DAHR, LEBANON — CRIST 417 



On one occasion a villager, instead of answering a question that had 

 been put to him, replied, "Just see all the questions a foreigner can 

 ask ! We are so busy trying to make a living that we don't have time 

 to think up questions." The struggle for a living is keen indeed, and 

 it is to be expected that one of the safety valves to population pressure 

 would be leaving the village in search of work. Six young men from 

 Dahr work during the summer months as day laborers on the large 

 estates along the coast. They earn about a dollar a day, and save 

 roughly two-thirds of this amount. With their savings they set up 

 housekeeping in Dahr, improving their holdings, and perhaps buy 

 some chickens or goats. The land base of the village is so poor that the 

 mere fact that it is used at all is an index of the low level of living. 

 It can be used only because it is worked by families, whose members 

 do not receive wages; even without the necessity of paying wages the 

 village achieves only a kind of precarious self-sufficiency. The mem- 

 bers of families of Dahr scatter early in search of a livelihood. Of a 

 representative family of eight children, between the ages of 3 and 22, 

 two are in Tripoli — one in school, and the other serving as a car- 

 penter's apprentice — two smaller boys are in school at a nearby village, 

 and the two smallest children live at home, together with the two who 

 work the family land. 



How can people, using such primitive techniques on poor soil and 

 on rugged terrain, compete with those who farm with the most modern 

 machinery the broad fertile acres of the wheat belts of Argentina, 

 Australia, or North America ? The answer is that they are protected 

 by a high tariff. It is difficult for the uninitiated to thread his way 

 through the Lebanese labyrinth of tariff controls and Government de- 

 crees, but the result is seen in the market places. First-quality flour, 

 made from wheat imported from Canada, Australia, or the United 

 States, retails at about one-third more (65 piasters the kilo against 45) 

 than flour made from wheat grown locally or in Syria. The removal 

 of the high tariff on imported grains would make it no longer profit- 

 able to grow wheat on the narrow, rocky fields in the mountains, and 

 many thousands of people, thus bereft of the possibility of making a 

 living, would migrate from their villages. 



The Lebanon has supplied a current of migrants to overseas coun- 

 tries. Thousands of Lebanese have emigrated to Africa and to the 

 Americas during the past 60 or 70 years, and many of them have done 

 well. Even a tiny village of the size of Dahr feels the influence of 

 overseas migration and of returned emigrants. The present moukhtar 

 (mayor) , was in Africa for many years and the former moukhtar spent 

 12 years in Brazil. They both returned to their village with enough 

 capital to buy small pieces of land and improve it by terracing and 

 the planting of trees, and they were financially able to wait until an 

 income would be realized on the investment. Of course, for every one 



