Part 25 (2/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: GREAT BANYAN TREE--BOTANICAL GARDEN--CALCUTTA]
The garden lies along the bank of the Ganges, about six miles south of the city, and is filled with trees and plants of the rarest varieties and the greatest beauty you can imagine. No other garden will equal it except perhaps that at Colombo. It is 272 acres in extent, has a large number of ponds and lakes, and many fine avenues of palms, mahogany, mangos, tamarinds, plantains and other trees, and its greatest glory is a banyan tree which is claimed to be the largest in the world.
A banyan, as you know, represents a miniature forest rather than a single tree, because it has branches which grow downward as well as upward, and take root in the ground and grow with great rapidity. This tree is about 135 years old. The circ.u.mference of its main trunk five and a half feet from the ground is 51 feet.
Its topmost leaf is eighty-five feet from the ground. It has 464 aerial roots, as the branches which run down to the ground are called, and the entire tree is 938 feet in circ.u.mference. It is large enough to shelter an entire village under its foliage.
Several other remarkable trees are to be found in that garden.
One of them is called ”The Crazy Tree,” because about thirty-five different varieties of trees have been grafted upon the same trunk, and, as a consequence, it bears that many different kinds of leaves. Its foliage suggests a crazy quilt.
Benares is the center of the opium traffic of India, which, next to the land tax, is the most productive source of revenue to the government. It is a monopoly inherited from the Moguls in the middle ages and pa.s.sed down from them through the East India Company to the present government, and the regulations for the cultivation, manufacture and sale of the drug have been very little changed for several hundred years. There have been many movements, public, private, national, international, religious and parliamentary, for its suppression; there have been many official inquiries and investigations; volumes have been written setting forth all the moral questions involved, and it is safe to say that every fact and argument on both sides has been laid before the public; yet it is an astonis.h.i.+ng fact that no official commission or legally const.i.tuted body, not a single Englishman who has been personally responsible for the well-being of the people of India or has even had an influential voice in the affairs of the empire or has ever had actual knowledge and practical experience concerning the effects of opium, has ever advocated prohibition either in the cultivation of the poppy or in the manufacture of the drug. Many have made suggestions and recommendations for the regulation and restriction of the traffic, and the existing laws are the result of the experience of centuries. But anti-opium movements have been entirely in the hands of missionaries, religious and moral agitators in England and elsewhere outside of India, and politicians who have denounced the policy of the government to obtain votes against the party that happened to be in power.
This is an extraordinary statement, but it is true. It goes without saying that the use of opium in any form is almost universally considered one of the most dangerous and destructive of vices, and it is not necessary in this connection to say anything on that side of the controversy. It is interesting, however, and important, to know the facts and arguments used by the Indian government to justify its toleration of the vice, which, generally speaking, is based upon three propositions:
1. That the use of opium in moderation is necessary to thousands of honest, hard-working Hindus, and that its habitual consumers are among the most useful, the most vigorous and the most loyal portion of the population. The Sikhs, who are the flower of the Indian army and the highest type of the native, are habitual opium smokers, and the Rajputs, who are considered the most manly, brave and progressive of the native population, use it almost universally.
2. That the government cannot afford to lose the revenue and much less afford to undertake the expense and a.s.sume the risk of rebellion and disturbances incurred by any attempt at prohibition.
3. That the export of opium to China and other countries is legitimate commerce.
The opium belt of India is about 600 miles long and 180 miles wide, lying just above a line drawn from Bombay to Calcutta. The total area cultivated with poppies will average 575,000 acres.
The crop is grown in a few months in the summer, so that the land can produce another crop of corn or wheat during the rest of the year. About 1,475,000 people are engaged in the cultivation of the poppy and about 6,000 in the manufacture of the drug. The area is regulated by the government commissioners. The smallest was in 1892, when only 454,243 acres were planted, and the maximum was reached in 1900, when 627,311 acres were planted. In the latter year the government adopted 625,000 acres as the standard area, and 48,000 chests as the standard quant.i.ty to be produced in British india. Hereafter these figures will not be exceeded. The largest amount ever produced was in 1872, when the total quant.i.ty manufactured in British India was 61,536 chests of 140 pounds average weight. The lowest amount during the last thirty-five years was in 1894, when only 37,539 chests were produced. In addition to this from 20,000 to 30,000 chests are produced in the native states.
The annual average value of the crop for the last twenty years has been about $60,000,000 in American money, the annual revenue has been about $24,000,000, and the officials say that this is a moderate estimate of the sum which the reformers ask the government of India to sacrifice by suppressing the trade. In addition to this the growers receive about $5,500,000 for opium ”trash,”
poppy seeds, oil and other by-products which are perfectly free from opium. The ”trash” is made of stalks and leaves and is used at the factories for packing purposes; the seeds of the poppy are eaten raw and parched, are ground for a condiment in the preparation of food, and oil is produced from them for table, lubricating and illuminating purposes, and for making soaps, paints, pomades and other toilet articles. Oil cakes made from the fiber of the seeds after the oil has been expressed are excellent food for cattle, being rich in nitrogen, and the young seedlings, which are removed at the first weeding of the crop, are sold in the markets for salad and are very popular with the lower cla.s.ses.
