Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 July 1886 — Wages and Living in Egypt. [ARTICLE]

Wages and Living in Egypt.

D. N. Richardson, editor of the Davenport 'Democrat, writes from Cairo, Egypt, relative to the pay and living of the laboring class in that region. It may be interesting here, when there is just at this time so much uneasiness among the laboring classes: All the embankments made to hold the Nile in check, all railroad fills—and these great works are myriad—are done with human hands, children and coolies packing the dirt in little baskets on their heads. Horses and carts might be used, but then wliat would the lowclass people do to get their 10 to 15 cents a day, which goes to buy their daily bread pud drilling shirt? To clothe these people costs a dollar or two a year. ..•To feed them, say 5 cents, perhaps, a day—but that is rather high. The stuff they^at—some greens, a very little coarse bread, some sugarcane to chew, make up the measure of their daily food.

You think this state of things severe, but have you never thought in your great land of peace and plenty that the time will come when America will be over-populated, when wages will fall off, and land get very dear, and people will fare no better than these I’m telling of? To be as densely populated as this land is, Iow r a should have 720,000,000 of people, instead of the 1,750,000 that she now has. Figure on that awhile and you will find no space for wages beyond what is paid here; nothing but huts to live in and the cheapest, coarsest sort of food.