“Oh, Dr. Millspaugh!”

An event overshadowing others in the Far East occurred last week at Teheran, when the Government of Persia extended for a sixth year the contract retaining Dr. Arthur Chester Millspaugh as Administrator-General of Persian Finance.

To realize the Doctor’s power, glance at one of the petitions in a Persian newspaper which typically begin: “Oh, Allah! Oh, Shah! Oh, Dr. Millspaugh! Heed our Prayer. . . .”

For the past five years every toman ($1) spent by the Government of Persia has required the authorization of Dr. Millspaugh, who must even dole out to “The King of Kings,” Reza Shah Pahlavi, that monarch’s monthly allowance for his army and himself, 750,000 tomans.

A powerful trilogy of forces ceaselessly exert themselves to oust the bespectacled Doctor; and therefore he won a momentous point last week, by securing the extension of his contract. Against him are the old, vastly rich Persian families whom he has taxed; secondly, the many politicians whose powers he has curbed through controlling their salaries; and lastly, the numerous agents of Soviet Russia in Persia who have thoroughly satisfied themselves that Dr. Millspaugh is the chief agent of a vast Anglo-U. S. conspiracy to seize the oil and opium lands of Persia. The Doctor, although thus powerfully opposed, has greatly and vastly succeeded.

Because Persia lies strategically at the side door of India and at the back door of Russia,* a struggle to dominate the Government of Persia was waged between British and Russian agents, up to the period of the World War, on a basis of flagrant bribery and corruption. Amid the idealistic post-War period Persia barely escaped falling to the British Empire as a “mandate.” Then the power of Soviet Russia gathered might, and the old Anglo-Russian 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 at Washington, D. C., a contract vesting in him the whole administrative authority over Persian state finance.

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.

Travelers have observed that the Persian is apt to be tolerably pious, quite up to Occidental average in sexual morality, easygoing, indo lent, not particularly patriotic and almost joyfully unencumbered by anything remotely approaching an Occidental’s concept of financial integrity. An official or a rich man has 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.

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.”

By steady plugging and with the co-operation of the Shah (whose revenue has been larger under Dr. Millspaugh than ever before) sufficient progress has been made so that the present budget shows a surplus. Time and again the Majlis (Parliament) has been ready to oust the U. S. Administrator-General of Finance; but many flukes have saved him. For example his dismissal was thought certain in 1924, just before the murder (TIME, July 28, 1924) of the U. S. Vice Consul Robert W. Imbrie. That incident so fired U. S. wrath that the Persian Government dared not further inflame U. S. opinion by the discharge of Dr. Millspaugh. Recently the Doctor’s dismissal has again been rumored; but the extension of his contract last week, seemed to augur that Persians are beginning to value at true weight his ponderous and growing achievement.

*Regions bounding Persia are (in clockwise order) ; the Republic of Turkey; the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia; the Azerbaijan Socialist Soviet Republic; the Caspian Sea; the Socialist Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan (“Turkestan”) ; the Amirate of Afghanistan ; the Kalat State of Anglo-Indian Baluchistan; the Gulf of Oman ; the Persian Gulf and (completing the clockwise circle) the Kingdom of Irak, a British mandate.

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