442 CHEAP LABOR 



besides. And yet all these servants cost but about the 

 wages of my six, and they all of them lodge and board 

 and clothe themselves, which mine do not. 



Labor in India is extraordinarily cheap. You hire a 

 servant to wait on you in a hotel for four annas (eight 

 cents) a day, and have no care as to his keep or shelter. 

 But the cumulative labor in the country is sometimes 

 absurdly dear. On leaving the Great Eastern Hotel to go 

 to the P. & O. steamer last spring, I had two small trunks 

 and two smaller hold-alls. At home one porter would 

 have shouldered a trunk and carried a hold-all; in two 

 trips he would have loaded them on a cab, and would 

 have been well paid with ten or fifteen cents ; in England 

 or France with less. But a "bearer" lucus a non 

 never bears anything except abuse. There followed him 

 into my room no less than seven coolies. Two hoisted a 

 trunk on their heads and marched off quadruped fashion ; 

 two others did the like with the other trunk ; the fifth 

 and sixth took each a hold-all on his head ; the seventh 

 carried my umbrella, and the bearer looked on. Down AVC 

 tramped, nine in all of us ; the four things were loaded on 

 a two-bullock cart with two drivers, and I was put in a 

 cab with a driver and a syce. Thirteen full-grown men 

 thus escorted the four bundles, or, to express it in more 

 correct terms, it took a dozen men, two bullocks, one 

 horse, and two vehicles to see me and my four small bits 

 of luggage to the boat. Total disbursement, exclusive of 

 the cab, one rupee and ten annas, or just about fifty cents. 

 I was ruined by Hindoo cheap labor, but I could not go 

 for the heathen Hindoo on account of his plurality, let 

 alone custom. 



The two coolies carrying a trunk on their heads re- 

 minds me of a wonderful answer once given in court by 

 old Harvey Waters, the mechanical expert. It was the 



