The greatest burden on the working classes--and it is a very grievous one--is the _octroi_, or _consumo_, a heavy tax on nearly every kind of food, drink, and fuel, and on timber, stone, lime, &c.; in short, on nearly everything that is consumed in use. The fisherman has to pay _consumo_ on his catch before he can sell it; the farmer on his dead meat, poultry, and eggs brought to market; the charcoal-burner on his charcoal; and so on. The tax, varying in details, is levied in every town and village, and thus may be, and often is, paid twice over by the same goods, if they happen to be conveyed from one town to another. It is obvious that such a tax on the necessaries of life presses with exceptional severity on the poor, and it is, moreover, steadily rising, while wages remain stationary. It is usually farmed out to syndicates which are said, and no doubt with truth, to be making enormous profits out of it. These syndicates are believed by the people to consist in many cases of persons who [Illustration: A SELLER OF PALM-LEAF BRUSHES AND FANS. [To face page 289.] represent the Jesuits, and the oppressiveness of the tax and the steady rise in its amount form another count in the heavy indictment of the poor against the Religious Orders. The estimated receipts from this tax in the Budget for 1909 were pesetas 58,000,000 (about £3,520,000). “Everything in the country is dying of the _consumos_,” said a working woman of about sixty years of age, who remembers with regret how much easier the life of the poor was in the days of Isabel II. “Every four years the contract for the _consumos_ in our province is put up to auction, and every time they are sold the price is raised four or five thousand duros,[26] and _we_ have to pay the difference. Yesterday Manolo paid four duros _consumo_ for the fish he sold in the market, and all he had for himself after twenty-four hours’ work was ten reals. The man who rents the _consumos_ from the Government is rotten with money (_podrido de dinero_): millions and millions of pesetas he has, all wrung from the necessities of the poor. Don Alfonso does not like it; every one knows that. If he had his own way there would be no _consumo_ for the poor. Already since he came into power we have been relieved of the _consumo_ on wine, green vegetables, and potatoes, and they say that two years hence, when the contract runs out, he wishes that it shall not be renewed. But that would not suit the Government nor the Jesuits, who are mixed up in this business. They would lose too much which they now are able to put into their own pockets. So they would like to make another revolution to get rid of Don Alfonso, as they got rid of his grandmother, before their contract comes to an end. In her time bread cost just half what it does now, twenty-five eggs cost five reals (pesetas 1.25) instead of two pesetas a dozen, and for four cuartos we could buy a piece of pork as big as we get now for two reals.[27] Salt