Modern India by William Eleroy Curtis

W >> William Eleroy Curtis >> Modern India

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

Another of the most notable gods worshiped at Benares is Ganesa,
the first born of Siva and one of his horrible wives. He is the
God of Prudence and Policy, has the head of an elephant, which
is evidence of sagacity, and is attended by rats, an evidence
of wisdom and foresight. He has eight hands, and from the number
of appeals that are made to him he must keep them all busy. He is
invoked by Hindus of all sects and castes before undertaking any
business of importance. It is asserted that none of the million
deities is so often addressed as the God of Wisdom and Prudence.
If a man is undertaking any great enterprise, if he is starting in
a new business, or signing a contract, or entering a partnership;
if he is about to take a journey or buy a stock of goods or engage
in a negotiation, he appeals to Ganesa to assist him, and leaves
an offering at one of his temples as a sort of bribe. If a woman
is going to make a dress, or a servant changes his employer, or
if anyone begins any new thing, it is always safer to appeal
in advance to Ganesa, because he is a sensitive god, and if he
does not receive all the attention and worship he deserves is
apt to be spiteful. Some people are so particular that they never
begin a letter without saluting him in the first line.

Driving along the roads of this part of India one often sees
stones piled up against the trunk of a tree and at the top a
rude elephant's head, decorated with flowers or stained with oil
or red paint, and there will always be a little heap of gravel
before it. That elephant's head represents the god Ganesa, and
each stone represents an offering by some one who has passed
by, usually the poorest, who have not been able to visit the
temple, and, having nothing else to offer, not even a flower,
drop a stone before the rude shrine.

There are many sacred cows in Benares. You find them in temples
and wandering around the streets. Some of them are horribly diseased
and they are all lazy, fat and filthy. They have perfect freedom.
They are allowed to wander about and do as they please. They
feed from baskets of vegetables and salad that stand before the
groceries and in the markets, and sometimes consume the entire
stock of some poor huckster, who dare not drive them away or
even rebuke them. If he should attempt to do so the gods would
visit him with perpetual misfortunes. Children play around the
beasts, but no one ever abuses them. Pilgrims buy food for them
and stuff them with sweetmeats, and it is an act of piety and
merit to hang garlands over their horns and braid ribbons in
their tails. When they die they are buried with great ceremony,
like the sacred bulls of Egypt.

Benares is the principal center of the idol trade, and a large
part of the population are engaged in making images of the various
gods in gold, silver, brass, copper, wood, stone, clay and other
materials. Most of the work is done in the households. There
are several small factories, but none employs more than ten or
a dozen men, and the streets are lined with little shops, no
bigger than an ordinary linen closet in an American house. Each
opens entirely upon the street, there are no doors or windows,
and when the proprietor wants to close he puts up heavy wooden
shutters that fit into grooves in the threshold and the beam
that sustains the roof. The shelves that hang from the three
walls are covered with all kinds of images in all sizes and of
all materials, and between sales the proprietor squats on the
floor in the middle of his little establishment making more.
The largest number are made of brass and clay. They are shaped
in rude molds and afterward finished with the file and chisel.
The large idols found in the temples are often works of art,
but many of them and some of the most highly revered are of the
rudest workmanship.

There is a funny story that has been floating about for many
years that most of the idols worshiped in heathen lands are made
in Christian countries and shipped over by the car load. This
is certainly not true so far as India is concerned. There is
no evidence upon the records of the custom-house to show that
any idols are imported and it would be impossible for any
manufacturer in the United States or Europe to compete with the
native artisans of Benares or other cities.

