Darkest India Part 12

1. It will form the channel, or outlet, by which the agricultural portion of the labor overflow in the cities will make its way back to the country. In fact, it will const.i.tute a sort of sluice which will in time act with the same regularity and ease as those which are attached to any reservoir of water, directing to the most needy places, and distributing without waste, those very waters which if uncontrolled would sweep everything before them as a devastating flood.

2. It will at the same time find a ready market in the city, not only for its own produce, but for that of the other branches of the country colony, with which it would be in constant and close communication.

3. It will supply the city with wholesome and unadulterated dairy produce, together with the best fruits and vegetables, at the ordinary market rates. These could be disposed of either wholesale to city merchants, or by moans of stalls in the various markets, or we could undertake to retail them in connection with our Household Salvage Brigade. The Suburban Farm would consist of, say, from fifty to five hundred acres of land in the immediate neighbourhood of a city. It would combine three or more separate departments.

1. _The Dairy._ Buffaloes and cows would be given us by friends, besides being purchased and reared by us, in large numbers. To tend them, milk them, prepare the ghee, cream and b.u.t.ter, and to convey it all to town, would find employment for a large number of the Submerged Tenth.

2. The _Market Garden_ would employ a still larger number. Bananas grow quickly in all parts of India, and with them we could make an immediate beginning, introducing from different districts the best species.

Sugar-cane and other popular native products would receive special attention, and where the European population in the neighbourhood was sufficiently numerous we could include the cultivation of such fruits and vegetables as would be liked by them. In the case of seaport towns we should no doubt do a large business with the steamers in the harbour, as for instance, in Bombay, Colombo, or Calcutta.

3. We should probably at an early period transfer some of the industrial brigades enumerated in Chapter VI to our Suburban Farm. In doing this there would be several obvious advantages:

(a) We should have more elbow room for them on the Farm, than in the Labor Yards, where land would be so expensive that we should be obliged to crowd everything into the smallest possible compa.s.s, both in regard to work sheds and sleeping accommodation.

(b) In removing them from the contaminating influences of city life, we should be able to exercise a more personal and powerful influence upon these members of the Submerged Tenth and should stand a far better chance of effectively carrying out that spiritual and moral regeneration, without which we reckon that any mere temporal reformation would be ineffective and evanescent.

(c) We should prevent our labor yards from getting gorged, and would keep them within manageable dimensions. At the same time that we should cope more effectively with all existing distress.

(d) The Suburban Farm being closely connected with other portions of our Country Colony, we should be able to use the latter to relieve it in case of its becoming in turn overcrowded by the influx from the City.

(e) It would thus form a natural stepping-stone to the Industrial Village, which we have next to describe.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE.

For the Industrial Village we have already before our very eyes an admirable object lesson in the existing organisation and subdivision of an ordinary Indian village. Indeed it is singular how precisely India has antic.i.p.ated just what General Booth now proposes to introduce in civilized Europe.

The village community so familiar to all who have resided in India consists of an independent or rather interdependent, co-operative a.s.sociation which const.i.tutes a miniature world of its own, producing its own food and manufacturing its own clothes, shoes, earthenware, pots, &c, with its own petty government to decide all matters affecting the general welfare of the little commonwealth. Very wisely the British rulers of India have left this interesting relic of ancient times untouched, so that the inst.i.tution can be seen in complete working order at the present day all over India. The onward march of civilisation has somewhat shaken the fabric and has threatened the existence of several of the village industries. But at present there has not been any radical alteration. The village may still be seen divided up into its various quarters.

Take for instance a village in Gujarat. Those substantial houses in the centre belong to the well-to-do landowners. The cultivators or tenants have their quarters close alongside. The group of huts belonging to the weavers is easily distinguishable by the rude looms and apparatus for the manufacture of the common country cloth. The tanners' quarter is equally well marked, and yonder the groups at work with mud and wheel and surrounded with earthenware vessels of various shapes and sizes, remind you that you are among the Potters.

On inquiring into the interior economy of the village a system of payment in kind and exchange of goods for labour and grain is found to prevail exactly similar to that suggested by General Booth. Only here we have the immense advantage that instead of having to explain and inst.i.tute a radical reform in the existing system, we have to deal with millions of people who are thoroughly imbued with these principles from their infancy.

For instance one of the staple articles of food in the village consists of b.u.t.termilk, which is distributed by the high caste among the low caste from year's end to year's end in return for petty services. One of the usual ways in which the high caste will punish the low, for any course of conduct to which they object is by the terrible threat of stopping their supply of "chas," which means usually nothing short of starvation.

