06-11-2011, 05:00 AM
A typical mill worker is uneducated and unskilled. He works eight hours a day and earns very little as compared to his needs. His work is hard and tiring. It is almost evening when he returns home. His house consists of a single small room and a tiny yard. He has hardly any furniture. He has a few utensils. Two or three cots. One or two earthen cooking pots, a few old cups and some metal plates and glasses are all that he has. His family includes a wife and half a dozen small children. Now think of his small wages and various needs. He can hardly feed his family. Meat fruit eggs and milk he cannot afford. Brown bread, pulses and vegetables. Cooked in water or sometimes in edible oil are what his family lives on. After paying for the house and food, he has only a few rupces to buy all other things he needs. In summer. Children can live without clothes. At leas; the poor children can. But in winter they need some sort of clothing. Sometime back he could buy secondhand clothes at a reasonable price. But not now. For the middle class has taken a fancy to that stuff and of course they can pay comparatively more. If he or his children fall ill- and they frequently do- he cannot get proper medical and his factory, no doubt, has a dispensary and a qualified doctor. But the medicines of good quality are hardly available there. He will get only fever mixture and some tablets. It is clear that his wages cannot support his family. So his wife has to work as a house-hold servant and earn a few rupces to supplements his income. If he needs more money. Which he always dose, he borrows it whenever he can. But debts do not add to income. For they are to be paid back with interest. How will he return what he borrows? He dose not return. The money lender catches him on the pay-day and forcibly recovers his money.