XXVIII

AMERICAN MISSIONS IN INDIA

About 5,000 missionaries of various religions and cults are working
among the people of India; two-thirds of them Protestants, and about
1,500 Americans, including preachers, teachers, doctors, nurses,
editors and all concerned. Their names fill a large directory,
and they represent all grades and shades of theology, philosophy,
morality and other methods of making human beings better, and
providing for the salvation of their souls. India is a fertile
and favorite field for such work. The languid atmosphere of the
country and the contemplative disposition of the native encourage
it. The Aryan always was a good listener, and you must remember
that India is a very big country--a continent, indeed, with a mixed
multitude of 300,000,000 souls, some striving for the unattainable
and others hopelessly submerged in bogs of vice, superstition
and ignorance. There are several stages of civilization also.
You can find entire tribes who still employ stone implements and
weapons, and several provinces are governed by a feudal system
like that of Europe in the middle ages. There are thousands who
believe that marriage is forbidden by the laws of nature; there
are millions of men with several wives, and many women with more
than one husband. There are tribes in which women control all
the power, hold all the offices, own all the property and keep
the line of inheritance on their side. There are vast multitudes,
on the other hand, in India who believe that women have no souls
and no hereafter, and advocate the murder of girl babies as fast
as they are born, saving just enough to do the cooking and mending
and to keep the race alive. Communities that have reached an
intellectual culture above that of any nation in Europe are
surrounded by 250,000,000 human beings who cannot read or write.
There are thinkers who have reasoned out the profoundest problems
that have ever perplexed mankind, and framed systems of philosophy
as wise as the world has ever known, and many of their wives
and daughters have never been outside of the houses in which
they were born; all of which indicates the size of the field of
missionary labor and the variety of work to be done.

India contains some of the most sublime and beautiful of all the
non-Christian religions, and perfect systems of morals devised
by men who do not believe in a future life. More than 60,000,000
of the inhabitants accept Jesus Christ as an inspired teacher
and worship the same God that we do under another name, and more
than three times that number believe that the Ruler of All Things
is a demon who delights in cruelty and slaughter and gives his
favor only in exchange for suffering and torture. A tribe in
northwest India believes that God lives on the top of a mountain
in plain sight of them, and up in the northeast are the Nagas,
who declare that after the Creator made men He put them into a
cellar from which they escaped into the world because one day
he forgot to put back the stone that covers a hole in the top.
More fantastic theories about the origin and the destiny of man
are to be found in India than in any other country, and those
who have faith in them speak 167 different languages, as returned
by the census. Some of these languages are spoken by millions
of people; others by a few thousand only; some of them have a
literature of poetry and philosophy that has survived the ages,
while others are unwritten and only used for communication by
wild and isolated tribes in the mountains or the jungles.

Christian missionaries have been at work in India for four hundred
years. St. Francis Xavier was one of the pioneers. Protestants
have been there for a little more than a century, and since 1804
have distributed 13,000,000 of Bibles. During the last ten years
they have sold 5,000,000 copies of the Scriptures either complete
or in part; for the Gospels in each of the great Indian languages,
like two sparrows, can now be bought for a farthing. In 1898,
497,000 copies were issued; in 1902, more than 600,000; and thus
the work increases. More than 140 colporteurs, or agents, mostly
natives, are peddling the Bible for sale in different parts of
India. They do nothing else. More than 400 native women are engaged
in placing it in the secluded homes of the Hindus among women of
the harems, and teaching them to read it. No commercial business
is conducted with greater energy, enterprise and ability than
the work of the Bible Society, in this empire, and while the
missionaries have enormous and perplexing difficulties to overcome,
they, too, are making remarkable headway.

You frequently hear thoughtless people, who know nothing of the
facts, but consider it fashionable to sneer at the missionaries,
declare that Hindus never are converted. The official census
of the government of India, which is based upon inquiries made
directly of the individuals themselves, by sworn agents, and
is not compiled from the reports of the missionary societies,
shows an increase in the number of professing Christians from
2,036,000 in 1891 to 2,664,000 in 1901, a gain of 625,000, or
30 per cent in ten years, and in some of the provinces it has
been remarkable. In the Central Provinces and United Provinces
the increase in the number of persons professing Christianity,
according to the census, was more than 300 per cent. In Assam,
which is in the northeastern extremity of India, and the Punjab,
which occupies a similar position in the northwest, the increase
was nearly 200 per cent. In Bengal, of which Calcutta is the
chief city, the gain was nearly 50 per cent; in the province
of Bombay it was nearly 40 per cent, and in Madras and Burmah
it was 20 per cent.

The dean of the American missionary colony is Rev. R. A. Hume,
of Ahmednagar, who belongs to the third, and his daughter to
the fourth, generation of missionaries in the family. He was
born in Bombay, where his father and his grandfather preached
and taught for many years. Rev. Mr. Ballantine, the grandfather
of Mrs. Hume, went over from southern Indiana in 1835 and settled
at Ahmednagar, where the Protestants had begun work four years
previous.