Here then is our model in good working order and in exact accordance with the ideal sketched out by General Booth. We cannot do better than adhere to it as closely as possible.

Probably the first industrial settlement which we shall establish, in addition to the labor yards and suburban farms already referred to, will consist of a colony of Weavers in Gujarat.

For this we shall have special facilities, as we have now 150 Officers at work in that part of the country, as well as more than 2,000 enrolled adults, a large proportion of whom have been in our ranks for several years. From amongst these we shall be able to select thoroughly reliable superintendents (both European and Native), and shall be able to take full advantage of their local experience.

But how far we shall consider it wise to confine our first settlement to one particular caste or to include within it from the outset some other useful village industries such as have been above referred to, I am not as yet prepared to say. Much will necessarily depend on the course that events may hereafter take. For the present I can only say that we will adhere as closely as possible to our Indian model.

The one weak point about the Indian system, as it at present exists, is, that there is no means of regulating the proportion of labour in each section of the community. The rules of caste prevent any transfer from one trade to another, while there is no system of intercommunication between the villages to enable them to readily transfer their surplus population to the places where they would be most needed. In a case where some village industry is threatened with annihilation, as for instance the weavers, there is absolutely no provision for the transfer of the unfortunate victims of civilisation either to some more favored locality or to some other sphere of labour.

Now this is just where our combined plan of campaign with its union of City, Country, and Over-sea Colonies would step in and supply the missing link. We should be able to direct the glut of labor into just those channels where it would be the most useful.

And why should this be thought impracticable? Everybody is acquainted with the power of wind, water and steam, where properly directed, to move the most gigantic machinery and yet for centuries those powers were suffered to go to waste. It is only of late that we have learnt for instance to put chains upon the genii of the tea-kettle, to put them as it were into harness, to bridle them and to compel them to drag our huge leviathans across thousands of miles of ocean. May not the enormous ma.s.s of waste labor that has acc.u.mulated in our cities and rural districts be fitly compared to the former waste of steam. The best that we have been able to do for it so far has been to provide for it the safety valves of beggary, dest.i.tution, famine, pestilence, crime, imprisonment and the gallows.

Is it too much to suppose that this enormous waste of human steam, the most valuable sort of steam that the world contains, can be properly controlled and guided so that it will make for itself railways and steamers that shall carry its human cargoes by millions across lands that are at present mere wastes, and to populate countries which are as yet wildernesses? In doing so, we shall but fulfil the words of prophecy uttered 26,000 years ago. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.

It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing.* *

For in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the desert.

And the parched ground shall become a pool and the thirsty land springs of water.* * * And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pa.s.s over it, but it shall be for those. The way-faring men, though fools shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be found there. But the redeemed shall walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Sion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

CHAPTER XV.

THE SOCIAL TERRITORY, OR, POOR MAN'S PARADISE.

Probably the biggest wholesale emigration scheme ever undertaken was that of Israel out of Egypt into Canaan, under the leadership of Moses.

The circ.u.mstances were so very similar to those with which we are dealing, that I may be excused for referring to them, as they have a direct bearing on the present problem, and may help largely towards its solution. It is said that "History repeats itself" and certainly this is true in regard to the evils that then existed, and we do not see why the remedy should not in some respect correspond.

Looking back then, we find that there was in Egypt in the year 1,500 B.C. a submerged tenth, consisting of 600,000 able-bodied men with their wives and families and numbering therefore at least two and a half million souls. They const.i.tuted a distinct caste, or nation, which had been grafted into the original Egyptian stock 430 years previously.

Owing to hereditary customs, race distinctions and religious differences they had preserved their ident.i.ty and had never become a.s.simulated with the Egyptians. It was a famine that had driven them to take refuge in Egypt at a time when their numbers were so few that their presence caused no particular inconvenience to the original inhabitants, while the services of the King's Vazir, to whose caste they belonged secured them a suitable reception.

At the time however when we take up their history a change had taken place. Their numbers had immensely increased. The labor market was deluged with them. The rulers, capitalists and landowners began to tremble for their very existence. Enormous public works were planned and the enslaved caste were compelled to carry out their allotted labour under rigorous taskmasters, who made their lives a burden to them. Still their numbers continued to increase. Alarmed at the prospect of an impending revolution, the King gave orders that every male child of the Hebrews should be drowned, thinking thus to stamp out the nation. It is easy to imagine therefore that affairs must have come to a desperate pa.s.s, when from the palace of Pharaoh and yet from among their own caste a deliverer was raised up to organise and carry out the wholesale emigration of the entire nation.