No person can cultivate poppies in India without a license from the government, and no person can sell his product to any other than government agents, who s.h.i.+p it to the official factories at Patna and Ghazipur, down the River Ganges a little below Benares.
Any violation of the regulations concerning the cultivation of the poppy, the manufacture, transport, possession, import or export, sale or use of opium, is punished by heavy penalties, both fine and imprisonment. The government regulates the extent of cultivation according to the state of the market and the stock of opium on hand. It pays an average of $1 a pound for the raw opium, and wherever necessary the opium commissioners are authorized to advance small sums to cultivators to enable them to pay the expense of the crop. These advances are deducted from the amount due when the opium is delivered. The yield, taking the country together, will average about twelve and a half pounds, or about twelve dollars per acre, not including the by-products.
The raw opium arrives at the factory in big earthen jars in the form of a paste, each jar containing about 87-1/2 pounds. It is carefully tested for quality and purity and attempts at adulteration are severely punished. The grower is paid cash by the government agents. The jars, having been emptied into large vats, are carefully sc.r.a.ped and then smashed so as to prevent scavengers from obtaining opium from them, and there is a mountain of potsherds on the river bank beside the factory.
Each vat contains about 20,000 pounds of opium, lying six or eight inches deep, and about the consistency of ordinary paste.
Hundreds of coolies are employed to mix it by trampling it with their bare feet. The work is severe upon the muscles of the legs and the tramplers have to be relieved every half hour. Three gangs are generally kept at work, resting one hour and working half an hour. Ropes are stretched for them to take hold of. After the stuff is thoroughly mixed it is made up into cakes by men and women, who wrap it in what is known as opium ”trash,” pack it in boxes and seal them hermetically for export. Each cake weighs about ten pounds, is about the size of a croquet ball, and is worth from ten to fifteen dollars, according to its purity under a.s.say.
The largest part of the product is s.h.i.+pped to China, but a certain number of chests are retained for sale to licensed dealers in different provinces by the excise department. In 1904 there were 8,730 licensed shops, generally distributed throughout the entire empire. But it is claimed by Lord Curzon that the average number of consumers is only about two in every thousand of the population.
The revenue from licenses is very large. No dealer is permitted to sell more than three tolas (about one and one-eighth ounces) to any person, and no opium can be consumed upon the premises of the dealer. Private smoking clubs and public opium dens were forbidden in 1891, but the strict enforcement of the law has been considered inexpedient for many reasons, chief of which is that less opium is consumed when it is smoked in these places than when it is used privately in the form of pills, which are more common in India than elsewhere. Frequent investigation has demonstrated that opium consumers are more apt to use it to excess when it is taken in private than when it is taken in company, and there are innumerable regulations for the government of smoking-rooms and clubs and for the restriction and discouragement of the habit.
The amount consumed in India is about 871,820 pounds annually.
The amount exported will average 9,800,000 pounds.
Opium intended for export is sold at auction at Calcutta at the beginning of every month, and, in order to prevent speculation, the number of chests to be sold each month during the year is announced in January. Considerable fluctuation in prices is caused by the demand and the supply on hand in China. The lowest price on record was obtained at the June sale in 1898, when all that was offered went for 929 rupees per chest of 140 pounds, while the highest price ever obtained was 1,450 rupees per chest. The exports of opium vary considerably. The maximum, 86,469 chests, was reached in 1891; the minimum, 59,632, in 1896.
The consumption in India during the last few years has apparently decreased. This is attributed to several reasons, including increased prices, restrictive measures for the suppression of the vice, the famine, changes in the habits of the people, and smuggling; but it is the conviction of all the officials concerned in handling opium that its use is not so general as formerly, and its abuse is very small. They claim that it is used chiefly by hard-working people and enables them to resist fatigue and sustain privation, and that the prevailing opinion that opium consumers are all degraded, depraved and miserable wretches, enfeebled in body and mind, is not true. It is a.s.serted by the inspectors that the greater part of the opium sold in India is used by moderate people, who take their daily dose and are actually benefited rather than injured by it. At the same time it is admitted that the drug is abused by many, and that the habit is usually acquired by people suffering from painful diseases, who begin by taking a little for relief and gradually increase the dose until they cannot live without it.
In 1895 an unusually active agitation for the suppression of the trade resulted in the appointment of a parliamentary commission, of which Lord Bra.s.sey was chairman. They made a thorough investigation, spending several months in India, examining more than seven hundred witnesses, of which 466 were natives, and their conclusions were that it is the abuse and not the use of opium that is harmful, and ”that its use among the people of India as a rule is a moderate use, that excess is exceptional and is condemned by public opinion; that the use of opium in moderation is not attended by injurious consequences, and that no extended physical or moral degradation is caused by the habit.”
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