CHAPTER XV.
THE SOCIAL TERRITORY, OR, POOR MAN'S PARADISE.
Probably the biggest wholesale emigration scheme ever undertaken was that of Israel out of Egypt into Canaan, under the leadership of Moses. The circumstances were so very similar to those with which we are dealing, that I may be excused for referring to them, as they have a direct bearing on the present problem, and may help largely towards its solution. It is said that "History repeats itself" and certainly this is true in regard to the evils that then existed, and we do not see why the remedy should not in some respect correspond.
Looking back then, we find that there was in Egypt in the year 1,500 B.C. a submerged tenth, consisting of 600,000 able-bodied men with their wives and families and numbering therefore at least two and a half million souls. They constituted a distinct caste, or nation, which had been grafted into the original Egyptian stock 430 years previously. Owing to hereditary customs, race distinctions and religious differences they had preserved their identity and had never become assimulated with the Egyptians. It was a famine that had driven them to take refuge in Egypt at a time when their numbers were so few that their presence caused no particular inconvenience to the original inhabitants, while the services of the King's Vazir, to whose caste they belonged secured them a suitable reception.
At the time however when we take up their history a change had taken place. Their numbers had immensely increased. The labor market was deluged with them. The rulers, capitalists and landowners began to tremble for their very existence. Enormous public works were planned and the enslaved caste were compelled to carry out their allotted labour under rigorous taskmasters, who made their lives a burden to them. Still their numbers continued to increase. Alarmed at the prospect of an impending revolution, the King gave orders that every male child of the Hebrews should be drowned, thinking thus to stamp out the nation. It is easy to imagine therefore that affairs must have come to a desperate pass, when from the palace of Pharaoh and yet from among their own caste a deliverer was raised up to organise and carry out the wholesale emigration of the entire nation.
Looked at in this light it was certainly the boldest venture and greatest scheme of the kind that had ever been conceived, and without the aid of remarkable miraculous displays of Divine power Moses could never have carried out so magnificent a project.
Everything appeared to be against him. The people whom he had come to deliver were an undisciplined mob of cowardly slaves, whose spirit had been crushed by years of cruel tyranny. They were unarmed and unaccustomed to war. They were the subjects of the most powerful military monarchy of those times. For them to dream of emigrating must have seemed the wildest folly. On the one hand the Egyptians would not hear of it, and their way would be barred by legions of the best soldiers the world could produce. On the other hand the country to which they were to emigrate was already occupied by numerous and warlike tribes, who would contest every inch of territory. Added to this there was a "great and howling wilderness" which separated the one country from the other.
Hence it will be seen that this vast national emigration scheme was carried out by Moses under circumstances of peculiar difficulty which do not exist in the problem at present under consideration.
There are the same destitute hunger-bitten multitudes, it is true, and the same difficulty arises before us as to what to do with these steadily increasing hordes. The same Egyptian remedy, the construction of vast public works, has been resorted to over and over again, with the effect of giving temporary, but not permanent relief. In some respects the position of the Hebrews in Egypt was preferable to that of the destitute masses in India. They seem at least to have had no lack of food and shelter, and if they had to work hard, and were cruelly treated by their taskmasters, we have become familiar in the Indian villages with many instances of cruelty in the treatment of the low caste by the high such as could not well have been surpassed in Egypt itself, to say nothing of the extortions of the money-lender and the ravages of famine and pestilence referred to elsewhere.
But in many respects the situation is far more hopeful. Our Pharaoh is a Christian Queen, under whom we have, not one, but many Josephs, who are really anxious for the highest welfare of the submerged masses, and who are likely to hail with gladness (as has been already the case in England) any project which bids fair to alleviate permanently the existing misery. The wealth and power of the British Government and Nation, instead of being used to hinder such a scheme, is likely to be thrown bodily into the scale in favour of all reasonable reform that will help congested labour to redistribute itself and recover its normal balances.
