In the canal foundry and workshop at Roorkee (U. P.) the daily wage in 1916 was only 4 annas a day (i. e., 8 cents).
In the Cawnpore saddlery establishment, the bullock drivers, the sweepers and the Bhishties received only R5 and R6 a month (i. e., less than 8s. or $2.00); the lascars from R6 to R7 (i. e., $2.00 to $2.33).
In the woolen mills in Northern India unskilled labor was paid at R8.12 (i. e., less than $3.00) a month in 1914. These are the rates allowed in big cities. For other big cities the rates may, in some cases, be somewhat better, but in small rural towns and villages, they are considerably less.
Does the Indian laborer, considering his standard of life, the size of his family and the requirements of decency, get a living wage? I am sure that a humane inquirer, not so much interested in the good name of the Government as in truth, will have no hesitation in answering the question in the negative. Any increase in wages has to be divided over the average strength of a family, which will show how disproportionate the increase in wages is to the increase in prices. In a family of five with one or two earning hands the increase in wages is two-fold at the most. While the increase in the cost of living by the increase in prices is five-fold. Your Official Report writers always ignore this important consideration. As for the housing conditions in which Indian workmen live, let me present to you the following testimony from a recent issue of the Times of India, Bombay (quoted in the London Times, June, 1917):
"It is no unusual sight to find fifteen or twenty persons, of both sexes, lying huddled on the floor of a single room in a stifling atmosphere and a vile stench. A single small window or an open door gives the only ventilation. Furniture there is none, beyond a few brass pots and some pegs. The sanitary arrangements are unspeakable. Every noise and smell that occurs in the neighborhood penetrates the crazy walls and floor and disturbs the sleepers. The chawls are often so rickety that it is a miracle that they do not collapse under their own weight. They seem to be kept up like a house of cards, by the support of their scarcely less rickety neighbors."
As for the Indian laborer getting any education or any leisure for art or for the pursuit of taste, that is out of the question. The condition of the small farmer or ryot is even worse. Sir, if you are ever inclined to study the actual conditions of life in India, do not rely upon the "conclusions" of your officers as embodied in reports. Study the facts, given in the reports, but disregard the conclusions. If you seek the aid of an Indian Nationalist he may show you how the reports are drawn up, and how dates and figures have been selected to suit conclusions. Having been a lawyer most of your life you are well aware of the magical properties of special pleading. In the hands of a skillful apologist, the figures can be made to mean anything. Better still, if you want to have a glimpse of conditions of life in India, depute an honest man of the type of Mr. Nevinson to go to Indian villages unaccompanied by officials, and see the things for himself; or to the slums in towns. The slums of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, Delhi, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Benares, will throw the slums of London and New York far back into the shade. The latter are verily a paradise as compared with the former. As to the villages, the less said the better.
The point is in fact conceded by all fair-minded English publicists.
The Manchester Guardian, only the other day, discussing the recent increase in the cotton duties, questioned "the wisdom and justice" of this £100,000,000 exaction from India and admitted that "the loss it represents to an extremely poor population like that of India is very much greater than the gain to England." Even the Morning Post, that representative of Jingo Imperialism, recognizes the extreme poverty of the masses of India. I will not quote the Nation as you do not like that journal. The moneyed classes of India, the Rajas and Maharajas, the bankers and mill owners, the industrial corporations that will fill this loan could not find a more profitable investment. They get 100 per cent. stock for 95 and besides get from 5 to 5-1/2 per cent. interest, in some cases free of income tax for thirty years to come. Upon whom will the burden of interest fall? Neither on the lender nor on the borrower, but mainly on the ryot and the laborer. Do you know, sir, that the average price of salt (wholesale) in Lahore, Punjab, had risen from R1-9-7 a maund in 1912-13 to R2-7-3 in 1916-17? But that in retail sale "the average price of salt per maund (82 lbs.) had risen from R1-14-0 to R5-0-0" (Tribune, Lahore, March, 1917). The fresh taxation imposed since the war, which by this loan-cum-gift transaction of 100 million sterling threatens to become permanent, has raised the prices of the necessaries of life to an abnormal extent. The wages remain virtually the same. Your Government which employs large numbers of laboring men in railways, canals, and otherwise have not considered it necessary to raise the wages of the workingmen. Will the private employer do otherwise? I know from personal knowledge how frightfully the poor Indian clerk is sweated in the offices of your Government in India on a mere pittance. Can't you feel for the millions of those little ones whose already scanty, insufficient food is still further reduced by the fresh taxes imposed by your Government to find means to pay the war budget and this permanent addition of £6,000,000 a year to their burden? Don't you know, sir, that in India there are millions of widows (much more than in any other country) who have to support their little ones by their own toil and that every penny of additional taxation hits them hard. The hardships and privations imposed in Europe by the war are nothing as compared with what the Indian masses have been putting up with, for the last fifty years or so. The fiscal policy of your Government has ruined Indian industry. You know it as well as anyone else. Did you notice the letter of Mr. G. W. Forrest in the London Times of March 14, 1917, wherein he admitted that "the tale of England's dealing with Indian industry was one of littleness and injustice," and that "by positive prohibition and heavy duties the Indian textile trade in England was destroyed and our own trade was fostered." You and your colleagues have used grandiloquent rhetoric in your defense of the increase in the cotton duties in India and over your concern for India and Indian industries, but you are mistaken if you think that anyone in India is likely to be taken in by your hypocritical professions. Pardon me, sir, I mean no insult when I say "hypocritical professions." The practice is a part of a modern statesman's job. He has to create a certain atmosphere before he can make his people believe that what he does is the only correct thing to do.
Your cotton duties, sir, afford no relief to the Indian poor. It would not have hurt me much, if you had forced or induced the Rajas and the Maharajas, the bankers and the capitalists to contribute even more than 100 million pounds to the war expenses, as it is they who have grown fat, if anyone in India has, under the British regime, but to force the Indian ryot and the Indian wage earner to do it and to continue to pay for it for years to come out of his scanty daily rations is the climax of cruelty. Then the unkindest cut of all is that it should come from you, whom we had associated with feelings of kindness, and pity, for the poor and the workmen.
Your Government has called it a free and spontaneous gift of the people of India! If the members of your cabinet, if the Secretary of State for India, if the Governor General of India and his ministers of the Executive Council, are the people of India, then truly you are right and we wrong. If they are not the people of India, as they are not, then it is a gift by yourself to yourself, of other peoples' money. Again, the statement that the measure was unanimously approved of by the Indian members of the council is a diplomatic lie. You know that the matter was settled between your Cabinet as represented by the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy's Executive Council (which includes only one Indian member nominated by you), before it was announced in the Legislative Council. You know also, sir, and if you don't, you ought to, that the Indian Legislative Council has no power under the law to make any changes in the budget. The budget is entirely beyond their purview. The members can only extol it or criticise it. They can propose resolutions disapproving of some of its provisions which can amount to nothing more than pious wishes even if passed. But the official majority in the Council guarantees the defeat of any hostile resolutions by non-official members. Re this loan-cum-gift transaction, the non-official members of the Legislative Council put a seal on their mouths because they thought it was useless to incur the risk of being called disloyal for a matter which was reported to them as a fait accompli and which they could not in any way change or modify; yet two of them did raise a sort of feeble protest.