to my weak intellect this seemed rather like juggling with counters.everything that i have yet purchased costs about twice as much as it would in england,and when native made is of inferior quality.
moreover,since these lines were first thought of,i have visited a gentleman who owned a factory which used to produce things.he owned the factory still.not a man was in it,but he was drawing a handsome income from a syndicate of firms for keeping it closed,in order that it might not produce things.this man said that if protection were abandoned,a tide of pauper labor would flood the country,and as i looked at his factory i thought how entirely better it was to have no labor of any kind whatever rather than face so horrible a future.
meantime,do you remember that this peculiar country enjoys paying money for value not received?i am an alien,and for the life of me i cannot see why six shillings should be paid for eighteen-penny caps,or eight shillings for half-crown cigar-cases.when the country fills up to a decently populated level a few million people who are not aliens will be smitten with the same sort of blindness.
but my friend's assertion somehow thoroughly suited the grotesque ferocity of chicago.
see now and judge!in the village of isser jang,on the road to montgomery,there be four changar women who winnow corn--some seventy bushels a year.beyond their hut lives purun dass,the money-lender,who on good security lends as much as five thousand rupees in a year.jowala singh,the smith,mends the village plows--some thirty,broken at the share,in three hundred and sixty-five days;and hukm chund,who is letter-writer and head of the little club under the travellers'tree,generally keeps the village posted in such gossip as the barber and the mid-wife have not yet made public property.