A common method of extortion is the collection of customs along the country roads. Quantities of goods are being transported by wheelbarrows, or carried by coolies on their shoulders. Any man who owns a gun is entitled to establish himself as a customs official at any point along the road, and force travellers to pay taxes on their goods. Needless such collectors have no legal status whatever, their only authority is armed force. They usually operate in groups, and of course the travellers have no power to resist them. After payrhent of taxes, the goods are usually allowed to proceed to the next stop.
On some roads, such tax stations are only a few miles apart, there may be several in ten miles. While grain is moved to and from market towns in considerable quantities, salt perhaps the principal item in long tance transportation by wheelbarrows. On some of the east and west roads, hundreds of barrow loads of salt may pass a given point in one day. The usual tax rate is a few "dimes" for such a load. While this rate may seem reasonable, it becomes burdensome if paid ten or 20 times in a day or two. The coolies who navigate these barrows, toiling day after day on all kinds of roads, may truly be said to earn their salt.
Beggars from this part of the country go to the salt fields near Haichow, and get salt without paying full prices. In some cases, no doubt they resort to begging or stealing. Such persons carry the salt in bags on their backs, with cloth straps over their shoulders. If they sit down to rest, it is difficult to rise again, with the heavy load. Each one carries a stick, with a short cross bar at one end. When the bearer stops to rest, the stick is placed under the bag of salt, with the cross bar at the upper end of the stick. This enables the bearer to get some relief from the weight of the burden, even though he cannot sit down. Men, women, and boys carry salt in this way.
Probably a good many of them are not real beggars, but they use this method of carrying salt in order to avoid paying taxes. For some reason, there is a quaint custom of allowing all such carriers to pi free of charge. Between tax static Cairo, June 23, Royal Air Force planes penetrated Ethiopia Thursday and heavily bombed railway stations and an airdrome at Dire Dawa, the headquarters of the British Army in the Middle East disclosed today.
Although Italian pursuit ships attempted to intercept the British bombers, which raided Dire Dawa twice on Thursday, all of the RAF, planes returned to their bases, it was announced, An Italian tri-motored bomber was shot down over the British lines on the Ethiopian border yesterday and its crew of six were captured, the announcement stated—United Press,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.