  Hitherto our description of the Submerged Tenth has concerned those who may be styled principally the children of misfortune, and who in their struggle for existence have resort to means which are indeed desperate in their nature, but against which no moral objection can be raised. General Booth next calls attention to another great section of the Submerged Tenth who have found a temporary shelter or asylum in the temple of Vice,—those who either trade upon the sins of society, or are the miserable victims of those sins. The unlawful gratification of the natural appetites has ever been the snare by which millions have been deluded to damnation. If it were possible to combat this tendency in human nature by mere legal enactments, it would have been done long ago. But though much has been done in this way to hold vice in check, and to prevent it from openly parading itself in public as it otherwise would, yet it has chiefly been by the chains of religion that the monster has been bound, and even his legal shackles have mostly been manufactured at the anvils of the religious public. Take for instance the wholesale prohibition of intoxicating liquor by the Mahommedan religion, or again the strong Temperance movement that has more lately been established among Christians. The former has no doubt accomplished what would never have been done by means of legal enactments, while the latter has first educated the public on the Temperance question and has thus prepared the way for prohibitory legislation of a more stringent character. In dealing with this portion of the Submerged Tenth there can be no doubt that the religious and moral appeals of the Salvation Army Officers will serve to stimulate and enforce wholesale reformation. By substituting the attractions of our public meetings, we shall do much to counteract those of the liquor den and other factories of pollution and destitution,—for it is as such that we may regard the places where drunkards, opium-eaters, prostitutes, fornicators, and the other hideous satellites of Vice are manufactured wholesale, whether with or without the shelter of a license. A large proportion of those who are engaged in vice as a trade openly profess to do so as a means of subsistence, and because it enables them to eke out what is in nine cases out of ten but a scanty subsistence, and what is almost invariably accompanied by the most terrible penalties Nature can inflict on those who outrage her ordinances. Many are heartily sick of the trade, but can see no way of escape. In dealing with destitution we shall open for these a door of hope. The deserters from the ranks of those who trade in vice will help us to deal more effectively with those who still cling to the profession on account of its profits. In dealing with the panderers to the vices of society we shall largely diminish the numbers of its victims. It has been said that sinning is very much a matter of temptation, and in reducing those temptations, as we believe General Booth's scheme will largely tend to do, we shall be able to reduce in quantity, if we cannot hope to cause altogether to cease, the frightful holocaust of human victims that is annually offered up at this dark shrine. (a) The Drunkards. I will take the question of the Drunkard first, for it is itself a prolific root of all kinds of evil. The gradual breaking up of religious restraints, the increasing facilities for obtaining at smallest cost the most fiery and dangerous liquors, the added suffering entailed on any drinking habits that may be formed by the tropical heat of India, all serve to accentuate the gravity of the evil in this country. Add to this a consideration of the distressing poverty, the chronic hunger, the dull monotony, unrelieved by hope of amendment, in which myriads of the people of India fight out the battle of life; reflect how these must crave for the boon of forgetfulness and eagerly grasp at the wretched relief which drunkenness may bring. Nor can we throw the responsibility altogether upon the individual, if it be true that prior to contact with Western nations, the Hindoos were largely a temperate and even an abstinent people. We are in an especial manner bound to consider whether there can be found any alleviation or remedy for a disaster which, if we have not actually created, we have at least suffered to spring up unheeded and unchecked in our very midst. It is notorious that the large cities of India are crowded with shops of the kind thus described by Mr. Caine, late M.P., in his "Picturesque India": "The wide and spacious shops in front of which are strewn broken potsherds, and whose contents are two or three kegs and a pile of little pots; are the liquor-dealer's establishments. The groups of noisy men seated on the floor are drinking ardent spirits of the worst description absolutely forbidden to the British soldiers, but sold retail to natives at three farthings a gill." Mr. Caine goes on to say that in the city of Lucknow, with a population of some 300,000 inhabitants, there were in 1889 thirty distilleries of native spirits and 200 liquor-shops. The Government exchequer receipts from spirits in the North-West Provinces amount to nearly £600,000, having doubled themselves during the last seven years. This means that in round numbers £1,000,000 worth of native spirits is sold in these provinces per annum. Now consider first that as a rule with rare exceptions a native of India who uses the fiery country liquors drinks for no other purpose than to become intoxicated. They are manufactured with a view to this, and not as in Europe to provide a thirst-quenching potation. Mr. Caine says: "The people of India, unlike other people, only drink for the purpose of getting drunk, and if we make them drunken we destroy them more rapidly than by war, pestilence and famine." Nothing is clearer than that a rapidly increasing multitude in this country, once remarkable for its sobriety and thrift, are rushing headlong into the disastrous vice of intemperance and its attendant horrors, almost without check. Something must be done. We cannot cold-bloodedly abandon them to a gospel of despair. (b) The Opium Slaves. Darker still perhaps is the dreadful night, and more sickening the miasma, which lies around the opium creeks, multiplying and increasing and slowly sucking down into their slimy depths thousands upon thousands of those who dare to seek momentary relief from sorrow in its lethal stream. Mr. Caine thus describes an opium den in Lucknow:— "Enter one of the side rooms. It has no windows and is very dark, but in the centre is a small charcoal fire whose lurid glow lights up the faces of nine or ten human beings, men and women, lying on the floor. A young girl some fifteen years of age has charge of each room, fans the fire, lights the opium pipe, and holds it in the mouth of the last comer, till the head falls heavily on the body of his or her predecessor. In no East-end gin palace, in no lunatic or idiot asylum, will you see such horrible destruction of God's image in the face of man, as appears in the countenances of those in the preliminary stage of opium drunkenness! Here you, may see some handsome young married woman, nineteen or twenty years of age, sprawling, on the ground, her fine brown eyes flattened and dull with coming, stupor; and her lips drawn convulsively back from her glittering white teeth. Here is a young girl sitting among a group of newly arrived customers singing some romance. As they hand round the pipes there is a bonny little lad of six or seven watching his father's changing face with a dreadful indifference. "At night these dens are crowded to excess, and it is estimated that there are upwards of twelve thousand persons in Lucknow enslaved by this hideous vice. An opium sot is the most hopeless of all drunkards. Once in the clutches of the fiend, everything gives way to his fierce promptings. His victims only work to get more money for opium. Wife, children, home, health, and life itself are sacrificed to this degrading passion." If twelve thousand for Lucknow be a fair estimate, can we put the figures for the whole country at less than 100,000? Still there is a deeper depth. In the same city, says Mr. Caine, there are ninety shops for the sale of Bhang and Churras. "Bhang," says the same writer, "is the most horrible intoxicant the world has ever produced. In Egypt its importation and sale is absolutely forbidden, and a costly preventive service is maintained to suppress the smuggling of it by Greek adventurers. When an Indian wants to commit some horrible crime such as murder, he prepares himself for it with two annas' worth of Bhang." (c) Prostitution. In the all but impenetrable shades and death-breathing swamps of this social forest, lie and suffer and rot probably not less than one hundred thousand prostitutes. Multitudes of these are dedicated to such a life in childhood, given over to it, in some cases by their parents and not unfrequently kept in connection with the temples. Thousands are searched for and persuaded and entrapped by old women, whose main business it is to supply the market. We know of at least one village where beautiful children, who have been decoyed or purchased from their parents by these prostitute-hunters, are taken to be reared and trained for the profession. In Bombay there is actually a caste in which the girls are in early childhood "married to the dagger," or, in other words, dedicated to a life of prostitution. In some of the cities old men are employed as touts to secure customers for the women, who remain in their haunts, thus seducing and leading into vice crowds of lads and young men who might otherwise have escaped. |
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