ntent?
Is it nothing to us that superadded to the sufferings of hunger, they
have to face the sharp and sometimes frosty air of the cold weather with
scarcely a rag to their backs, and no doors, windows, or even walls to
keep off the chilly wind? Is it nothing to us that in the rainy season
they have to make their bed on the damp floor or ground, though to do so
means a certain attack of fever? Is it nothing to us that under such
circumstances the houseless poor should be converted into a dismal
quagmire in which moral leprosy, more terrible than its bodily
representative, should thrive and propagate itself? Certainly if the
Indian destitute are to have a "bullock charter" granted to them, it
will be necessary that it should sooner or later include suitable and
decent shelter as well as food.

True, the problem is a vast one but this is no reason why it should be
looked upon as insoluble, or left to grow year by year still vaster and
more uncontrollable.

What we propose ourselves to undertake in this will be found elsewhere
(see Part II Chapter VI). It must be remembered, moreover, that if our
efforts to deal with the workless masses in finding them employment
should prove successful this will in itself help to remove much of the
existing evil. And by directing labor into channels where it can be the
most profitably employed, we shall help to disembarrass those channels
which have at present got choked up with an excess of it.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LAND OF DEBT.

One of the darkest shadows on the Indian horizon is that of debt. A
drowning man will snatch at a straw, and it would surely be inhuman for
us to find much fault with the unhappy creatures who constitute the
submerged tenth for borrowing their pittance at even the most exorbitant
rates of interest in the effort to keep their heads above water.

I have no desire here to draw a gloomy picture of the Indian Shylock. In
some respects I believe him to be a decided improvement on his European
and Jewish representative. It was only a short time ago that I read a
blood-curdling description of the London money-lender, which put any
Indian I have ever come across altogether into the shade.

Nevertheless, Shylock flourishes in India as perhaps in no other country
under the sun. His name is Legion. He is ubiquitous. He has the usual
abnormal appetite of his fraternity for rupees. But strange to say he
fattens upon poverty and grows rich upon the destitute. W