GOVERNMENTAL CONDITIONS IN THE INTERIOR 111 
get to the attention of the Commissioner-General at Monrovia. The regulations 
further stipulate that native Chiefs can be required to furnish District Com- 
missioners with no more than one hundred and twenty-five hampers of rice and 
two tins of palm oil a month, which articles apparently must be provided free. 
The regulations also lay down rules in respect to pawns and dowry, and they 
fix the damages to be paid for adultery at three pounds. ‘“‘If a man is enticed 
by a woman, however great a flirt she may be known to be,’ he must neverthe- 
less pay her husband or parents the above sum. Other sexual offences are 
punished with fines ranging as high as twenty pounds. 
The principal obligations imposed on the native population of the interior 
by the Liberian Government are the hut tax, labor for road work, labor upon the 


No. 72. — Government road construction 
government farms, and labor for porterage. According to the Liberian regula- 
tions the Chief of the village makes an assessment of the huts and collects the 
tax under the direction of the District Commissioner, and in return receives a 
ten per cent commission. The annual hut tax is one dollar, but it is said that the 
tax is not limited to that amount if more can be obtained from the taxpayer, 
and that it may be collected more than once a year. The Commissioners of 
internal revenue, however, frequently complain that certainly part of this money 
does not reach Monrovia but is retained.! Nevertheless, the amount collected 
from the hut tax in the interior has steadily increased. In 1911 it was less than 
$10,000 but in 1925 it was estimated at $178,540. In other words, the govern- 
ment at Monrovia is obtaining a greatly increased amount of money from the 
natives in the interior, who yet cost the government nothing. According to the 
statement of a number of natives in the interior, the District Commissioners 
1 Report of the Secretary of the Interior of Liberia (1919-1920), p. 16. 
