The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1889-08-30

a Country Where Able-Bodied Mon Wort
for Six Cents a Day.

a Country Where Able Bodied Mon Wort
for Six Cents a Day.
l had always looked upon India as a
rlce-eating country. find that a great
number of the people here eat wheat
and grain. In Northwestern India
only about ten per cent. of the people
eat rice, and in the prison at Agra |
found that the prisoners were fed
upon grain. Everywhere the mass of
the people seem to be underfed and
the leanest. scraggiest specimens of
humanity | have ever seen find in
this rich valley of the Ganges Where
nature has done every thing the peo-
pie are starving. and you can have no
idea OF the skin and bone men and
boys whom / see daily by the thou
sands. The costume of the people is
such that the arms and legs and often
the breasts and waists are bare. There
seems to be nothing but skin, bones
and sinew, and the average thigh is
not bigger than muscular American
biceps. There are no calves what
ever, and the joints at the knees and
ankles are extraordinarily large.
Nearly every man you meet. if he be
poor, has wrinkles in his belly, and at
every railroad station you find gaunt.
dark-faced, piteous, lean men, who
slap their bare stomachs to show that
they are hollow and ask for backshish
Wages are miserably low Farm
laborers get from six to eight cents a
day and masons get about ten cents
day. Even travellers who have to
pay the highest wages, can get good
English-speaking servants who will
travel with them and feed themselves
for thirty-three cents day, and less
than that if taken by the month.
This valley of the Ganges has more
people than it can support, and it is
probably the most densely populated
part of the world. The people live in
villages and the average country town
consists of one-story mud huts, too
poor and Differentiated for American
pig-pens. You would not think of
having such outhouses as the resi-
dences OF the majority of this vast
population would make, and in large
part of India, and especially in the
best part of this Ganges country. the
holdings average from two to three
acres apiece. At four to the family
this represents half acre per person,
or over 1920 persons per square mile.
When it is remembered that these peo-
pie live by agriculture it will be seen
that this condition is far worse than
that of China or any part of Europe.
And still the people are bright They
are brainy, too, and you will find few
sharper business men, better cut
faces and more polite people than
these people of India Their faces in
this part of India have much the
same characteristics as those of the
Anglo-Saxon. Those of the higher
castles are more like those of the
Greeks, and l see faces every day
which, if the skin We're white, any
American might be proud to own.
They belong to the same race germ
that we do, and under the same train
ing and Christian influences they
would be strong competitors with us.
But what can a man do on six cents a
day, or how can man learn when he
has to struggle to exist The popula-
ton of India is continually increasing.
England eats the lions share of the
products OF the country, and though
the people are perhaps better off under
her government than they have been
in the past. it is the same old story of
her wealth going to the rulers and
the people working their flesh off their
bones to support them. The Gov
of India, who, by the
way, is the rich Marquis of Lans-
downe, gets 500, 600 year Quite a
contrast with the wages of the masses
at six cents day, isn't t?-Frank q.
Carpenter, in Boston Globe