Again the progress of science and civilization has removed immense barriers that previously existed, and railways, steamers, post and telegraph have rendered possible for us, if not comparatively easy, what was before only within the reach of miraculous manifestations of Divine Power.
Furthermore, the land is there, plenty of it, for centuries to come, some of it across the seas, within easy reach of our steamers, but a great deal of it quite close at hand. Nor will it be necessary to dispossess others to occupy it. The only enemies that will have to be faced are the wild beasts, always ready to beat a retreat when man appears. It does not even belong to some different nationality or Government, jealous of our encroachments, but is the property of the same Power to whom these destitute multitudes are looking for their daily bread.
Hence it is impossible to imagine circumstances more favorable than those which already exist in India at the moment that General Booth's scheme is placed before the public, towards the carrying out on an enormous scale, hitherto never dreamt of, the portion of his projects referred to in the present chapter.
What I would propose is that a considerable section of waste Territory should be assigned to us and placed at our disposal in some suitable part of India, upon which we could plant colonies of the destitute, similar in many respects to those already described, save that we should here carry out on a wholesale scale what elsewhere we should be doing by retail. Into this central lake or reservoir all our scattered streams would empty themselves, till it was so far full that we should require to repeat the process elsewhere. Beginning with a single social reservation in some specially selected district, we should easily be able to repeat the experiment elsewhere on an even larger scale profiting as we went along by our accumulated experience.
From the first, however, I should suppose that it would be preferable to carry out the manoeuvre on as large a scale as possible, for the reason that this is just one of those things which will be found easier to do wholesale than retail.
We have many illustrations of this in business. The merchant who amasses a colossal fortune will perhaps scarcely spend an hour a day in superintending the working of an establishment that covers half an acre, while the poor retail shopkeeper over the way toils from early morning to late at night and is scarcely able then to earn a bare subsistence for the support of his family.
Compare again the labour and profits of a boatman in Bombay Harbour, with those of the owner of an ocean going steamer. The former toils day and night at the peril of his life and earns but little, while the latter rests comfortably at home and enjoys a handsome income.
Or again let the village hand-loom weaver be pitted against the Bombay Mill-owner, and we see at a glance that under certain circumstances it pays infinitely better to do things on a large than on a small scale, and that in so doing the amount of labour and risk are also economised.
Now this applies to the proposal contained in this chapter. Given a people who are well acquainted with Indian agriculture and who are willing to be moved;—given a leader and an organisation in which they have confidence;—given those religious and moral influences which will so help them in overcoming the initial difficulties of the enterprise; and given a suitable tract of country which (without displacing existing population) they can occupy, and I would say with confidence that it will be found easier to accomplish the transfer on a large than on a small scale, by wholesale rather than by retail.
In the present case all the above conditions are satisfied. The entire congested labor of the rural districts is thoroughly versed from childhood in the arts of Indian agriculture. They are willing in many parts of the country to emigrate by thousands even across the "kala pani," to which they have such an intense and religious aversion, or to enlist by thousands in our merchant marine and military forces. Much more then will they be willing to emigrate in far larger numbers to districts close at hand. A leader to inspire, an organisation to enfold, and a plan of campaign to guide, have in the most marvellous manner almost dropped from the skies since the publication of General Booth's book. The religious and moral restraints and incentives, so important for guarding against the abuses of selfishness and for inspiring with a spirit of cheerful self-sacrifice, are provided, and that in a purely Native garb, and yet with all the advantages of European leadership and enthusiasm. And finally there is land in abundance which Government desires to see colonised, and which is being slowly retailed out bit by bit in a manner altogether unworthy of the urgent necessities of the occasion.
What then is there to hinder a big bold experiment? General Booth will have in England largely to make his agriculturists before he can put them upon the land. Here in India we have millions of skilled destitutes ready to hand, and it will be possible within a very short period with a few bold strokes to relieve the congested labor market from one end of India to the other in a manner that can hardly now be conceived.