The first Christian mission ever undertaken by Americans in a
foreign country was at Bombay in 1813, when Gordon Hall and Samuel
Newall, fresh from Williams College, went to convert the heathen
Hindus. The governor general and the officials of the East India
Company ordered them away, for fear that they would stir up trouble
among the natives and suffer martyrdom, but they would not go, and
were finally allowed to remain under protest. A Baptist society
in England had sent out three men--Messrs. Carey, Ward and
Marshman--a few years before. They went to Calcutta, but the
East India Company would not permit them to preach or teach,
so they removed to Gerampore, where they undertook evangelical
work under the protection of the Dutch. But nowadays the British
government cannot do enough to help the missionaries, particularly
the Americans, who are treated in the same generous manner as
those of the Established Church of England, and are given grants
of money, land and every assistance that they officially could
receive.

Speaking of the services of the missionaries during the recent
famine, Lord Curzon said: "I have seen cases where the entire
organization of a vast area and the lives of thousands of beings
rested upon the shoulders of a single individual, laboring on
in silence and in solitude, while his bodily strength was fast
ebbing away. I have known of natives who, inspired by his example,
have thrown themselves with equal ardor into the struggle, and
have unmurmuringly laid down their lives for their countrymen.
Particularly must I mention the noble efforts of missionary agencies
of various Christian denominations. If there ever was an occasion
in which it was open to them to vindicate the highest standards
of their beneficent calling it was here, and strenuously and
faithfully have they performed the task."

In 1901 the government of India recognized the labors and devotion
of the American missionaries during the previous famine by bestowing
upon Dr. Hume the Kaiser-I-Hind gold medal, which is never bestowed
except for distinguished public services, and is not conferred
every year. It is considered the highest honor that can be bestowed
upon a civilian.

Sir Muncherjee Bharnajgree, a Parsee member of parliament, recently
asserted that the American missionaries were doing more for the
industrial development of the Indian Empire than the government
itself. The government recognizes the importance of their work
and has given liberal grants to the industrial schools of the
American Board of Foreign Missions, which are considered the
most successful and perhaps the most useful in India. It is
significant to find that the most important of these schools
was founded by Sir D. M. Petit, a wealthy Parsee merchant and
manufacturer, at the city of Ahmednagar, where 400 bright boys
are being trained for mechanics and artisans under the direction
of James Smith, formerly of Toronto and Chicago. D. C. Churchill,
formerly of Oberlin, Ohio, and a graduate of the Boston School
of Technology, a mechanical engineer of remarkable genius, has
another school in which hand weaving of fine fabrics is taught
to forty or fifty boys who show remarkable skill. Mr. Churchill,
who came out in 1901, soon detected the weakness of the native
method of weaving, and has recently invented a hand loom which
can turn out thirty yards of cloth a day, and will double, and
in many cases treble, the productive capacity of the average
worker. And he expects soon to erect a large building in which
he can set up the new looms and accommodate a much larger number
of pupils. J. B. Knight, a scientific agriculturist who also came
out in 1901, has a class of forty boys, mostly orphans whose
fathers and mothers died during the late famine. They are being
trained in agricultural chemistry and kindred subjects in order to
instruct the native farmers throughout that part of the country.
Rev. R. Windsor, of Oberlin, is running another school founded by
Sir D. M. Petit at Sirur, 125 miles east of Bombay, where forty
boys are being educated as machinists and mechanics. At Ahmednagar,
Mrs. Wagentreiver has a school of 125 women and girls, mostly
widows and orphans of the late famine, who are being taught the
art of lacemaking, and most of her graduates are qualified to
serve as instructors in other lace schools which are constantly
being established in other parts of India. There is also a school
for potters, and the Americans are sending to the School of Art
at Bombay sixty boys to be designers, draughtsmen, illustrators
and qualified in other of the industrial arts.

It is interesting to discover that the School of Industrial Arts
founded by Sir D. M. Petit at Ahmednagar owes its origin to the
Chicago Manual Training School, whose aims and methods were carefully
studied and applied to Indian conditions with equally satisfactory
results. The principal and founder of the school, James Smith, was
sent out and is supported by the New England Congregational Church
on the North Side, Chicago, and generous financial assistance
has been received from Mr. Victor F. Lawson and other members of
that church. It was started in 1891 with classes in woodwork and
mechanical drawing, and has prospered until it has now outgrown
in numbers and importance the high school with which it was
originally connected.

