The Accumulation Of Capital Part 35

Within the thirteen years after Said Pasha's death, Egypt's total public debt had grown from m. 3293 to m. 94110,[405] and collapse was imminent.

These operations of capital, at first sight, seem to reach the height of madness. One loan followed hard on the other, the interest on old loans was defrayed by new loans, and capital borrowed from the British and French paid for the large orders placed with British and French industrial capital.

While the whole of Europe sighed and shrugged its shoulders at Ismail's crazy economy, European capital was in fact doing business in Egypt on a unique and fantastic scale--an incredible modern version of the biblical legend about the fat kine which remains unparalleled in capitalist history.

In the first place, there was an element of usury in every loan, anything between one-fifth and one-third of the money ostensibly lent sticking to the fingers of the European bankers. Ultimately, the exorbitant interest had to be paid somehow, but how--where were the means to come from? Egypt herself was to supply them; their source was the Egyptian fellah--peasant economy providing in the final a.n.a.lysis all the most important elements for large-scale capitalist enterprise. He provided the land since the so-called private estates of the Khedive were quickly growing to vast dimensions by robbery and blackmail of innumerable villages; and these estates were the foundations of the irrigation projects and the speculation in cotton and sugar cane. As forced labour, the fellah also provided the labour power and, what is more, he was exploited without payment and even had to provide his own means of subsistence while he was at work. The marvels of technique which European engineers and European machines performed in the sphere of Egyptian irrigation, transport, agriculture and industry were due to this peasant economy with its fellaheen serfs. On the Kaliub Nile dams and on the Suez Ca.n.a.l, in the cotton plantations and in the sugar plants, untold ma.s.ses of peasants were put to work; they were switched over from one job to the next as the need arose, and they were exploited to the limit of endurance and beyond. Although it became evident at every step that there were technical limits to the employment of forced labour for the purposes of modern capital, yet this was amply compensated by capital's unrestricted power of command over the pool of labour power, how long and under what conditions men were to work, live and be exploited.

But not alone that it supplied land and labour power, peasant economy also provided the money. Under the influence of capitalist economy, the screws were put on the fellaheen by taxation. The tax on peasant holdings was persistently increased. In the late sixties, it amounted to 2 5_s._ per _hectare_, but not a farthing was levied on the enormous private estates of the royal family. In addition, ever more special rates were devised. Contributions of 2_s._ 6_d._ per _hectare_ had to be paid for the maintenance of the irrigation system which almost exclusively benefited the royal estates, and the fellah had to pay 1_s._ 4_d._ for every date tree felled, 9_d._ for every clay hovel in which he lived. In addition, every male over 10 years of age was liable to a head tax of 6_s._ 6_d._ The total paid by the fellaheen was m. 25 under Mehemet Ali, m. 5 under Said Pasha, and m. 815 under Ismail Pasha.

The greater the debt to European capital became, the more had to be extorted from the peasants.[406] In 1869 all taxes were put up by 10 per cent and the taxes for the coming year collected in advance. In 1870, a supplementary land tax of 8_s._ per _hectare_ was levied. All over Upper Egypt people were leaving the villages, demolished their dwellings and no longer tilled their land--only to avoid payment of taxes. In 1876, the tax on date palms was increased by 6_d._ Whole villages went out to fell their date palms and had to be prevented by rifle volleys. North of Siut, 10,000 fellaheen are said to have starved in 1879 because they could no longer raise the irrigation tax for their fields and had killed their cattle to avoid paying tax on it.[407]

Now the fellah had been drained of his last drop of blood. Used as a leech by European capital, the Egyptian state had accomplished its function and was no longer needed. Ismail, the Khedive, was given his _conge_; capital could begin winding up operations.

Egypt had still to pay 394,000 Egyptian pounds as interest on the Suez Ca.n.a.l shares for m. 4 which England had bought in 1875. Now British commissions to 'regulate' the finances of Egypt went into action.

Strangely enough, European capital was not at all deterred by the desperate state of the insolvent country and offered again and again to grant immense loans for the salvation of Egypt. Cowe and Stokes proposed a loan of m. 76 at 9 per cent for the conversion of the total debt, Rivers Wilson thought no less than m. 103 would be necessary. The _Credit Foncier_ bought up floating bills of exchange by the million, attempting, though without success, to consolidate the total debt by a loan of m. 91. With the financial position growing hopelessly desperate, the time drew near when the country and all her productive forces was to become the prey of European capital. October 1878 saw the representatives of the European creditors landing in Alexandria. British and French capital established dual control of finances and devised new taxes; the peasants were beaten and oppressed, so that payment of interest, temporarily suspended in 1876, could be resumed in 1877.[408]

