that the order
involved £m. 3·75. Ismail Pasha's next wire: "Quote cost immediate
factory expansion. Viceroy willing foot bill."--You can imagine that
Leeds made hay while the sun shone. And in addition, other factories in
England and France as well were made to supply steam ploughs. The
Alexandria warehouses, where goods destined for the vice-regal estates
were unloaded, were crammed to the roof with boilers, wheels, drums,
wire-rope and all sorts of chests and boxes. The second-rate hostelries
of Cairo swarmed with newly qualified steam ploughmen, promoted in a
hurry from anvil or share-plough, young hopefuls, fit for anything and
nothing, since every steam plough must be manned by at least one expert
pioneer of civilisation. Wagonloads of this assorted cargo were sent
into the interior, just so that the next ship could unload. You cannot
imagine in what condition they arrived at their destination, or rather
anywhere but their destination. Ten boilers were lying on the banks of
the Nile, and the machine to which they belonged was ten miles further.
Here was a little heap of wire-rope, but you had to travel another 20
hours to find the appropriate pulleys. In one place an Englishman who
was to set up the machines squatted desolate and hungry on a pile of
French crates, and in another place his mate had taken to native liquor
in his despair. Effendis and Katibs, invoking the help of Allah, rushed
to and fro between Siut and Alexandria and compiled endless lists of
items the names of which they did not even know. And yet, in the end,
some of this apparatus was set in motion. In Upper Egypt, the ploughs
belched steam--civilisation and progress had made another step forward'
(_Lebendige Kräfte, 7 Vorträge aus dem Gebiete der Technik_, Berlin,
1908, p. 21).
[405] Cf. Evelyn Baring, Earl of Cromer, _Egypt Today_ (London, 1908),
vol. i, p. 11.
[406] Incidentally, the money wrested from the Egyptian fellah further
fell, by way of Turkey, to European capital. The Turkish loans of 1854,
1855, 1871, 1877 and 1886 were based on the contributions from Egypt
which were increased several times and paid direct into the Bank of
England.
[407] 'It is stated by residents in the Delta', reports _The Times_ of
March 31, 1879, 'that the third quarter of the year's taxation is now
collected, and the old methods of collection applied. This sounds
strangely by the side of the news that people are starving by the
roadside, that great tracts of country are uncultivated, because of the
physical burdens, and that the farmers have sold their cattle, the women
their finery, and that the usurers are filling the mortgage offices with
their bonds, and the courts with their suits of foreclosure' (quoted by
Th. Rothstein, _Egypt's Ruin_, 1910, pp. 69-70).
[408] 'This produce', wrote the correspondent of _The Times_ from
Alexandria, 'consists wholly of taxes paid by the peasants in kind, and
when one thinks of the poverty-stricken, overdriven, under-paid
fellaheen in their miserable hovels, working late and early to fill the
pockets of the creditors, the punctual payment of the coupon ceases to
be wholly a subject of gratification' (quoted by Rothstein, op. cit., p.
49).
[409] Eyth, an outstanding exponent of capitalist civilisation in the
primitive countries, characteristically concludes his masterly sketch on
Egypt, from which we have taken the main data, with the following
imperialist articles of faith: 'What we have learnt from the past also
holds true for the future. Europe must and will lay firm hands upon
those countries which can no longer keep up with modern conditions on
their own, though this will not be possible without all kinds of
struggle, when the difference between right and wrong will become
blurred, when political and historical justice will often enough mean
disaster for millions and their salvation depend upon what is
politically wrong. All the world over, the strongest hand will make an
end to confusion, and so it will even on the banks of the Nile' (op.
cit., p. 247). Rothstein has made it clear enough what kind of 'order'
the British created 'on the banks of the Nile'.
[410] Already in the early twenties of the last century, the
Anglo-Indian government commissioned Colonel Chesney to investigate the
navigability of the River Euphrates in order to establish the shortest
possible connection between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf,
resp. India. After detailed preparations and a preliminary
reconnaissance in winter 1831, the expedition proper set out in 1835/7.
In due course, British staff and officials investigated and surveyed a
wider area in Eastern Mesopotamia. These efforts dragged on until 1866
without any useful results for the British government. But at a later
date Great Britain returned to the plan of connecting the Mediterranean
with India by way of the Gulf of Persia, though in a different form,
i.e. the Tigris railway project. In 1879, Cameron travelled through
Mesopotamia for the British government to study the lie of the land for
the projected railway (Max Freiherr v. Oppenheim, _Vom Mittelmeer zum
Persischen Golf durch den Hauran, die Syrische Wüste und Mesopotamien_,
vol. ii, pp. 5 and 36).
[411] S. Schneider, _Die Deutsche Bagdadbahn_ (1900), p. 3.
[412] Saling, _Börsenjahrbuch 1911/12_, p. 2211.
[413] Saling, op. cit., pp. 360-1. Engineer Pressel of Wuerttemberg, who
as assistant to Baron v. Hirsch was actively engaged in these
transactions in European Turkey, neatly accounts for the total grants
towards railway-building in Turkey which European capital wrested from
the Turkish government:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| _Length | _Paid guarantee
| in km._ | in francs_
-------------------------------------------+---------+----------------
3 lines in European Turkey | 1888·8 | 33,099,352
| |
Turkish permanent way in Asia completed | |
before 1900 | 2313·2 | 53,811,538
| |
Commissions and other costs connected with | |
the guaranteed railway grants paid to the | |
A.D.P.O. | | 9,351,209
-------------------------------------------+---------+----------------
Total | | 96,262,099
----------------------------------------------------------------------
All this refers only to the period before 1899; not until that date were
the revenue grants paid in part. The tithes of no less than 28 out of
the 74 _sandshaks_ in Asiatic Turkey had been pledged for the revenue
grants, and with these grants, between 1856 and 1900, a grand total of
1,576 miles of rails had been laid down in Asiatic Turkey. Pressel, the
expert, by the way gives an instance of the underhand methods employed
by the railway company at Turkish expense; he states that under the 1893
agreement the Anatolian company promised to run the railway to Baghdad
via Angora, but later decided that this plan of theirs would not work
and, having qualified for the guarantee, left the line to its fate and
got busy with another route via Konya. 'No sooner have the companies
succeeded in acquiring the Smyrna-Aydin-Diner line, than they will
demand the extension of this line to Konya, and the moment these branch
lines are completed, the companies will move heaven and earth to force
the goods traffic to use these new routes for which there are no
guarantees, and which, more important still, need never share their
takings, whereas the other lines must pay part of their surplus to the
government, once their gross revenue exceeds a certain amount. In
consequence, the government will gain nothing by the Aydin line, and the
companies will make millions. The government will foot the bill for
practically the entire revenue guarantee for the Kassaba-Angora line,
and can never hope to profit by its contracted 25 per cent share in the
surplus above £600 gross takings' (W. V. Pressel, _Les Chemins de Fer en
Turquie d'Asie_ (Zurich, 1900), p. 7).
[414] Charles Moravitz, _Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen_ (1903),
p. 84.
[415] 'Incidentally, in this country everything is difficult and
complicated. If the government wishes to create a monopoly in cigarette
paper or playing cards, France and Austro-Hungary immediately are on the
spot to veto the project in the interest of their trade. If the issue is
oil, Russia will raise objections, and even the Powers who are least
concerned will make their agreement dependent on some other agreement.
Turkey's fate is that of Sancho Panza and his dinner: as soon as the
minister of finance wishes to do anything, some diplomat gets up,
interrupts him and throws a veto in his teeth' (Moravitz, op. cit., p.
70).
_CHAPTER XXXI_