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.