Note 49 — Chapter VII · COTTON SUPPLY AND WHITE LABOUR IN THE COTTON CLIMATE.

A writer in “Household Words,” speaking of the “popular fallacy that a man cannot do a hard day’s work in the climate of India,” says:—

“I have seen as hard work, real bone and muscle work, done by citizens of the United Kingdom in the East, as was ever achieved in the cold West, and all upon rice and curry—not curry and rice—in which the rice has formed the real meal, and the curry has merely helped to give it a relish, as a sort of substantial Kitchener’s zest, or Harvey’s sauce. I have seen, likewise, Moormen, Malabars, and others of the Indian labouring classes, perform a day’s work that would terrify a London porter, or coal-whipper, or a country navvy, or ploughman; and under the direct rays of a sun that has made a wooden platform too hot to stand on in thin shoes, without literally dancing with pain, as I have done many a day, within six degrees of the line.”