The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-05-26
POVERTY IN INDIA.
How the Hind0O Masses Live and
Work.
THEIR MUD HUTs AND SQUALOR.
The Most Beautiful Tomb in the WOrId-The
Sacred Oxen-CeylOn Tea and
American Editors

poverty 1 find written all over India. Its
characters shine out in all the shrunken
legs and fiat stomachs of the people. The
blazing sun paints the word on the huts OF
every village and the squalid want, which
fills every part of the cities have seen, is
50 plain that he who runs may read.
~RzE CONDITION OF THE EAST INDIAN PEOPLE
is far worse than that of the Chinese. The
Coreans are fat and the Japanese wealthy
in comparison with the people around me.
The AIalays, the SiameSe and the Burmese
have plenty to eat and leisure for loafing.
These people work from morn until night
and 90 TO bed hungry. They are not more
than half clothed. The masses wear two
strips of thin cotton cloth, and Of the
259, OOO. 600 people in India, four out Of five
90 barefooted Just below here about the
CITY of Patna is the great opium producing
district of India. and I am told by one of
the leading opium officers of the government
that the people Of this region invariably
feed their children small quantities Of
ODium daily in order that they may by this
means ward off the cold and reduce their
apDetites There is in the province OF
Bengal alone more people taan IN the WhoIe
United States. The majority Of these are
farmers and their holdings are one-half acre
to the person.
THE MOST DENSELY POPULATED
Of our United States are Rhode Island and
Massachusetts. whose small territories and
large cities give them respectively 25f ana
52i people per square mile. A square mile
is e1uai to four farms of 16G acres each, and
the average Of the whole United States Is
six people to each such farm. There IS IN
Bengal 800 people to each cultivated 100
agnes, or two people per acre. Our states
Nc largely a city population, and wher-
ever we have a large average per square
mile a great part Of the population live IN
cities and make their living off of manu-
featuring and trade. Here the reOple live
almost altogether by farming and II you
will put 32O people on the richest quarter
section you can find in America and expect
them TO make their living by raising ordln-
arv crops YOU get the condition OF THIS part
Of India Even with our cities Ohio has
only twenty people TO the quarter section
Oregon has a little over two, Nebraska has
two Kentucky ten, Kansas three, and
PENNSYLVANIA, teeming with mines and
manufacturers. has not quite twenty-five:
Speaking of the town population OF INDIA,
only
ONE MAN IN TWENTY LIVES II TOWN
of over twenty thousand inhabitants. The
other nineteen persons live IN villages, and
these little collections OF mud nuts are
Nsca.tered all over the country. No one
lives on the land ne cultivates, and the farms
are without fences and are in large tracts
divided up into little fields, the extent OF
which can be seen by the low lrrigatlng
walls and by the difference in the colOrs OF
the crops. These villages are built entirely
of mud The huts are from SIX 10 n1teen
feet square. Their roofs are matched with
straw or with thin brick tiles and there are
no .cl imneys Sometimes there Is mud
waHpround the hut and this wall and the
sidAs7Df the hut arenOw covered with round
cakes of cow manure. each the size OF
buckwheat cake and each bearing the I'M
print of a WOman'S hand GU see these
cakes by the thousand in the cities and
villages all over India and they form the
fuel by which the rice is cooked and the
people are warmed. 1t IS the duty OF
THE WOMEN AND GIRLS
to Gather this manure. They pick it,
with their hands and in front or behind
their huts mix it with straw or mud and
then. moulding the iltny mass between
their palms to the thickness OF an inch,
they take il and plaster it on the sides OF
the hut ID dry Wood IS too dear Tor them
and by such fuel, through the raw, wlntry
mornings the family huddles over the
little cooking fire and attempts TO keep
warm The babies in many cases wear no
clothing. and the dress of the remainder OF
the family of five could be made out OF
three ordinary sheets. The smoke gets
ont of the hut as best II can, and there Is
absolutely nothing cheering about the
house. The floor is OF mud, the walls are
1rSlastered. The family have no chairs
and they squat on tae ground ground at U men
meals. The bed is either the floor or net
work of ropes stretched on frame OF
wood with legs which raise it two feet
from the floor 1t is usually about four
feet Spug and three feet wide and the man
wiz sleeps upon II must either hanS ms
lagsNOver the end or lie doubled up. During
tbe day time the beds are stood out of
doors, because there IS no room 10Y Uneul III
the hut, and some Of
THE FAMILY USUALLY SLEEP
under the overhanging roof in front OF the
door. Going through Benares IN the early
morning saw perhaps five hundred people
thus sleeping in front OF as many nuts;
They had no bed clothes under them and
none over them. Women and men were
living with their knees up to their cnlns
vyraDped in the same cotton garments they
had worn during the day time. Others
were crawling from their beds and stoOp-
inS over the smoUldering Goals their wives
had inst lighted. SqUalOr was everywhere
and dirt was king Wages are terribly
low and millions of men in Indialive, marry
and raise children on an income OF nifty
cents a week. This is a good income for a
family. and women work IN the heldS Tor
three cents a day. and many servants get
little more than a dollar month. Inc EN-
broidery of India is noted the world over
and there is as much skill in the making OF
patterns and doing this work on cloth with
gold and silver thread as there IL In the art
work of the western world. good en-
broiderer gets from
TWO TO THREE DOLLARS A MONTH,
a,d men working on the railroads in minor
nositions get about the same An Amer
ican or German would starve on such an
allowance but the Indians who get this
much grow fat. Among the workingman
of the world they have reduced themselves
TO tSae least number Of wants. They pay
no Millinery bills and they never have a
tailor. They need neither needles nor
thread and il is against their religion to
drink. The HindOo eats no meat nor any
animal fat and he lives upon the cheapest
rice and millet. These with vegetables
and milk make up his diet and as a rule he
has not enough to fill his stomach. When
ever the crops fail there is famine, for he
has not enough income to enable him to
save. and about ten years ago the English
government spent S55,OOO,OOO in
RELIEVING THE WANTS OF THE PEOPLE.
Tn some parts of India, such as Allahabad,
which visited last week, the population is
an dense that it does not Increase from year
- COR In twenty years in this district
N Gro was only an annual increase of six
narsons in every 10000, ard at the present
time the increase is not much greater. The
Deople are so underfed that disease and
death keep down the natural increase winch
ooes over the rest of the world, and you see
Il --4,n hlfOFsa