Omaha daily bee., 1889-05-26
ON FIFTY CENTS PER WEEK.
L1en and Women Marry and Raise
Families in India.
AMID MUD HUrs AND soUALoR.
How the Masses Live and Work in the
Land of the Hindoos- Most
Beautiful Tomb in
the World.
Poverty In IndIn.

AGRA, March 29-ISpecial Correspond
ence of THE BEE. l-Poveryl poverty pow
ertyl ind written all over India. Its
characters shine out In the shrunken legs
and fiat stomach of the people. The blaz-
Ing sun paints the word on the huts of every
village and the squalid want, which fills
every part Of the cities l have seen, is so
PLAIN that he who runs may read. Tho
condition of the East Indian people is far
worse than that of the Chinese. The
Koreans are fat and the Japanese are wealthy
in comparison with the people around me.
The Maiays, the Siamese and tho Burmese
have plenty to eat and leisure for loafing.
These people work from morn until night
and GO to bed hungry. They are not more
than half clothed. The masses wear two
strips of thin cotton CLOTH, and of the
250, 100000 of people in India, four out of five
go bare-footed. just below here about the
city of Patna is the great opium producing
district of India, and / 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 opium
daily, in order that they may by this means
ward off the cold and reduce their appetites.
There are In the province OF Bengal alone
more people than in the whole 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 arc Rhode Island and Massachu-
setts, whose small territories and large cities
give them respectively 254 ana 221 people per
square mile. A square mile is equal to four
farms of 100 acres each, and the average of
the WHOLE United States is
SIX PEOPLE TO EACH SUCH FARM.
n -
tIvated 100 acres, or two people per acre.
Our states have largely city population,
and wherever we have large average per
square mile great part of the population
lives in cities and make their living off of
manufacturing and trade. Here the people
live almost altogether by farming, aud If you
will put 320 people on the richest quarter Sec
tion you can find In America and expect
them to make their living by raising ordin-
ary 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 little over two, Nebraska two. Ken
lucky ten, Kansas three, an1 Pennsylvania,
teeming with mines and manufacturers, has
not quite twenty-five
Speaking of the town population of India
only one man in twenty lives in a town of
over twenty thousand inhabitants. The
other nineteen persons live in villages and
these little collections of mud huts are scat
tered all over the country. No one lives on
the land he cuItivates, 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 irrigatng walls and by
the difference in the colors of the crops.
These villages are built entirely of mud. The
huts are from SIX to fifteen feet square,
Their roofs are matched with straw or with
thin brick tiles and there are no chimneys.
Sometimes there is mud wall around the
hut and this wall and the sides OF the hut are
now covered with round cakes of COW man
ure, each the size of q buckwheat cake and
each bearing the imprint of a woman's hand
You 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 man
ure. They pick it up with their hands and
In front or behind their huts mix it with
straw and mud and then, moulding the filthy
mass between their palms to the thickness
of an inch, they take it and plaster
1t on the sides of the hut to dry. Wood IS
too dear for them, and by such fuel through
the raw, wintry mornings the family huddies
over the liJtle 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 out
Of the hut as best it can, and there is abso-
lutely nothing cheering about the house.
The floor is Of mSd and the walls are un-
plastered. The family have no chairs and
they squat on the ground at their meals. The
he'd Is elther the floor or a t-work of ropes
stretched on frame Of wood with legs
which raise it two feet from the floor 1t is
usually about four feet long and three feet
wide. and the man who sleeps upon it must
doubled up. During the daytime the beds
are stood out Of doors, because there is no
room for them in the hut, and some of
the family usually sleep under the over
through Benares in the early morning saw
perhaps five hundred people thus sleeping In
front OF as many huts. They had no bed
clothes under them and none over them
Women and men were lying with their
Knees up to their chins wrapped in the same
cotton garments they had worn during the
day time. Others were crawling from their
beds and stooping over the smouldering Goals
which their wives had just lighted. Squalor
was everywhere and
DIRT WAS KING.
Wages are terribly low and millions of
men In India live, marry and raise children
on an income Of fifty cents week. This is
q good income for u family and women work
IN the nelds Tor three cents a day. ana many
servants get little more than dollar a
month. The embroidery 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
IS in the art work of the western world A
good embroiderer gets from two to three
dollars month. and men working on the
rRilroads 10 minor positions get about
the same. An American or o German
would starve on such an allowance
but the Indians who get this much grow fat.
Among the workingmen of the world they
have reduced themselvesto the least number
Df wants They pay no millinery bills and
they never have tailor. They need neither
needles or thread and 1t In against their re-
ligion to drink. The Hindoo eats no meat
nor any animal fat and he lives on the cheap
est OF rice and mlllet. These with veget-
ables and milk make up his diet, and as a
rule he has not enough to fill his stomach,
Whenever the crops fail there is a famine
Tor he has not enough income to enable him
TO save, and about ten years ago the Eng
lish government spent S55 600, 900 in reliev-
ing the wants OF the people In some parts
OF India, such as Allahabad, which visited
last week, the population is so dense that it
does not Increase from year TO year. In
twenty years in this district there was only
an annual increase Of six persons In every
10,OOO, and Mt the present time the increase is
not much greater. Tho people are so under
1ed that disease and death keeps down the
natural increase which goes over the rest of
the world, aud you see them apparently