Is not this plan infinitely superior to the spasmodic Egyptian expedient of occasional public works, which cost the State enormous sums and only increase the local difficulty as soon as they are completed? Should we not here be erecting a satisfactory and permanent bulwark against the future inroads of famine? Shall we not rather be increasing the public revenue for future years by millions of pounds and that without adding a single new tax, or relying upon sources so uncertain and detrimental to the public welfare as those founded upon the consumption of drugs and liquors that destroy the health of the people? Shall we not again be increasing the stability and glory of the Empire in caring for its destitute masses and in turning what is now a danger to the State into a peaceful, prosperous and contented community? And finally will not our Poor Man's Paradise be infinitely superior from every point of view to the miserable regulation workhouse, that is in other countries offered by the State, or again to the system of charitable doles and wholesale beggary that at present exists? To me it seems that there is indeed no comparison between the two, and General Booth's book has opened out a vista of happiness to the poor, such as we should hardly have conceived possible save in connection with a Christian millennium or a Hindoo "Kal Yug."
But it may be objected by some that in providing those outlets for the destitute, we should in the end only aggravate the difficulty by enormously increasing the population. This reminds one of the gigantic folly of the miser with his hoards of gold. An amusing eastern anecdote is told of one who having gone two or three miles to say his prayers to a mosque suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to put out an oil lamp before leaving home. He at once retraced his steps and on reaching his house called out to the servant girl to be sure and put out the light. She replied that she had already done so, and that it was a pity he had wasted his shoe leather in walking back so far to remind her. To this he answered that he had already thought of this and had therefore taken off his shoes and carried them under his arm so as not to wear them out!
And here you have a wretched class of miserly so-called "economists" who are afraid to light their lamp, lest they should burn the oil, and who would rather sleep in the darkness, doing nothing, or break their necks fumbling about in their vain efforts to do little, when for a farthing dip they may put in hours of profitable toil! And when a shoe is provided for the swollen foot of a nation they are so afraid of wasting their shoe leather, that they would rather hobble about belamed with thorns, stones, heat, or cold, than lay out the little that is necessary to bring them so ample a return!
Each labourer represents to the state what the piece of gold is to the miser. He is the human capital of the nation and is capable of producing annual interest at the rate of at least a hundred per cent, if placed in sufficiently favourable circumstances. What folly is it then, nay what culpable negligence, nay what nothing short of criminality to sink this human gold in the bogs of beggary and destitution! Man is the most wonderful piece of machinery that exists in the world! The cleverest inventions of human science sink into insignificance in comparison with him! The whole universe is so planned that his services cannot be dispensed with and indeed he is at the same time the most beautiful ornament and the essential keystone of the entire fabric! The utmost that science itself can do is to increase his productive powers.
But the idea of dispensing with the service of a single human being, or of consigning him hopelessly to the perdition of beggary, destitution, famine and pestilence is the most stupendous act of folly conceivable. What should we think of a railway company that would shunt half its engines on to a siding and leave them to the destructive influence of rain and dust? And how shall we characterise the stupidity that shall shunt millions of serviceable human beings into circumstances of misery so appalling as well as of uselessness so entire, as those which we have endeavoured to picture? Why, here we have not even the decency of a siding! These wonderfully made semi-Divine human engines are suffered to obstruct the very main lines on which our expresses run, not only wrecked themselves, but the fruitful cause of wreckage to millions more!
But I have said enough I trust to show that the problem is not a hopeless one, and that the portion of General Booth's scheme to which this chapter refers is particularly applicable to India and capable of being successfully put into operation on a scale commensurate with the necessities of the hour.
Having obtained our territory we should proceed to mark it out, and to direct into the most advantageous channels, the inflowing tide of immigration. There would be a threefold division into agricultural districts which would furnish food for the incoming population, a pastoral district for the cattle, and a central market, which would furnish the pivot on which all the rest would work. Our agricultural and dairy farm proposal I have already fully discussed and will now proceed to describe the social City of Refuge which will act as a sort of solar system round which all the minor constellations would revolve.