The Crime of Caste

IN OUR COUNTRY

AMERICANS ENFORCE EQUALITY

No Sham Aristocracy of Wealth Permitted by the People

Lesson of 1892 Taught Imitators of
English Aristocracy

HISTORY OF THE POWER OF PEOPLE RE-TOLD

Records for Three Thousand Years Searched
for Examples

Bullets, 1861—Ballots, 1892

By BENJAMIN R. DAVENPORT

PHILADELPHIA:
KEYSTONE PUBLISHING CO.
1893

This Book is Dedicated to All American Citizens,
who believe
That Patriotism, Honesty, Virtue, and Merit
ALONE CONSTITUTE INEQUALITY IN MANKIND;
WHO OBJECT TO AND RESENT ARROGANCE AND PRESUMPTION
UPON THE PART OF
THE POSSESSORS OF WEALTH
AND TO THOSE TO WHOM
“Caste” and Foreign Mannerisms are Obnoxious.

The Author.

DEFINITION OF “CASTE.”

The word “Caste,” we derive from a Portuguese word, which means “a race;” the Portuguese being the early voyagers to the East Indies, where they found the distinction of classes of society established under the Brahminical regime of India. Thence it came to be applied as a term of distinction of society in other countries. There were four castes in India: 1, the Priests; 2, military; 3, merchants; 4, the servile classes.

Members of the lowest caste were forbidden to marry those of the upper. Children of such unions were outcasts and irredeemably base; they could not accumulate property, nor change or improve their conditions. Along with many other senseless and inconvenient rules for the conduct of the different castes, were such as those forbidding members of different castes from using the same springs or running streams, sitting at the same table, eating with the same utensils, or preparing food in the same vessels. It was contamination for those of the first class to even mingle in the public highway with those who were of the lower castes. For convenience, and in the interest of the commercial prosperity of India, the British, after much exertion, have been able to eradicate many of these absurd distinctions, and the habits that resulted therefrom.

The attempt to create class distinctions in Free America, upon the basis of wealth or assumed social superiority, is a crime, and as such will be punished by the Common People.