Darkest India Part 5

The picture which I have endeavoured to paint in the foregoing pages is dark enough to strike despair into the hearts of the most sanguine. And if there were indeed no way of escape for these victims of sin and misfortune, we might well prefer to draw a veil over the sad scene, and to bury in the ocean of forgetfulness, the very recollection of this earthly purgatory.

But there are elements of hope in the consideration of this problem, which should prevent us from regarding it despair.

1. In the first place, supposing that we are correct in computing this human wastage at from twenty-five to twenty-six million souls, this would represent only some five million families. It is true that looked at even in this light the number is vast. But surely it is not impossible for India to make sufficient and suitable provision for them within her own borders, to say nothing of the "regions beyond" if reasonable thought and effort were put forth in dealing with the problem.

2. Again, as regards the _numbers_, it will be found _easier_ to deal with these great national problems in bulk than piecemeal, and their very size will give them an impetus when once they are fairly set in motion. It will be found as easy to dispose of 1,000 people as of a hundred, and of 50,000 as of a thousand, if they be properly organised.

Indeed, for many reasons it is easier. The larger the community, the more work they at once provide for each other. Once let this social ball be set rolling on a large scale, and we may believe that it will soon get to move of its own weight.

3. Again, it is not an indiscriminate system of largely extended charity that we propose to provide. Our object is to find work for these workless mult.i.tudes, and such work as shall more than pay for the very humble pittance the Indian dest.i.tute requires. He must be a poor specimen of a human being who cannot fairly earn his anna or two annas a day, and our brains must be poor addled affairs, if in this great vast world of ours we cannot find that amount of work for him to do. It is all nonsense to talk about over-population, when the world is three parts empty and waiting to be occupied.

4. While we are piercing the bowels of the earth in search of gold, minerals and coal, there lies at our very door a mine of wealth which it is simple folly for us to ignore. True, the shaft has become choked with the rubbish of despair, vice and crime, which will take time, trouble and untiring patience to dig through. But it needs no prophet to foresee that beneath this rubbish are veins of golden ore which will amply repay our utmost efforts to open up. The old adage that "labour is wealth,"

and that a nation's riches consist in its hardy sons and daughters of toil, will yet be proved true. Treat this human muck-heap even as you would ordinary sewage or manure, and who does not know that the very same putrefying ma.s.s of corruption which if allowed to remain near our doors would breed nothing but fever, cholera, and the worst forms of disease and death, when removed to a little distance, will double and treble the ordinary fertility of the soil and produce crops that will increase the wealth of the entire nation?

And knowing this can we be so blind, even to our selfish interests, as to treat this human waste in a manner that we should deem the very height of imprudence and folly in dealing with the other sort? Can we shut our eyes to the fact that there are moral diseases, more terrible in their nature, and more fatal to a nation's life, than the bodily ones, against which we are so anxious to guard, even at the most lavish expenditure of the public purse? And shall we, in dealing with this moral sewage, neglect even the most ordinary precautions that we consider necessary in dealing with the conservancy of our cities?

If on the other hand the problem be boldly and wisely faced, I am convinced that in India, as in England, General Booth's most sanguine prophecies will be realised, our most pestilential marshes shall be drained, our moral atmosphere purified, prosperity take the place of dest.i.tution, and hope that of despair. The millstone that hangs around our national neck, so that we can barely keep our heads above water, even when there is not a ripple upon its surface, and that always threatens to engulf us in perdition at the first symptoms of a storm,--this millstone shall be converted into an unsinkable life-buoy, that shall not only support itself upon the crest of the highest waves, but shall help to keep afloat the entire national body. What is now an eyesore shall become an adornment, and what is now a cause of weakness shall be a source of strength, bulwark of protection and mine of wealth to all India. How this can be done we have sought in the following pages to unfold, adhering carefully to the programme marked out by General Booth, and suggesting only such additions and alterations as the circ.u.mstances of the case appear to necessitate.

PART II.--THE WAY OUT.

CHAPTER I.

THE ESSENTIALS TO SUCCESS.

General Booth prefaces his scheme for the deliverance of the submerged by laying down briefly the essentials to success. I cannot do better than quote from his own words.

(1) "You must _change the man_, when it is his character and conduct which const.i.tute the reasons for his failure in the battle of life. No change in circ.u.mstances, no revolution in social conditions, can possibly transform the nature of man. Some of the worst men and women in the world, whose names are chronicled by history with a shudder of horror, were whose who had all the advantages that wealth, education and station could confer, or ambition could obtain.

"The supreme test of any scheme for benefiting humanity lies in the answer to the question; what does it make of the individual? Does it quicken his conscience, does it soften his heart, does it enlighten his mind? Does it, in short, make a true man of him? Because only by such influences can he be enabled to lead a human life. You may clothe the drunkard, fill his purse with gold, establish him in a well furnished house, and in three, six, or twelve months, he will once more be on the "Embankment," haunted by delirium tremens, dirty, squalid and ragged.

(2) "The remedy, to be effectual, must _change the circ.u.mstances_, when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and lie beyond his control.

(3) "Any remedy worthy of consideration must be on _a scale commensurate with the evil_, which it proposes to deal with. It is no use trying to bale out the ocean with a pint pot. There must be no more philanthropic tinkering, as if this vast sea of human misery were contained in the limits of a garden pond.

