OF THE EMPLOYMENTS OF THE PEOPLE, AND ASPECTS OF DAILY LIFE.
I have spoken quite at length of the English Barbarians as traders—these form a large portion of the whole. Below these are the lowest caste, workers, beggars, and thieves. The tillers of the land make a great part of the workers; then those who toil in the mines, shops, and great factories; lastly, mere day-labourers of all sorts.
The tillers of land are wretchedly poor. In the years of their strength they just keep from starvation, living in hovels hardly fit for a brute, and not so good as the Master's dog-kennel. When strength goes they become idle, paupers, and die in the poor-house [do-zen-di].
The mine-workers delve in the dark bowels of the earth for coal, iron, copper, tin, and other minerals. No beast works in more dirt, nor under more brutal circumstances. Out of the light of day, far below, in pitchy blackness, illumined only by the faint light of a lamp fastened to his head, the serf toils—exposed to death from suffocation, by the falling-in of earth, from great outbursts of water, from accidents of many kinds, and from the fearful explosions! He gets more money—but in the light of day, when he has cleansed himself from some of his weight of filth, the gin and beer shop give him the readiest and only resource! The lives of these toilers and of their families are scarcely imaginable. An explosion sometimes destroys nearly a whole village!
The vast numbers, men, women, and children, who labour in shops and factories of all kinds, present a very uniform appearance of misery and degradation. They swarm in the great towns, amid the débris [kon] of coal and iron works, and in the purlieus of the places of labour—dirty, noisome, barbarous. No High-Caste, unless by mistake, ever goes among them; and even the lower avoid them. Worked by their task-masters all the day, from early morning till late at night, for such pittance as may keep them at work, what can be expected? Young girls and lads work together; there is no decency (there hardly can be), connections are formed, children come; but who is to care for them? What can describe truly the actual state of things?
When work is over, weary, without respect from others, and feeling none, therefore, for themselves; no decent home, wife and children draggled and wretched like themselves, where else to go but to the warm and brilliant-lighted drink-places? Here is warmth, shelter, comforting drink. Is it surprising that these, the only homes, take nearly all earnings; and that the small remainder gives to the bare rooms, ragged garments, and squalid wives and children, that aspect of misery and brutishness? Whole quarters of towns are given up to this degradation. The portals of Temples, the porticoes of grand edifices, the very steps of public charities, are crowded with these victims of ignorance and selfishness—a selfishness peculiar to the cold nature of these Barbarians, and which receives its finest and most exquisite polish among the High-Caste. I speak of the steps of Charity Halls, where relief is supposed to be given to the starving; but on the very steps misery may find its last, wretched repose.
It seems to be accepted as inherent in the nature of things that this abounding debasement and wretchedness, wherein crime breeds by an inexorable law, must be. The crime must be watched and kept within bounds, and guards must carefully repress the disorders of this foul shame, but the thing itself is inherent and ineradicable. It may be so to the barbaric nature.
The ordinary labourers of all descriptions, in the street, in the shipping-docks, in waiting upon the artificers, in the digging, toiling, manual employments, differ not much from their congeners [re-la-tsi] in the factories and mines. Their habits are the same. All are alike really serfs, taking no notice of the refinements and the enjoyments of the higher-castes, and being everywhere rigidly avoided by them. On a sunny day, if you walk in a public garden, you will see some of these miserable beings lying about on the grass, stretched out in the sun, asleep. By no chance will they occupy any place which is usually used by the upper castes, nor will any of these, by any chance (short of dire need), ever speak to or notice one of these low creatures. Sometimes an open green space will present an appearance like a battle-field after a combat. These serfs scattered around, here one or two perfectly still, there some just turning or raised upon elbow; sometimes an old crone resting upon a recumbent man; most, perfectly still and flat, give an aspect of dead and dying strewn over the field. Occasionally men and women will be cuddled close together for warmth; in truth, this grassy, sunny couch, is to them a luxury.
The aspect of these day-labourers as they lounge, or slouch [gr-utn] idly about the streets, is repulsive and curious. They seem unable to stand up. Whether from the nature of their toil, or from mere shiftlessness, I know not. But they never do stand erect, and slouch along from one beer-shop corner to another, till they can lean or lie down. They cluster about the corners by beer and gin shops, rarely molesting any one, but frequently noisy and quarrelsome among themselves. They carry their strong passions and strong drink to their wretched haunts where crime and violence are rife. Women and children of this class are also at these drinking places, and give a feature to the degradation of unusual repulsiveness. These beer and gin shops, in low quarters of a town, are prolific of riot and crime, but abounding everywhere, in parts more decent, the police [ta-pki] are forced to be more watchful. A striking illustration of the callousness of the High-Caste is, that they derive their own revenues largely from this very degradation of the serfs—for an immense tax is paid by them upon the beer and gin which they consume—and this tax enures wholly to the benefit of the High-Caste. In the Law-making House, therefore, whenever some good man wishes to moderate this excessive evil of drink and drunkenness; pointing out how Crime takes root and flourishes, and vice spreads from these drinking-places; how the whole community suffers; he is laughed at and pointed at, and made odious to these miserable creatures, as one who would deprive the poor man of his Beer! In this connection of the serf with the rich man's revenue, it is convenient to say "the poor man;" on ordinary occasions, the "drunken beast," or the "brute," would be more likely.