This school is the most conspicuous example of combined English
education and industry in western India, and has received the
highest praise from government officers. Its grant from the
government, too, is higher than that of any other school in the
province. The government paid half of the cost of all the buildings
and equipments, while a very large part of the other half was
paid by people of this country, foremost among the donors being
the late Sir D. M. Petit, Bart., who built and equipped the first
building entirely at his own expense.

Mr. Churchill's workshops have also been very highly commended by
the government inspectors, and his invention has attracted wide
notice because it has placed within reach of the local weavers
an apparatus which is an immense saving in labor and will secure
its operators at least three times the results and compensations
for the same expenditure of time and toil. It thus affords them
means of earning a more comfortable living, and at the same time
gives the people a supply of cheap cotton cloth which they require,
and utilizes defective yarn which the steam power mills cannot
use. The government inspectors publicly commend Mr. Churchill
for declining to patent his invention and for leaving it free
to be used by everybody without royalty of any kind.

It is exceedingly gratifying to hear from all sides these and
other similar encomiums of the American missionaries, and it
makes a Yankee proud to see the respect that is felt for and paid
to them. Lord Curzon, the governors of the various provinces and
other officials are hearty in their commendation of American men
and women and American methods, and especially for the services
our missionaries rendered during the recent famines and plagues.
They testify that in all popular discontent and uprisings they
have exerted a powerful influence for peace and order and for
the support of the government. Lord Northcote, recently governor
of Bombay, in a letter to President Roosevelt, said:

"In Ahmednagar I have seen for myself what practical results
have been accomplished, and during the famine we owed much to the
practical schemes of benevolence of the American missionaries."

On the first of January, 1904, the viceroy of India bestowed upon
William I. Chamberlin of the American Mission College at Madras the
Kaiser-I-Hind gold medal for his services to the public. A similar
medal was conferred upon Dr. Louis Klopsch of the Christian Herald,
New York, who collected and forwarded $600,000 for direct famine
relief and provided for the support of 5,000 famine orphans for
five years. Other large sums were sent from the United States.
The money was not given away. The American committee worked in
cooperation with the agents of the government and other relief
organizations, so as to avoid duplication. They provided clothing
for the naked and work at reasonable wages for the starving. They
bought seed for farmers and assisted them to hire help to put
it in the ground. The rule of the committee in the disbursement
of this money was not to pauperize the people, but to help those
who helped themselves, and to require a return in some form for
every penny that was given. Dr. Hume says: "The gift was charity,
but the system was business." The American relief money directly
and indirectly reached several millions of people and has provided
for the maintenance and education of more than five thousand
orphans, boys and girls, who were left homeless and helpless
when their fathers and mothers died of starvation. More than
320 widows, entirely homeless, friendless and dependent, were
placed in comfortable quarters, taught how to work, and are now
self-supporting. Two homes for widows are maintained by the
missionaries of the American Board, one in Bombay in charge of
Miss Abbott and her sister, Mrs. Dean, with nearly 200 inmates,
and the other at Ahmednagar, in charge of Mrs. Hume.

The medical and dispensary work of the American missions is also
very extensive, and its importance to the peasant class and the
blessings it confers upon the poor cannot be realized by those
people who have never visited India and other countries of the
East and seen the condition of women. As I told you in a previous
chapter, ninety per cent of the Hindu population of India will not
admit men physicians to their homes to see women patients, and the
only relief that the wives, mothers and daughters and sisters in
the zenanas can obtain when they are ill is from the old-fashioned
herb doctors and charm mixers of the bazaars. Now American women
physicians are scattered all over India healing the wounded and
curing the sick. There are few from other countries, although
the English, Scotch and German Lutherans have many missions.

XXIX

COTTON, TEA, AND OPIUM

Next to the United States, India is the largest cotton-producing
country in the world, and, with the exception of Galveston and
New Orleans, Bombay claims to be the largest cotton market. The
shipments have never reached $50,000,000 a year, but have gone
very near that point. Every large state in southern India produces
cotton, but Bombay and Berar are the principal producers. The
area for the whole of India in 1902-3 was 14,232,000 acres, but
this has been often exceeded. In 1893-4 the area planted was
nearly 15,500,000. The average is about 14,000,000 acres. Cotton
is usually grown in conjunction with some other crop, and in
certain portions of India two crops a year are produced on the
same soil. The following table will show the number of bales
produced during the years named:

Bales of Bales of
400 lbs. 400 lbs.

