COTTON IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 45 



cotton. At the beginning of the nineties a yearly rent of 100 piastres 

 was paid in Upper Egypt, in the Delta 140 to 150 piastres, for 

 sugar cane land 350 to 450 piastres. At the present day the rent 

 for first-class cotton soil has advanced to ;10, ,12, and even /T15 

 and ;,20, prices which can hardly go further upwards ; inferior soil 

 is let in proportion, and the average rent can be taken to be about 

 ;6 to ;8 in Upper Egypt, and about 8 to 10 in Lower Egypt 

 for one feddan of cotton land. 



As in Egypt every large land holder wishes to let his land, if 

 possible, with a certain guarantee for the rent, which the small 

 peasant can hardly ever give, there has come into existence 

 an intermediary, the large contract tenant, who is in a position to 

 give securities in the form of mortgages and such like. Usually it 

 is the Omdeh or a Sheich, the chief of the village, who leases a 

 few thousand feddans, and sublets them in lots of 15 to 100 feddans ; 

 for good land he pays perhaps E5 or ;E6, and receives E7 or 

 ES per feddan. His next guarantor of the tenancy is a generally 

 wealthy fellah with his own small holding, and he sub-lets the land 

 again in still smaller lots to members of his family, or to smaller 

 fellaheen. 



Wages and Work. The dependence of the Egyptian agricul- 

 ture upon small holdings is evident again from the various ways 

 in which the workers are paid. They seldom work for a daily wage ; 

 mostly all kinds of agreements are made, and these often obliterate 

 the distinction between the labourer and the tenant. Besides the 

 work for a share there are all possible intermediate stages. The 

 Egyptian country population belongs to the most frugal classes 

 of men in the world, and in accordance with the command of the 

 Koran most of them are sober. Their requirements as to mode of 

 living, food, and clothing are extremely simple, and therefore their 

 daily money wage is very small. For 10 to 12 hours work from 

 sunrise to sunset adults are paid, without food, P.T.2 to P.T.3 in 

 Upper Egypt; in Lower Egypt P.T.3 to P.T. 4^; for children in 

 Upper Egypt P.T.I to P.T.li, and Lower Egypt P.T.2 to P.T.2. 

 At the time of cotton picking, during which all workers are in 

 great demand, or when other urgent work requires doing, the daily 

 wage rises as much as 5 P.T. The present still existing difference 

 of wages of 1 P.T. in favour of Upper Egypt is disappearing more 

 and more, as since the extension of agriculture in Upper Egypt 

 through perennial irrigation, the supply of labour there does not meet 

 the demand. Besides daily and monthly wages (the latter for the 

 overseer), " piecework " is also known, for example, for the 

 preparation of one feddan 20 P.T. , and for the watering about 

 15 P.T. are paid. At the beginning of the present century the daily 

 wage for an ordinary farm labourer in Central Egypt had risen 

 from 3 P.T. to 5 P.T., since then they have changed little in the 

 country, although the wages in the town have for the most part 

 increased. In the factories 3 P.T. are paid as daily wage for easy 

 work, and 5 P.T. to 10 P.T. for hard work. 



Some estates pay ready cash for wages and add, under certain 

 conditions, produce, besides one feddan for clover to every head of 

 a family. Others . pay their wages monthly in hard cash, about 

 150 P.f . Others again pay their labourers' 30 P.T. monthly, but 



