Part 21 (2/2)

An ignorant people is always a poor people, and we have already seen that only 10 per cent. of the men in India can read or write, and of these 10 per cent. the majority are Brahmins. {253} Then, again, the people use only the crudest tools and machinery; and a third factor in keeping them poor is the system of early marriage. When it is a common thing for a boy of fifteen or sixteen to be the father of a growing family, it is easy to see that not much can be laid up for rainy days.

Owing to the absence of diversified industries, the crudeness of the tools, the ignorance of the men behind the tools, and the over-crowded population of folk hard-pressed by poverty, the wages are what an American would call shamefully low. An Englishman who had lived in an interior jungle-village, five days by bullock-cart from a railway, told me that twenty years ago laborers were paid 2 rupees (64 cents) a month, boarding themselves, or 4 rupees ($1.28) a year and grain. The wages have now advanced, however, to 5 rupees ($1.60) a month where the man boards himself; and for day labor the wages are now five annas (10 cents) instead of two annas (4 cents) twenty years ago.

In Madura a well-educated Hindu with whom I was talking rang the familiar changes on the ”increasing cost of living,” and pointed out that in four or five years the cost of unskilled labor has increased from eight to twelve cents. ”And in some towns,” he declared, looking at the same time as if he feared I should not believe his story, ”they are demanding as much as 8 annas (16 cents) a day!” In Bombay I was told that coolies average 16 to 20 cents a day; spinners in jute factories, $1.16 a week, weavers, $1.82. In a great cotton factory I visited in Madras, employing about 4000 natives (all males) the average wages for eleven and a half hours' work is $3.84 to $4.85 a month. In Ahmedabad, another cotton manufacturing centre, about the same scale is in force. Miners get 16 to 28 cents a day. Servants, $3.20 to $3.84 a month.

The women in Calcutta (some of them with their babies tied out to stakes while they worked) whom I saw carrying brick and mortar on their heads to the tops of three and four story buildings, get 3 to 4 annas a day--6 to 8 cents. In {254} Darjeeling the bowed and toil-cursed women laden like donkeys, whom I found bringing stone on their backs from quarries two or three miles away managed to make 12 to 16 cents a day for their bitter toil up steep hills and down, for eight long hours. Women who carried lighter loads of mud, making 50 trips averaging 20 miles of travel, earned only 8 cents, as did also the women with babies strapped on their backs, who nevertheless toiled as steadily as the others.

”As for the men I pay these strong, brawny Bhutia fellows 8 annas (16 cents) a day,” the contractor told me, ”but those Nepalese who are not so strong get only 5 annas for shovelling earth.”

Director of Agriculture Couchman of the Madras Presidency gave me the following as the usual scale of wages for farm work: men 6 to 8 cents; women 4 to 6; children 3 to 5, the laborers boarding themselves.

With this Mr. Couchman, whom I have just mentioned, I had a very interesting interview in Madras which should shed some light on Indian agriculture.

”In Madras Presidency,” he told me, ”we cultivate 10,000,000 acres of rice, which is the favorite food of the people. As it is expensive compared with some cheaper foods, however, the people put 4,500,000 acres to a sort of sorghum--not the sorghum cultivated for syrup or sugar but for the seed to be used as a grain food--and also grow 4,000,000 acres of millet the seed of which are used as a grain food.”

”Then we grow 2,000,000 acres in cotton, but cotton in India is grown only on black soils. We want some for red soils, and we are also seeking to increase the yield and the length of staple in the indigenous varieties. In both these points the Indian cotton now compares very badly with the American. Our average yield is only about 50 to 100 pounds lint per acre, and the staple is only three quarters to five eights of an inch in length, and not suitable for spinning over 20s in warp.”

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[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNING THE BODIES OF DEAD HINDUS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN INDIAN CAMEL CART.]

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[Ill.u.s.tration: TRAVEL IN INDIA.]

How the author and his friends made the trip from Jeypore to Amber

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”Of course, with our dense population, land is high and our system of farming expensive. Good irrigated wet land, used chiefly for rice, is worth from $166 to $500 per acre, renting for $20 to $25; dry land sells for $17 to $133 per acre and rents for from $3 to $5. It is commonly said that a man and his family should make a living on two acres, and the usual one-man farm consists of 5 to 10 acres of wet land or 30 to 50 of dry. The wet land farmers are generally renters, the others owners. Of course, you have noticed that no horses are used on the farms, nothing but bullocks; nor do I think that horses will be used for a long time to come. We are making some progress in introducing better methods of farming. Little, of course, can be done with bulletins where such a small percentage of the people can read, but demonstration farms have proved quite successful, and the government is much pleased with the results obtained from employing progressive native farmers to instruct their neighbors.”

The advancing price of cotton has proved a matter of hardly less interest to India than to America, and for several years the crop has been steadily increasing. The 1910-11 crop (the picking ended in May) was almost 4,500,000 bales of 400 pounds each. The necessity for growing food crops, however, is so imperative that the cotton acreage cannot be greatly increased--at least not soon. During our Civil War, it will be remembered, India did her uttermost; and Bombay laid the foundations of her greatness in the high prices then paid for the fleecy staple. Hers is still a great cotton market and down one of her main streets from morning to night one sees an almost continuous line of cotton carts, drawn by bullocks and driven by men almost as black as our negroes in the South. I was very much interested in seeing how much better the lint is baled than in America. In the first place the bagging is better--less ragged than that we commonly use--and in the next place it is held in place by almost twice as many encircling bands or ties as our bales.

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All in all, I regret to say good-by to India. Its people are poor; its industries primitive; its religion atrocious; its climate generally oppressive, and yet, after all, there is something fascinating about the country. For one thing, there is a large infusion of Aryan blood among the people, and after one has spent several months among the featureless faces of the Chinese and j.a.panese, these Aryan-type faces are strangely attractive. The speech of the people, too, is picturesque beyond that of almost any other folk, as readers of Kipling have come to know. It is very common for a beggar to call out, ”Oh, Protector of the Poor, you are my father and mother, help me, help me.”

”I salute you,” said our old guide at the Kutab Minar, speaking in his native Hindustani, which my friend interpreted for me. ”I know that you are the kings of the realm, but I have eaten your salt before, and I am willing to eat it again.”

At the end, of course, he wished a tip. ”But ask him why I should give him anything,” I said to my friend.

Replying, he mentioned first the number of his children, the blindness of his wife, and then dropped into the picturesque native plea: ”Besides, you are my father and mother, the king of the realm, and if I may not look to you, to whom shall I look?”

”Well, so much lying ought to be worth four annas,” I said, and left him happier with the coin.

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