Word: millspaugh
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...struggle began again at Teheran. Finally the Government of Persia turned (or was swayed by British pressure) toward the U. S. (1921), in search of an administrator to restore shattered Persian finances. Soon the U. S. Secretary of State at that time, Charles Evans Hughes, suggested Dr. Arthur Chester Millspaugh as the man for Persia's money?or lack of it. The Doctor, then 38, had served the U. S. State Department as a routine drafter of official documents and later as an investigator of oil lands for the U. S. Foreign Trade Bureau. Then and there (1922) he signed...
When the 13 U. S. citizens comprising the original Millspaugh Mission arrived in Teheran, five years ago, each one wisely clapped upon his head a Persian variant of the fez, then put on over his business suit a long, ornate Persian robe. The 100% Persian effect of this costume was only slightly marred in Dr. Millspaugh's own case by his spectacles, his small three-cornered mustache, and the high batwing collar peeping out above his robe. The experts, thus garbed, at once began to grapple with Persians and Persian finance...
...immemorially been expected to accept bribes, embezzle, cheat. The peasantry have usually chosen for their principal crop that hardy weed, the opium plant, a species of vegetation which requires absolutely no cultivation and fairly luxuriates upon the ideal soil of Persia. Not surprising, then, was the discovery of the Millspaugh Mission that in 1922 there were very few tomans in the Treasury, scarcely an official not addicted to taking bribes and hardly a rich man who did not successfully evade his taxes...
...being all-important, Dr. Millspaugh tightened that screw first. For example, His Highness the Sipahdar-i-Azam, onetime Prime Minister, was pressed for payment of millions in back taxes. Soon His Highness committed suicide, first proclaiming that his sole rea son for this act was "unendurable American extortion." Other nobles paid. Progress was made -slowly...
Even today the problem of "honesty" has barely been at tacked. Rather indeed it has been dismissed in suave words, attributed to Dr. Millspaugh: "We find that many Persian officials are endowed with great potential honesty...