Now the claims of European capital became the pivot of economic life and the sole consideration of the financial system. In 1878, a new commission and ministry were set up, both with a staff in which Europeans made up one half. In 1879, the finances of Egypt were brought under permanent control of European capital, exercised by the _Commission de la Dette Publique egyptienne_ in Cairo. In 1878, the Ts.h.i.+fliks, estates of the viceregal family, which comprised 431,100 acres, were converted into crown land and pledged to the European capitalists as collateral for the public debt, and the same happened to the Daira lands, the private estates of the Khedive, comprising 485,131 acres, mainly in Upper Egypt; this was, at a later date, sold to a syndicate. The other estates for the greatest part fell to capitalist companies, the Suez Ca.n.a.l Company in particular. To cover the cost of occupation, England requisitioned ecclesiastical lands of the mosques and schools. An opportune pretext for the final blow was provided by a mutiny in the Egyptian army, starved under European financial control while European officials were drawing excellent salaries, and by a revolt engineered among the Alexandrian ma.s.ses who had been bled white.

The British military occupied Egypt in 1882, as a result of twenty years' operations of Big Business, never to leave again. This was the ultimate and final step in the process of liquidating peasant economy in Egypt by and for European capital.[409]

It should now be clear that the transactions between European loan capital and European industrial capital are based upon relations which are extremely rational and 'sound' for the acc.u.mulation of capital, although they appear absurd to the casual observer because this loan capital pays for the orders from Egypt and the interest on one loan is paid out of a new loan. Stripped of all obscuring connecting links, these relations consist in the simple fact that European capital has largely swallowed up the Egyptian peasant economy. Enormous tracts of land, labour, and labour products without number, accruing to the state as taxes, have ultimately been converted into European capital and have been acc.u.mulated. Evidently, only by use of the _kourbash_ could the historical development which would normally take centuries be compressed into two or three decades, and it was just the primitive nature of Egyptian conditions which proved such fertile soil for the acc.u.mulation of capital.

As against the fantastic increase of capital on the one hand, the other economic result is the ruin of peasant economy together with the growth of commodity exchange which is rooted in the supreme exertion of the country's productive forces. Under Ismail's rule, the arable and reclaimed land of Egypt grew from 5 to 675 million acres, the ca.n.a.l system from 45,625 to 54,375 miles and the permanent way from 25625 to 1,638 miles. Docks were built in Siut and Alexandria, magnificent dockyards in Alexandria, a steamer-service for pilgrims to Mecca was introduced on the Red Sea and along the coast of Syria and Asia Minor.

Egypt's exports which in 1861 had amounted to 4,450,000 rose to m.

144 in 1864; her imports which under Said Pasha amounted to m 12 rose under Ismail to between m. 5 and m. 55. Trade which recovered only in the eighties from the opening up of the Suez Ca.n.a.l amounted to m. 815 worth of imports and m. 1245 worth of exports in 1890, but in 1900 the figures were m. 144 for imports and m. 1225 for exports, and in 1911--m. 2785 for imports and m. 2685 for exports. Thanks to this development of commodity economy which expanded by leaps and bounds with the a.s.sistance of European capital, Egypt herself had fallen a prey to the latter. The case of Egypt, just as that of China and, more recently, Morocco, shows militarism as the executor of the acc.u.mulation of capital, lurking behind international loans, railroad building, irrigation systems, and similar works of civilisation. The Oriental states cannot develop from natural to commodity economy and further to capitalist economy fast enough and are swallowed up by international capital, since they cannot perform these transformations without selling their souls to capital. Their feverish metamorphoses are tantamount to their absorption by international capital.

Another good recent example is the deal made by German capital in Asiatic Turkey. European capital, British capital in particular, had already at an early date attempted to gain possession of this area which marches with the ancient trade route between Europe and Asia.[410]

In the fifties and sixties, British capital built the railway lines Smyrna-Aydin-Diner and Smyrna-Ka.s.saba-Alasehir, obtained the concession to extend the line to Afyon Karahisar and also leased the first tract for the Anatolian railway Ada-Bazar-Izmid. French capital gradually came to acquire influence over part of the railway building during this time.

In 1888, German capital appeared on the scene. It took up 60 per cent of the shares in the new merger of international interests, negotiated princ.i.p.ally with the French capitalist group represented by the _Banque Ottomane_. International capital took up the remaining 40 per cent.[411]

The Anatolian Railway Company, a Turkish company, was founded on the 14th Redsheb of the year 1306 (March 4, 1889) with the _Deutsche Bank_ for princ.i.p.al backer, to take over the railway lines between Ada-Bazar and Izmid, running since the early seventies, as also the concession for the Izmid-Eskisehir-Angora line (525 miles). It was further ent.i.tled to complete the Ada-Bazar-Scutari line and branch lines to Brussa, in addition to building the supplementary network Eskisehir-Konya (278 miles) on the basis of the 1893 concession, and finally to run a service from Angora to Kaisari (264 miles). The Turkish government gave the company a state guarantee of annual gross earnings amounting to 412 per km. on the Ada-Bazar line and of 600 per km. on the Izmid-Angora lines.

