onsideration of this problem,
which should prevent us from regarding it despair.

1. In the first place, supposing that we are correct in computing this
human wastage at from twenty-five to twenty-six million souls, this
would represent only some five million families. It is true that looked
at even in this light the number is vast. But surely it is not
impossible for India to make sufficient and suitable provision for them
within her own borders, to say nothing of the "regions beyond" if
reasonable thought and effort were put forth in dealing with the
problem.

2. Again, as regards the _numbers_, it will be found _easier_ to deal
with these great national problems in bulk than piecemeal, and their
very size will give them an impetus when once they are fairly set in
motion. It will be found as easy to dispose of 1,000 people as of a
hundred, and of 50,000 as of a thousand, if they be properly organised.
Indeed, for many reasons it is easier. The larger the community, the
more work they at once provide for each other. Once let this social ball
be set rolling on a large scale, and we may believe that it will soon
get to move of its own weight.

3. Again, it is not an indiscriminate system of largely extended charity
that we propose to provide. Our object is to find work for these
workless multitudes, and such work as shall more than pay for the very
humble pittance the Indian destitute requires. He must be a poor
specimen of a human being who cannot fairly earn his anna or two annas a
day, and our brains must be poor addled affairs, if in this great vast
world of ours we cannot find that amount of work for him to do. It is
all nonsense to talk about over-population, when the world is three
parts empty and waiting to be occupied.

4. While we are piercing the bowels of the earth in search of gold,
minerals and coal, there lies at our very door a mine of wealth which it
is simple folly for us to ignore. True, the shaft has become choked with
the rubbish of despair, vice and crime, which will take time, trouble
and untiring patience to dig through. But it needs no prophet to foresee
that beneath this rubbish are veins of golden ore which will amply repay
our utmost efforts to open up. The old adage that "labour is wealth,"
and that a nation's riches consist in its hardy sons and daughters of
toil, will yet be proved true. Treat this human muck-heap even as you
would ordinary sewage or manure, and who does not know that t