een given--and the
ill-fated Mining Company have created well-founded suspicion of foreign
ways of increasing one's capital, nor can we with any fairness blame the
Persians for returning to their old method of slow accumulation. True
enough, a fortune, if discovered, has a fair possibility of being seized
in the lump by a greedy official, but that is only a possibility;
whereas, when invested in some foreign speculations the loss becomes a
dead certainty! More even than the actual loss of the money, the Persians
who burned their fingers by meddling with foreign schemes felt the scorn
of their friends, of whom they had become the laughing stock.

There is no doubt that to-day the confidence of the natives towards
foreigners has been very much shaken, and excepting a few men whom they
well know, trust and respect, they regard most Europeans as adventurers
or thieves. The "treasuring" of capital instead of the investment of it
is, therefore, one of the reasons why industries in Persia seldom assume
large proportions. It is only the small merchant, content to make a
humble profit, who can prosper in his own small way while more extensive
concerns are distrusted.

But it must not be understood that Persians do not care for money. There
is, on the contrary, hardly a race of people on the face of the earth
with whom the greed for money is developed to such an abnormal extent as
in all classes in the land of Iran! But, you will ask, how can money be
procured or increased fast and without trouble in a country where there
is no commercial enterprise, where labour is interfered with, where
capital cannot have a free outlet or investment? An opening has to be
found in illicit ways of procuring wealth, and the most common form
adopted is the loan of money at high interest on ample security. As much
as 50 per cent., 80 per cent., 100 per cent. and even more is demanded
and obtained as interest on private loans, 15 per cent. being the very
lowest and deemed most reasonable indeed! (This does not apply to foreign
banks.) All this may seem strange in a Mussulman country, where it is
against all the laws of the Koran to lend money at usury, and it is more
strange still to find that the principal offenders are the Mullahs
themselves, who reap large profits from such illegal financial
operations.

The Persian is a dreamer by nature; he cannot be said to be absolutely
lazy, for he is always absorbed in deep thought--what the thoughts are