Looked at in this light it was certainly the boldest venture and greatest scheme of the kind that had ever been conceived, and without the aid of remarkable miraculous displays of Divine power Moses could never have carried out so magnificent a project.

Everything appeared to be against him. The people whom he had come to deliver were an undisciplined mob of cowardly slaves, whose spirit had been crushed by years of cruel tyranny. They were unarmed and unaccustomed to war. They were the subjects of the most powerful military monarchy of those times. For them to dream of emigrating must have seemed the wildest folly. On the one hand the Egyptians would not hear of it, and their way would be barred by legions of the best soldiers the world could produce. On the other hand the country to which they were to emigrate was already occupied by numerous and warlike tribes, who would contest every inch of territory. Added to this there was a "great and howling wilderness" which separated the one country from the other.

Hence it will be seen that this vast national emigration scheme was carried out by Moses under circ.u.mstances of peculiar difficulty which do not exist in the problem at present under consideration.

There are the same dest.i.tute hunger-bitten mult.i.tudes, it is true, and the same difficulty arises before us as to what to do with these steadily increasing hordes. The same Egyptian remedy, the construction of vast public works, has been resorted to over and over again, with the effect of giving temporary, but not permanent relief. In some respects the position of the Hebrews in Egypt was preferable to that of the dest.i.tute ma.s.ses in India. They seem at least to have had no lack of food and shelter, and if they had to work hard, and were cruelly treated by their taskmasters, we have become familiar in the Indian villages with many instances of cruelty in the treatment of the low caste by the high such as could not well have been surpa.s.sed in Egypt itself, to say nothing of the extortions of the money-lender and the ravages of famine and pestilence referred to elsewhere.

But in many respects the situation is far more hopeful. Our Pharaoh is a Christian Queen, under whom we have, not one, but many Josephs, who are really anxious for the highest welfare of the submerged ma.s.ses, and who are likely to hail with gladness (as has been already the case in England) any project which bids fair to alleviate permanently the existing misery. The wealth and power of the British Government and Nation, instead of being used to hinder such a scheme, is likely to be thrown bodily into the scale in favour of all reasonable reform that will help congested labour to redistribute itself and recover its normal balances.

Again the progress of science and civilization has removed immense barriers that previously existed, and railways, steamers, post and telegraph have rendered possible for us, if not comparatively easy, what was before only within the reach of miraculous manifestations of Divine Power.

Furthermore, _the land is there, plenty of it, for centuries to come_, some of it across the seas, within easy reach of our steamers, but a great deal of it quite close at hand. Nor will it be necessary to dispossess others to occupy it. The only enemies that will have to be faced are the wild beasts, always ready to beat a retreat when man appears. It does not even belong to some different nationality or Government, jealous of our encroachments, but is the property of the same Power to whom these dest.i.tute mult.i.tudes are looking for their daily bread.

Hence it is impossible to imagine circ.u.mstances more favorable than those which already exist in India at the moment that General Booth's scheme is placed before the public, towards the carrying out on an enormous scale, hitherto never dreamt of, the portion of his projects referred to in the present chapter.

What I would propose is that a considerable section of waste Territory should be a.s.signed to us and placed at our disposal in some suitable part of India, upon which we could plant colonies of the dest.i.tute, similar in many respects to those already described, save that we should here carry out on a wholesale scale what elsewhere we should be doing by retail. Into this central lake or reservoir all our scattered streams would empty themselves, till it was so far full that we should require to repeat the process elsewhere. Beginning with a single social reservation in some specially selected district, we should easily be able to repeat the experiment elsewhere on an even larger scale profiting as we went along by our acc.u.mulated experience.

From the first, however, I should suppose that it would be preferable to carry out the manoeuvre on as large a scale as possible, for the reason that this is just one of those things which will be found easier to do wholesale than retail.

We have many ill.u.s.trations of this in business. The merchant who ama.s.ses a colossal fortune will perhaps scarcely spend an hour a day in superintending the working of an establishment that covers half an acre, while the poor retail shopkeeper over the way toils from early morning to late at night and is scarcely able then to earn a bare subsistence for the support of his family.

Compare again the labour and profits of a boatman in Bombay Harbour, with those of the owner of an ocean going steamer. The former toils day and night at the peril of his life and earns but little, while the latter rests comfortably at home and enjoys a handsome income.