CHAPTER VI.

"THE OUT-OF-WORKS."


I should question whether there is a single town or country district in
India which does not present the sad spectacle of a large number of men,
willing and anxious to work, but unable to find employment. Moreover, as
is well known, they have almost without exception families dependent
upon them for their support, who are necessarily the sharers of their
misfortunes and sufferings. There is one district in Ceylon, where
deaths from starvation have been personally known to our Officers, and
yet the country appears to be a very garden of Eden for beauty and
fertility.

In the early years of our work I remember begging food from a house, and
learning afterwards that what they had given us was positively the last
they had for their own use. Needless to say that it was hastily
returned. During the same visit a cry of "Thief, thief!" was raised in
the night. We learnt next morning that the robbery had been committed by
a man whose wife and child were starving. It consisted of rice, and the
thief was discovered partly by the disappearance of the suspected
person, and partly by the fact that in his house was found the exact
quantity which had been stolen, whereas it was known that on the
previous day he had absolutely nothing whatever in his house! He had
left it all for his starving wife and child, and had himself fled to
another part of the country, probably going to swell the number of
criminals or mendicants in some adjoining city.