For this purpose it wrote over to the _Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane_ the revenue from t.i.thes in the _sandshaks_ of Izmid, Ertoghrul, Kutalia and Angora, with which to make up the gross earnings guaranteed by the government. For the Angora-Kaisari line the government guaranteed annual gross earnings of 775 Turkish pounds, i.e. 712 per km., and 604 Turkish pounds, i.e. approximately 550, provided, in the latter case, that the supplementary grant per km. did not exceed 219 Turkish pounds (200 a year). The government was to receive a quarter of the eventual surplus of gross earnings over the guaranteed amount. The _Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane_ as executor of the government guarantee collected the t.i.thes of the _sandshaks_ Trebizonde and Gumuchhane direct and paid the railway company out of a common fund which was formed of all the t.i.thes set aside for this purpose. In 1898, the Eskisehir-Konya maximum grant was raised from 218 to 296 Turkish pounds.

In 1899, the company obtained concessions to build and run a dockyard at Ada-Bazar, to issue writs, to build corn-elevators and storerooms for goods of every description, further the right to employ its own staff for loading and unloading and, finally, in the sphere of customs policy, the creation of a kind of free port.

In 1901, the company acquired a concession for the Baghdad railway Konya-Baghdad-Bazra-Gulf of Persia (1,500 miles) which connects with the Anatolian line by the Konya-Aregli-Bulgurlu line. For taking up this concession, a new limited company was founded which placed the order of constructing the line, at first to Bulgurlu, with a Building Company registered in Frankfort-on-the-Main.

Between 1893 and 1910, the Turkish government gave additional grants--1,948,000 for the Ada-Bazar-Angora line and 1,800,000 Turkish pounds for the Eskisehir-Konya line--a total of 3,632,000.[412]

Finally, by the concession of 1907, the company was empowered to drain the Karavirar Lake and to irrigate the Konya plain, these works to be executed within six years at government expense. In this instance, the company advanced the government the necessary capital up to 780,000 at 5 per cent interest, repayable within thirty-six years. In return the Turkish government pledged as securities: (1) an annual sum of 25,000 Turkish pounds, payable from the surplus of the t.i.thes' fund a.s.signed to the _Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane_ to cover the railway grants and other obligations; (2) the residual t.i.thes over the last 5 years in the newly irrigated regions; (3) the net proceeds from the working of the irrigation systems, and (4) the price of all reclaimed or irrigated land that was sold. For the execution of this work, the Frankfort company had formed a subsidiary company 'for the irrigation of the Konya plain' with a capital of m. 54 to take this work in hand.

In 1908 the company obtained the concession for extending the Konya railway as far as Baghdad and the Gulf of Persia, again with inclusion of a guaranteed revenue.

To pay for this railway grant, a German Baghdad railway loan was taken up in three instalments of m. 216, m. 432 and m. 476 respectively, on the security of the aggregate t.i.thes for the _vilayets_ Aydin, Baghdad, Mossul, Diarbekir, Ursa and Aleppo, and the sheep-tax in the _vilayets_ Konya, Adana, Aleppo, etc.[413]

The foundation of acc.u.mulation here becomes quite clear. German capital builds railways, ports and irrigation works in Asiatic Turkey; in all these enterprises it extorts new surplus value from the Asiatics whom it employs as labour power. But this surplus value must be realised together with the means of production from Germany (railway materials, machinery, etc.). How is it done? In part by commodity exchange which is brought about by the railways, the dockyards, etc., and nurtured in Asia Minor under conditions of natural economy. In part, i.e. in so far as commodity exchange does not grow quickly enough for the needs of capital, by using force, the machinery of the state, to convert the national real income into commodities; these are turned into cash in order to realise capital plus surplus value. That is the true object of the revenue grants for independent enterprises run by foreign capital, and of the collateral in the case of loans. In both instances so-called t.i.thes (_ueshur_), pledged in different ways, are paid in kind by the Turkish peasant and these were gradually increased from about 12 to 12 1/2 per cent. The peasant in the Asiatic _vilayet_ must pay up or else his t.i.the would simply be confiscated by the police and the central and local authorities. These t.i.thes, themselves a manifestation of ancient Asiatic despotism based on natural economy, are not collected by the Turkish government direct, but by tax-farmers not unlike the tax-collectors of the _ancien regime_; that is to say the expected returns from the levy in each _vilayet_ are separately auctioned by the state to tax-farmers. They are bought by individual speculators or syndicates who sell the t.i.thes of each _sandshak_ (district) to other speculators and these resell their shares to a whole number of smaller agents. All these middlemen want to cover their expenses and make the greatest possible profit, and thus, by the time they are actually collected, the peasants' contributions have swollen to enormous dimensions. The tax-farmer will try to recoup himself for any mistake in his calculations at the expense of the peasant, and the latter, nearly always in debt, is impatient for the moment when he can sell his harvest. But often, after cutting his corn, he cannot start thres.h.i.+ng for weeks, until indeed the tax-farmer deigns to take his due. His entire harvest is about to rot in the fields, and the tax-farmer, usually a grain merchant himself, takes advantage of this fact and compels him to sell at a low price. These tax-collectors know how to enlist the support of the officials, especially the Muktars, the local headmen, against complaining malcontents.[414]

