The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-06-26
HOW INDIAN WORKERS LIVE

scribed as having their floors completely COW
cred with sleeping forms and having in adj
dition, beds hanging from the roof into which
people were crowded for whom there was no
on the floor. One instance was quoted
of "a room Is by II feet in which no less than
six families were living-making in all no less
than thirty persons, including children Three
out of the six women were expecting shortly
to be delivered, and the district nurse pointed
out a space three feet by four which was
usually screened off for the purpose"
What conclusions do these British benefac-
tors of India, draw from study of these con-
ditions? observations have proved" says a
British woman DOCTOR chat the hours spent
in the mills were healthier and more hygienic
for the women industrial workers, than those
spent in their own chawls." This is by no
means an unfamiliar trick Workers are
forced by the capitalists to live under the most
miserable disease-breeding conditions, and
then, out of lofty moral considerations of So
cial health, the capitalists are good enough to
lengthen the working day in the healthy"
mills.
In the city of Karachi, the commission
found: "The foundations of the houses are
saturated with sewage and filth of every
description. There is generally cesspool be-
low the house which has not been emptied
since the house was built-probably close to a
we'll The neighborhood is honeycombed with
rat holes"
In Bombay, 'the water supply tends to fail
IN the hot weather in the poorer quarters of
the town and is frequently off except during
certain very limited periods of the day. Sew
ers have not yet been laid in some of the
poorer quarters. Open drains run down the
gullies separating the adjoining buildings.
Often the cesspools overflow into the gullies
Often the drains are not flushed with water
for months on end"
The Heavy Death Rate
Under such conditions, is it any wonder that
in Bombay Tin 1921 infant mortality reached
a rate of 667 per thousand (which means
that out of every three children born, two
died! When the influenza epidemic struck
India in 1888, it swept away over IL mil
lion lives-more than the total number of
deaths in all the armies during the whole four
years of the World War; Any cattle-owner
would be considered insane who allowed his
herds to die Off at the appalling rate at which
British progress" kills off the Indian work
ers. In England the average expectancy of
life is 81 years, in Germany AZ, in France 45.
In India, it is only % years!
Of course, the British empire builders have
been making progress" in sanitation. The
true imperalist always believes that natives
live under these fearful conditions merely be.
So, during the war, "broad roadways were
opened up in Bombay, tenements were cleared
Of their surplus population and buildings
were condemned butt (the commission reports
With mixture of naive disappointment and
helplessness) "the expelled population had to
live somewhere, and they settled in neighbor-
ng areas, taking with them their overcrowd-
ing, dirt and disease"
Nothing could show more clearly that it is
not backwardness but poverty that is at the
root of these terrific conditions. Naturally
the rents for the improved tenements were in
finitely above what the workers were able to
pay. Life in pesthole is all that the Indian
worker buy with his terrible poverty
the crushing poverty that from the cradle to
the grave never lets him raise his head in
cleanliness and health, that from the cradle
to the grave never lets him know what it is
to be free from the cravings of hunger. Bril-
fish imperialism, feudalism, capitalism, these
are the three deadly diseases that make
pesthole out of Indiai