Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/164

150 necessary to keep them clear of the mud which the Nile at the period of its annual overflow brings down in large quantities; and to effect this, no other labor than that of the fellahs' is available. Finding that this indispensable work could be done by contract and paid labor, for about £400,000 ($2,000,000) per annum, the commission appropriated, from the funds made available from loans and the reduced expenses of the Government, the sum of £250,000, to be paid annually as compensation for such service, and thereby at once reduced by more than fifty per cent the number of men formerly called out and compelled to perform service; without payment. In addition, the employment of skilled engineers and the introduction of improved machinery for dredging and excavating, still further reduced both the necessity for the labor of individuals and the general aggregate of former expenditures. Whatever of the obligation of the corvée is still incumbent on the fellah, as, for example, when he is called in any sudden emergency to prevent breaks in embankments in time of flood, or keep clear the irrigation of his own land, is therefore largely in his own interest, and even this will probably at no distant day be abolished. But, be this as it may, it is certain that what of the corvée the commission has felt compelled to retain does not represent one tithe of the awful incubus which the old corvee represented "in the days of the oppression." The use of the koorbash, or lash, which was the former invariable accompaniment of unpaid labor in Egypt, has also been absolutely prohibited. Of other forms of relief to the people of Egypt, effected by the English fiscal commission, the following may be mentioned:

An abandonment of a tax on sheep, goats, and camels, which was very obnoxious to the agriculturists; a tax on weighing and measuring; octroi taxes on rice, oil, and other commodities; and a tax on all trades and crafts, in the nature of licenses on business and professions, which was collected in innumerable small sums from the poorest of the people. The price of salt, the supply and sale of which was a monopoly of the state, has been reduced to the extent of forty per cent, while large abatements have been made in judicial fees, postal and telegraph rates, and in railway rates and fares.

As formerly, the tax on land is yet the corner stone of Egyptian finance, and can not be rapidly or radically disturbed; but large measures of relief have nevertheless been instituted. A vexatious diversity of rates at which land has been assessed in different parts of the country has been simplified to the extent that a former total number of fourteen hundred different rates has been brought down to two hundred. The value of land varies greatly, according to its proximity to the Nile, and the extent to which it can be profitably supplied with water for irrigating