(4) "Not only must the scheme be large enough, but it _must be permanent._ That is to say, it must not be merely spasmodic coping with the misery of to-day, but must go on dealing with the misery of to-morrow and the day after, so long as there is misery left in the world with which to grapple.

(5) "But while it must be permanent, it must also be _immediately practicable_, and capable of being brought into instant operation with beneficial results.

(6) "The indirect features of the scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit. Mere charity for instance, while relieving the pinch of hunger, demoralises the recipient. It is no use conferring sixpenny worth of benefit on a man, if at the same time we do him a shillings worth of harm.

(7) "While a.s.sisting one cla.s.s of the community, it must not seriously interfere with the interest of another.

"These are the conditions by which I ask you to test the scheme I am about to unfold. They are not of my making. They are the laws which govern the work of the philanthropic reformer just as the laws of gravitation, of wind and of weather govern the operation of the engineer. It is no use saying we could build a bridge across the Tay, if the wind did not blow. The engineer has to take into account the difficulties, and make them his starting point. The wind will blow, therefore the bridge must be made strong enough to resist it. So it is with the social difficulties, which confront us. If we act in harmony with these laws we shall triumph. But if we ignore them, they will overwhelm us with destruction, and cover us with disgrace."

CHAPTER II.

WHAT IS GENERAL BOOTH'S SCHEME?

His object is to supply the dest.i.tute with food, shelter and clothing, to provide them with work and to set them on their feet for making a fresh start in life.

With a view to this he proposes to call into existence, a threefold organisation, consisting of self-helping and self-sustaining communities, governed and disciplined on the principles of the Salvation Army. These he calls "Colonies", and divides into

(1) The City Colony,

(2) The Country Colony, and

(3) The Over-sea Colony.

All these are to be linked together and to be interwoven with and dependent on each other. In the City Colony a series of agencies will be established for gathering up and sifting the dest.i.tute. Thence they will be pa.s.sed on to the Country Colony and subsequently many of them will be sent to Colonies across the sea.

Now this triple organisation can be brought into existence, on the largest possible scale in India under circ.u.mstances peculiarly favorable to the success of the scheme.

Our country is not of limited extent like England. It covers an immense area and includes a conglomeration of nationalities, such as we find in Europe, with the special advantage of being united under a single, and that a friendly Government.

Then again there is the fact that, though the influx from the country to the cities has commenced, yet it has not at present got beyond manageable proportions, so that it is possible for us, if awake to the emergency, to rise up and divert the stream into more desirable channels.

If instead of waiting for a further irruption of village Goths and Vandals, (which is only a matter of time, and which will soon overwhelm our City labour market and compel the attention of our civil authorities,) we antic.i.p.ate the event and meet them half way by opening up fresh channels for them, more in harmony with their own taste and preference, we shall not only confer an inestimable boon upon them, but shall turn them into a source of strength and revenue for the country, and shall with them people tracts which are at present barren and fruitless, but which are only waiting to be occupied and which in many cases have only to be restored to the prosperity that they formerly enjoyed.

Finally we have the great advantage of a people already trained to husbandry from their youth, and accustomed to the very co-operative system of farming which General Booth advocates, where payments are mostly to be made in kind rather than in cash, and where the exchange of goods will largely supersede transactions in money, a strong but paternal government regulating all for the general good.

CHAPTER III.

THE CITY COLONY.

The first portion of General Booth's threefold scheme consists of the City Colony.

This may aptly be compared to a dredger, which, gathers up all the silt of a harbour, and carries it out to sea, leaves it there and then returns to repeat the operation. If such an operation is necessary in a harbour, and if without it the best anchorages in the world would often get choked with rubbish and become useless, how doubly important must it be in the case of the human wastage that abounds in every large Indian City.

Should a single ship strike on an unknown rock, we hasten to mark it down in our charts, or erect over the spot a lighthouse as a warning to others. Should it sink where it is likely to hinder the traffic, we set our engineers to work to remove it, even though it may be necessary to blow it to atoms.

And yet it is a notorious fact that our cities abound with rocks over which there is no lighthouse,--that every channel is obstructed with sunken vessels, and that there are not a few tribes of pirates who fatten on the human wreckage. But we fold our hands in despair, and allow bad to grow worse, till the problem daily becomes more enormous, desperate and difficult to deal with.

Now General Booth's scheme proposes to establish a dredger for every harbour, a lighthouse for every rock, an engineer for keeping clear every channel. It may be too much to expect that there will be no wrecks, but they will be fewer, and that surely is something! We do not say that there will be no accidents, but there will be willing hands held out to deliver. We cannot hope to abolish failures, mistakes, shortcomings and weaknesses of various sorts, but we shall do our best to antic.i.p.ate and provide for them? We are sure there will be difficulties and disappointments to encounter, but we shall meet them in the confidence that G.o.d is on our side, that He is intensely interested in the efforts which He Himself has inspired us to undertake and that ultimate victory is bound to crown our efforts.

And now I would give a brief description of this great City Dredger, explaining its component parts in the chapters that are to follow. We cannot promise that the entire machine will get into working order at once. We are anxious to start it immediately and to complete it as soon as possible. But on the public will largely depend the question as to how long it will take us to get it afloat and finished. Its simplicity, practicability, and universality are to me at the same time its chief charms, and its credentials to success. It is only part of a larger scheme with which it is entwined. But it is an important, perhaps the most important part and will continue to exercise over the entire effort the controlling head and the inspiring heart without which the whole apparatus will be as motionless as a machine without steam, or a body without life.