Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"Booth-Tucker, Frederick St. George De Lautour
History
Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"
Booth-Tucker, Frederick St. George De Lautour
India -- Social conditions; Poor -- India
Whatever may be the produce of this cheap labour, we shall be careful to
sell it rather above than below the ordinary market rates, so as to
avoid competing with other labour. Moreover, we shall direct our
attention from the first to manufacturing chiefly those articles which
are likely to be of service to us in other branches of our scheme, so
that the labour of the destitute will go chiefly towards supplying their
own wants and those of the persons who are engaged in prosecuting the
work.
For instance, supposing that a number of the destitute were employed in
making coarse cloth, baskets, mats, or cow-dung fuel, these could be
retailed at a nominal figure to those who presented our labour tickets
at our food depôts.
The most encouraging feature in the establishment of labour yards is
that nearly every Indian has been brought up from childhood to some
trade. You can rarely meet the most ignorant and uneducated Native
without finding that he is thoroughly expert at some kind of handicraft.
In brigading the poor we should be careful to make the best use of this
knowledge by putting each as much as possible to the trade with which he
was most familiar.
The following industries, the majority of them directly connected with
various branches of our work, could be started at once and would need
scarcely any outlay to begin with.
1. _The Potters Brigade_--Would furnish us with the earthenware, for
which we should from the first have a very large demand. The
Household Salvage Brigade would require some thousands of pots to
start with and in connection with our food depôts we should be able
to dispose of thousands more.
2. _The Weavers Brigade_--This would give employment for a large
number of skilled hands. Their first object would be to supply the
kinds of clothes, blankets, &c., which would be most suitable for
the use of the submerged tenth. In catering for their wants we
should avoid, however, anything _prisony_, or _workhousey_, or
charity-institutiony in appearance. As our numbers increased we
should find plenty of work for our weavers, at any rate for many
years to come without entering into any sort of competition either
with the market or the mills.
3. _The Basket Brigade_--Would supply us with all sorts of cheap
baskets, for which we should have a constant demand.
4. _The Mat Making Brigade_--Would find employment for many more
hands in supplying us with mats for sleeping and household purposes.
5. _The Fuel Brigade_--Here we have an industry which requires no
skill. There would be two branches of it--the woodchoppers and the
Oopala makers. For the latter women and children could be largely
employed both in the collection of the cow-dung and in the
preparation of it for use as fuel.
6. _The Tinners Brigade_--Will be kept busy making receptables and
badges for the Salvage Brigade, and also probably emblems for the
Labor Bureau.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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