To Us This Appears Nothing, But To The Cypriote It Is
Everything.
Where is he to obtain one hundred pounds?
To him the sum is
enormous and overpowering.
In times of scarcity, which unfortunately are the general conditions of
the country, owing to the deficiency of rain, the farmer must borrow
money not only for the current expenses of his employment, but for the
bare sustenance of his family; he has recourse to the usurer, and
henceforth becomes his slave. The rate of interest may be anything that
can be imagined when extortion acts upon one side while poverty and
absolute famine are the petitioners. The farm, together with the stock,
are mortgaged, and the expected crops for a stipulated number of seasons
are made over to the usurer at a fixed sum per measure of corn, far
below the market price. Another bad season adds to the crushing burden,
and after a few years, when the unfortunate landowner is completely
overwhelmed with debt, perchance one of the happy years arrives when
propitious rains in the proper season bring forth the grand
cereal-producing power of Cyprus, and the wheat and barley, six feet
high, wave over the green surface throughout the island. The yield of
one such abundant crop almost releases the debtor from his misery;
another year would free him from the usurer; but rarely or never are two
favourable seasons consecutive; the abundant harvest is generally
followed by several years of drought. This pitiable position may be
quickly changed by government assistance without the slightest risk.
The first necessity is capital, and the usurer must disappear from the
scene. I do not think that an agricultural bank will be practically
worked, as the value of money in the east is above 6 per cent., which is
the maximum that the Cyprian cultivator should pay. The government must
advance loans for the special erection of water-wheels, or other methods
of irrigation, at 6 per cent., taking a mortgage of the land as their
security; this loan upon water-works to take precedence of all others.
The government can borrow at 4 per cent., and will lend at 6, which is
not a bad beginning for a national bank. The water-wheels can be
constructed in a few weeks, and their effect would be IMMEDIATE; there
would be no doubtful interval of years, but the very first season would
leave the cultivator in a position to repay the loan; at the same time,
the government would reap the direct benefit of a certain revenue from
the irrigated and assured production of the land.
This is no visionary theory; the fact is already patent in the few farms
belonging to wealthy land-owners that I have already described, as
exhibiting the simple power of a few water-wheels to produce abundance,
while upon the margin of such verdant examples the country is absolutely
desert, parched and withered by a burning sun, yielding nothing either
to the owner or to the revenue, while at the same time the water-supply
is only four or five yards beneath the feet of the miserable proprietor,
who has neither capital nor power to raise it to the surface.
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