UNKNOWN

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2677, 7 September 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

UNKNOWN

Tilts condition of India lias been tho same for ages. The people seem to have always been poor and the fabulous wealth of India ha* always been in the hands of the few. The English have their powerful grip on it now and their palaces and luxurious residences dot the face of the country. They squeeze out of the land just about the same amounts that the Mogul kings did in times cono by. aud horo at Agra are the ruins' which show how India was ground down in the past. There are in tho Province of Bongal alone more people than in tho whole United States. Here the peoplo live almost altogether by funning, and if you will put 320 people on the richest quarter section you can find in America and expect them to make their living by raisin? ordinary crops you get, the conditions of this part of India. Even with our cities Ohio has only twenty people to tho quarter section, and Pennsylvania, teeming with mines and manufactures, has not quite twenty-five. Speaking of the town poulation of India only one man in twenty lives in a town of over 80,000 inhabitants. The other nineteen persons live iu villages, and these little collections of mud huts are scattered all over the countr}'. No one lives on the land he cultivates, and tho firms are without fences and aro iu lar>je tracts divided up into little fields, the extent, of which can be seen by tho low irrigating walls and by tho difference in the colors of the crops These villages are built entirely of mild. The huts are from six to fifteen feet square. Their roofs are thatched with straw or with thin brick tiles and there are no chimneys. Sometimes there is a mud wall around the hut and this wall and the sides of the hut arc now covered with ronnd cakes of cow manure, each the size of a buckwheat cake and each bearing the imprint of a woman's hand. You see these cakes by the thousand in cities and villages all over India, and they form the fuel by which the rice is cooked and the people are warmed. It is the duty of the women and girls to gather it. Wages are terribly low and millions of men in India live, marry and raiso children on an income of 50 cents a week. This is a good income for a family, and women work in the fields for threo ccnts a day. and many servants get little more than a dollar a month. I found in Singapore and ia Burmah emigrants from Madras who looked lank and thin, and who had come there to better their wages. Many of these were Klings. Lean, black men, half naked, with long hair hanging down upon their shoulders —they do the work of Ceylon and of many of the islands of the Indian Ocean. They are bright and hardy, and are among the most picturesque people of India. The most of them act as coolics, but there is one caste which devotes itself entirely to the lending of money, and this caste, by banking, has grown rich. Its members are known as chittics, and they have their money-lending establishments in every town in Southern India. They control the capital of Burmah, and one street of Rangoon is lined with their banks. An Indian bank is far different from the money-lending establishment in tho United States. Tako a low, narrow, cell-like room, six feet high and about one hundred feet long, and put in tho centre of this twenty-fiveytmng men as black as the aco of spades. Lot each havo his head shaved. Let nono of them wear inoro than a white cotton cloth about tho loins. Mako them squat upon tho dirty floor and in front of each put a flat table a foot and a half high, upon which lies a ledger, the pages of which are filled with Indian characters. Behind each of these naked figures put a chest about tho sizi of the average trunk with a heavy lock upon it, and let all bo working away as though tbeir lives depended upon their calculations. On tho outside of the door, under a sort of portico, tho chief of tho bank sits counting out silver coins to a farmer who has como to borrow. He counts very rapidly, and lets each coin strike nnolher as it falls into his hand. By tho sound ho tells whether they are good or not. Ho exacts big rates of interest., and ."> per cent, a month is nothing to him if he can get it. Tho whole rioo crop of Burmah is owned by these chittics before it. is harvested, and they own millions of valuable property iu tho East. They live most abstemiously, and it is their business to accumulate money. They bring up their sons to follow their business, and thoy aro a caste of money lenders. The wives of those chitties aro gorgeous iu jewellery, and though thoy wear no clothing except, tho two strips of cotton, soinc of their earrings aro to heavy that Iliev pull down the oars and net a few wear nose-rings four inches in diameter.