The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1900-07-25

more periodically afflicted and depopu-
lated India, and drawn heavily on the
charities of the world. England's
system of forecasting famine and pro-
viding for her starving subjects when
the gaunt specter comes has been de-
tailed, and praised as marvel of be-
nevolent provision. Has England, in
the course of hundred and fifty years
of occupation of India, undertaken Sc
riously to apply to local conditions there
the ounce of prevention that would have
been better than the shiploads OF cure?
Is there ever famine in England?
That there is not, is it because Eng
land raises bread enough for her mil
lions, or because crops there never
fail2 The barns and granaries of Eng
fish farmers have often been empty,
but if they were always filed 10 burst
ing with the products of English soil
they could feed but part only of the
English people. England has always
the means to buy food.
In an article on "India's Terrible
Famine" in the RevieD of Reviews for
June, its editor, William T. Stead, says
of the cause:
"India is a country not quite half as large
as the United States, with four times its pop
ulation. These 3OO,0O0,OO0 people must be
fed from their own crops, as there is, rela-
tively, no manufacturing resource to buy food
toitb."
Why is there ono manufacturing
resource to buy food WITH" This alb
sence of diversified industry is at the
very root of India's terrible famine,
the present one and all its CHASTITY pred
ecessors, not in India only, but in Ire
land also. From earliest times English
policy has been to do in England the
manufacturing for all her dependencies.
Manufacturing in her colonial posses
sions has been discouraged, if not abb
solutely forbidden by the laws of Eng
land governing her colonies. Parlia-
ment has made various enactments TO
this end. The colonies have been es.
tablished and held to supply markets
for England's factories and workshops.
midas 300,000,000 inhabitants have
been for century and half the ex-
elusive customers of England's shop
keepers. This, in some controlling
part, is the reason why these teeming
millions "must be fed from their own
crops" why "there is no manufacture
ing resource to buy food WITH" and
why, consequently, when their crops,
their one | reliance, fall--as they do
periodically-there is famine and all
its attendant horrors.
Had the English government, in its
conquest and dominion of India, been
the great humanitarian agency its in
discriminate and wholesale eulogists
delight to portray it, at the end of a
en- tury and half of occupation of the
country there ought to be in existence
there the one adequate provision
against these periodic disasters, "manu-
featuring resource to buy food WITH"
even if the profits English manufac-
turers have been piling up through
their inhuman monopoly had mean
time suffered some curtailment. This
abridgment of greedy gain certainly
could not have exceeded the heavy
contributions that have heen required
from time to time to feed people, mil
lions of whom a narrow, proscriptive
and brutally selfish policy has doomed
to perish from starvation.
England's harvests may fail, but the
workers in England's diversified indus
tries have she resource to buy food
with" So would the people of India,
under similar circumstances, in some
large and ameliorating degree, if not
in an entirety. England's prohibitive
policy in the matter of industries in hel
colonies or dependencies limited the
support of Ireland's 100000 inhabt.
ants to one resource, the potato
When the blight ruined that crop in the
later forties there was widespread fam
inc, death and suffering. A million
men, women and children persisted fol
want of food. The whole world was
drawn on for the relief of Ireland, as il
today is for the succor of India.
I'M 0F oil
famine in India might reveal Others
than those conveniently laid at thu
Threshold of Providence, and the,
might not add glory to the record o
English rule. England is fairly indict
able before the world for the death ant
suffering in India.