Along with the taxes on salt, tobacco, spirits, the excise on silk, the fis.h.i.+ng dues, etc., the t.i.thes are pledged with the _Conseil de l'Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane_ to serve as security for the railway grant and the loans. In every case the _Conseil_ reserves to itself the right to vet the tax-farmers' contracts and stipulates for the proceeds of the t.i.the to be paid directly into the coffers of its regional offices. If no tax-farmer can be found, the t.i.thes are stored in kind by the Turkish government; the warehouse keys are deposited with the _Conseil_ which then can sell the t.i.thes on its own account.

Thus the economic metabolism between the peasants of Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia on the one hand and German capital on the other proceeds in the following way: in the _vilayets_ Konya, Baghdad, Bazra, etc., the grain comes into being as a simple use-product of primitive peasant economy. It immediately falls to the t.i.the-farmer as a state levy. Only then, in the hands of this latter, does it become a commodity, and, as such, money which falls to the state. This money is nothing but converted peasant grain; it was not even produced as a commodity. But now, as a state guarantee, it serves towards paying for the construction and operation of railways, i.e. to realise both the value of the means of production and the surplus value extorted from the Asiatic peasants and proletariat in the building and running of the railway. In this process further means of production of German origin are used, and so the peasant grain of Asia, converted into money, also serves to turn into cash the surplus value that has been extorted from the German workers. In the performance of these functions, the money rolls from the hands of the Turkish government into the coffers of the _Deutsche Bank_, and here it acc.u.mulates, as capitalist surplus value, in the form of promoters' profits, royalties, dividends and interests in the accounts of Messrs. Gwinner, Siemens, Stinnes and their fellow directors, of the shareholders and clients of the _Deutsche Bank_ and the whole intricate system of its subsidiary companies. If there is no tax-farmer, as provided in the concessions, then the complicated metamorphoses are reduced to their most simple and obvious terms: the peasant grain pa.s.ses immediately to the _Administration de la Dette Publique Ottomane_, i.e.

to the representatives of European capital, and becomes already in its natural form a revenue for German and other foreign capital: it realises capitalist surplus value even before it has shed its use-form for the Asiatic peasant, even before it has become a commodity and its own value has been realised. This is a coa.r.s.e and straightforward metabolism between European capital and Asiatic peasant economy, with the Turkish state reduced to its real role, that of a political machinery for exploiting peasant economy for capitalist purposes,--the real function, this, of all Oriental states in the period of capitalist imperialism.

This business of paying for German goods with German capital in Asia is not the absurd circle it seems at first, with the kind Germans allowing the shrewd Turks merely the 'use' of their great works of civilisation--it is at bottom an exchange between German capital and Asiatic peasant economy, an exchange performed under state compulsion.

On the one hand it makes for progressive acc.u.mulation and expanding 'spheres of interest' as a pretext for further political and economic expansion of German capital in Turkey. Railroad building and commodity exchange, on the other hand, are fostered by the state on the basis of a rapid disintegration, ruin and exploitation of Asiatic peasant economy in the course of which the Turkish state becomes more and more dependent on European capital, politically as well as financially.[415]

FOOTNOTES:

[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. 375. 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 a.s.sorted cargo were sent into the interior, just so that the next s.h.i.+p 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 Krafte, 7 Vortrage 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 Wuste und Mesopotamien_, vol. ii, pp. 5 and 36).

[411] S. Schneider, _Die Deutsche Bagdadbahn_ (1900), p. 3.

[412] Saling, _Borsenjahrbuch 1911/12_, p. 2211.

[413] Saling, op. cit., pp. 360-1. Engineer Pressel of Wuerttemberg, who as a.s.sistant 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 18888 33,099,352 Turkish permanent way in Asia completed before 1900 23132 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 t.i.thes 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 Ka.s.saba-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 Turkei 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.