Rails Against Opium

Among the first and most feverishly idealistic projects undertaken by the League of Nations was to send a three-man commission to Persia (now Iran) to investigate the opium traffic. This task was entrusted to Frederic A. Delano, onetime president of the Wabash R. R., one of whose nephews is now President of the U. S. He ran into a rather remarkable situation and, rather remarkably, was able to do something very practical about it. ,

The Persians had told the League that they were not particularly pleased that their country's economy was supported by the narcotics trade, but what were they to do about it? The English had grabbed their oil, and in their vast and mountainous country--one-fifth the size of the U. S.--there were no arteries of transport on which agricultural or mineral wealth could be carried down to the sea and the world's markets. The poppy's drowsy seed, very valuable and very light, was the logical, evolutionary Persian product. A camel could carry thousands of dollars' worth very satisfactorily on its back. Just as logically, "Uncle Fred" Delano's commission returned to Geneva and recommended that one good way to prevent the world's being flooded by Persian opium was to build the Persians a railway so they could ship something else. Last week, eleven years after the League commission's visit, 490 miles of the Trans-Iranian Railway (Persia's name officially became Iran in 1935) was completed--a winding, climbing engineering masterpiece through the Elburz Mountains between Bandar Shah and Bandar Shahpur. Iran's soldier-dictator, Reza Shah Pahlavi, had already ordered his gold, silver & rosewood private car.

When finished, the Trans-Iranian will jog south 865 miles through the middle of the country it serves, joining the Caspian Sea with the Persian Gulf. U. S. and German firms began the line in 1927 on the route suggested by the League report. As often happens in business negotiations between representatives of civilized and more primitive peoples, the U. S. and Germans found themselves out in the cold in 1933. Danes and Swedes took over the partly completed job, parceled it out to subcontractors, some of whom were British. Forty-five thousand Persian laborers and 5,000 foreign skilled workers have been working on the Trans-Iranian for the past four years, expect to finish the line in 1938. The $125,000,000 cost is being met by import taxes on sugar and tea, royalties on oil--which Shah Reza recovered for his countrymen.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.