1892-3 1,924,000 1897-8 2,198,000
1893-4 2,180,000 1898-9 2,425,000
1894-5 1,957,000 1899-0 843,000
1895-6 2,364,000 1900-1 2,309,000
1896-7 1,929,000 1901-2 1,960,000

The failure of the crop in 1899-1900 was due to the drought which
caused the great famine.

About one-half of the crop is used in the local mills. The greater
part of the remainder is shipped to Japan, which is the best
customer. Germany comes next, and, curiously enough, Great Britain
is one of the smallest purchasers. Indian cotton is exclusively of
the short staple variety and not nearly so good as that produced
in Egypt. Repeated attempts have been made to introduce Egyptian
cotton, but, while some of the experiments have been temporarily
successful, it deteriorates the second year.

The cost of producing cotton is very much less than in the United
States, because the land always yields a second crop of something
else, which, under ordinary circumstances, ought to pay taxes
and often fixed charges, as well as the wages of labor, which
are amazingly low, leaving the entire proceeds of the cotton
crop to be counted as clear gain. The men and women who work in
the cotton fields of India are not paid more than two dollars
a month. That is considered very good wages. All the shipping is
done in the winter season; the cotton is brought in by railroad
and lies in bags on the docks until it is transferred to the
holds of ships. During the winter season the cotton docks are
the busiest places around Bombay.

The manufacture of cotton is increasing rapidly. There are now
eighty-four mills in Bombay alone, with a capital of more than
$25,000,000, and all of them have been established since 1870,
including some of the most modern, up-to-date plants in existence.
The people of Bombay have about $36,000,000 invested in mills,
most of it being owned by Parsees. There are mills scattered all
over the country. The industry dates from 1851, and during the
last twenty years the number of looms has increased 100 per cent
and spindles 172 per cent. January 1, 1891, there were 127 mills,
with 117,922 operatives, representing an investment of L7,844,000.
On the 31st of March, 1904, according to the official records,
there were 201 cotton mills in India, containing 43,676,000 looms
and 5,164,360 spindles, with a combined capital of L12,175,000.
This return, however, does not include thirteen mills which were
not heard from, and they will probably increase the number of
looms and spindles considerably and the total capital to more
than $60,000,000.

The wages paid operatives in the cotton mills of India are almost
incredibly low. I have before me an official statement from a
mill at Cawnpore, which is said to give a fair average for the
entire country. The mills of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta and
other large cities pay about one-half more. At smaller places
farther in the north the rates are much less. The wages are given
in rupees and decimals of a rupee, which in round numbers is
worth 33 cents in our money.

MONTHLY WAGES IN A COTTON MILL AT CAWNPORE FOR THE
YEARS NAMED (IN RUPEES AND DECIMALS OF A RUPEE).

1885. 1890. 1900. 1903.
Cardroom--
Head mistry 17.00 24.80 34.90 33.00
Card cleaner 5.00 5.25 8.70 8.84
Spare hands 5.00 5.25 5.90 6.58
Muleroom--
Head mistry 8.50 19.60 34.00 36.42
Minder 5.00 6.37 6.20 7.12
Spare hands 5.00 5.00 6.00 6.50
Weaving department--
Mistry 13.50 18.00 18.80 17.81
Healder 5.00 5.50 7.60 7.09
Weaver 6.00 10.50 8.62 9.14
Finishing department--
Washers and bleachers 6.00 18.00 18.70 21.25
Dyer 5.00 5.50 5.50 6.08
Finishing man 5.00 5.50 6.00 6.53
Engineering shop--
Boiler mistry 6.00 9.00 9.30 10.16
Engine man 8.00 11.00 10.80 14.62
Oil man 6.00 6.00 6.20 6.64
Boiler man 6.00 6.00 6.90 7.31
Carpenter 10.00 10.00 11.10 11.67
Blacksmith 11.50 13.50 13.80 15.84
Fitter 10.00 11.00 13.98

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33