Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/164

150 kerosene, and matches—is reported to have amounted to seventy-five per cent of the value of the articles taxed. On the other hand, the Russian customs duties in the same year averaged but thirty-four per cent of the import value of the foreign goods imported—a circumstance that may find an explanation in the fact that a large proportion of imports of Russia are in the nature of machinery or crude materials for industrial use or elaboration, and apart from this the requirements of the masses in Russia for foreign products are comparatively small.

In Egypt until quite recently, as has been already shown (see previous chapter on The Tax Experiences of Egypt), the annual exactions from its peasantry—the fellahs—under the name of taxation produced an extremity of want which closely bordered on starvation.

In Italy, which in ancient times was regarded, as it is in fact to-day, potentially the richest country in Europe, and although its present Government can not fairly be characterized as despotic, its agriculture is burdened with state exactions that are reported as absorbing from one third to one half of the value of its annual product. The existing debt of the country, created largely by enormous military and naval expenditures, entails an annual interest charge of about $3.75 per head of its population.

Another disastrous interference with the prosperity of the state is the system of taxing all business enterprises, after they have been established three years, at rates which in some cases swamp the profits. And in addition to such disturbing elements, there is undoubtedly an all-pervading evasion for a consideration of all forms of taxation by the functionaries whose business it is