“Close by the altar in the sacred fane,
Where daily God’s own paschal lamb was slain,
Hadji, the impious, made vile harlots sing,
And drunken broils throughout the temple ring.”
The Armenians, living in large towns and cities, were and are engaged in various occupations. The following trades were almost exclusively in the hands of the Armenians in Asiatic and partly in European Turkey: Blacksmithing, goldsmithing, coppersmithing, locksmithing, watchmaking, shoemaking, tailoring, weaving, printing, dyeing, carpentry, masonry, architecture, etc. Some are storekeepers of all sorts. Others are merchants and traveling merchants, money-brokers, bankers, lawyers and physicians. “The Armenian nation,” says a writer, “is the life of Turkey.” But the Turks have been committing suicide by attempting to annihilate the Armenians in the Empire. Another says, “They are a noble race and have been called ‘the Anglo-Saxons of the East.’ They are an active and enterprising class. Shrewd, industrious and persevering, they are the bankers of Constantinople, the artisans of Turkey, and the merchants of Western and Central Asia.”
One of the first missionaries of the American Board, the Rev. Dr. H. G. O. Dwight, says: “The principal merchants are Armenians, and so are nearly all the great bankers of the Turkish government; and whatever arts there are that require peculiar ingenuity and skill, are almost sure to be in the hands of Armenians.”
“In these Armenian provinces of Russia the machinery of administration is conducted by a handful of Russian officials through Armenians, who are employed even in the higher grades. The Armenian is a man of ancient culture and high national capacity; neither the instinct nor the quality would be claimed by his Russian superior.... Moreover, the Russian official gives the impression of being overwhelmed by his system, like a child to whom his lessons are new, and when you see him at work among such a people as the Armenians, you ask yourself how it has happened that a race with all the aptitudes are governed by such wooden figures.”[71]
One more quotation from another Englishman, which will be an exception from the other testimonies, yet the exception proves the rule: “As a people (the Armenians) there are few who have a good word for them. They are said to be cowardly and treacherous, to be mere money grubbers, and so on ad nauseum. The charges vary; but all agree that the objects of them are objectionable somehow. They seem, in fact, to be a sort of ‘Dr. Fell’ of nationalities for every one dislikes them, though often enough they cannot tell the reason. Even the writer, who has not the least objection to thieves, murderers, and devil-worshipers, who has kindly feeling for a successful cheat, admits to getting on less well with Armenians than with other Orientals.”[72] Surely does the exception prove the rule. Every Armenian ought to be thankful that he is not a thief, he is not a murderer, he is not a devil-worshiper or even a successful cheat, so as to merit this Rev. Dr. Wigram’s approval. However, there are some things that man cannot deny; so this writer is compelled to say, “And yet there is much about them that anyone must admire.... In the massacres of 1895, armed men were butchering unarmed, and there was no test of anything but passive endurance. Yet how many could have saved their lives by a mere verbal acceptance (of Mohammedanism)?” But they did not.
In the days of old the Armenians were also noted as merchants and traders in Western Asia. Herodotus, the great historian who lived in the fifth century before Christ, tells us that next to the marvelous city Babylon were the boats constructed in Armenia by the Armenian merchants in the following manner:
“But the greatest wonder of all that I saw in the land, after the city itself, I will now proceed to mention. The boats which came down the river (Euphrates) to Babylon are circular and made of skin. The frames which are of willow, are cut in the country of the Armenians above Assyria and on these, which serve for hulls, a covering of skin is stretched outside and thus the boats are made, without either stem or stern, quite round like a shield. They are then entirely filled with straw, and their cargo is put on the board, after which they are suffered to float down the stream. Their chief freight is wine, stored in casks made of the wood of the palmtrees.
“They are managed by two men, who stand upright in them, each plying an oar, one pulling and the other pushing. The boats are of various sizes, some larger, some smaller; the biggest reach as high as five thousand talents burthen. Each vessel has a live ass on board; those of larger size have more than one. When they reach Babylon the cargo is landed and offered for sale, after which the men break up their boats, sell the straw and frames, and, loading their asses with the skins, set off on their way back to Armenia. The current is too strong to allow a boat to return upstream, for which reason they make their boats of skin rather than wood. On their return to Armenia they build fresh boats for the next voyage.”[73]
The prophet Ezekiel, more than a hundred and fifty years before the time of Herodotus, in his enumeration of the ancient merchant nations who were engaged in mercantile pursuits with the Phœnicians in the markets of Tyre, speaks of the Armenians under the popular appellation of “the house of Togarmah.” “They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules.”[74]
The descendants of Togarmah, on account of their ingenuity and intelligence, have accumulated great wealth, and demanded, by fitness, from the indolent Turk, many high trusts in the government and its affairs, but by the jealousy, cruelty, and cupidity of the latter many of them have been precipitated from their elevated state and prosperity into terrible misery, often ending in execution.