COOLIES IN CALCUTTA.

Colonist, Volume XLVIII, Issue 11762, 19 October 1906, Page 4

COOLIES IN CALCUTTA.

Kecently a Bengali gentleman was being driven down a street iv Calcutta when his carriage knocked down a little child. The carriage was at once stopped, and the merchant stepped down to see if the

child was hurt. As he picked it uP to comfort it some person raised an alarm of "child stealer." In an instant a mob surrounded the man and handled him very roughly. His coachman who had whipped up tne horses and tried to escape, waß pulled down from his seat and belabored so mercilessly that his life was endangered. The ca rriage was overturned, deluged with kerosene and burned. The most dangerous element of the Calcutta population consists of coolies and city loafers, recruited from the worst classes of all parts of India, A writer who has been amongst them lately says that these people are for the most, part, quiet and well-behaved, but their intelligence iB of the brutal kind, their reasoning powers are limited. "In their own home," he says, " they would be styled Bavages by the Hindoos themselves. Living in orowded slums, under the most insanitary conditions, they are not only a sanitary menace, for the worst diseases are endemic amongst them, but are liable to atattacks of passion or panic in which they threaten the well-being oi the city." These classes, it is said, threaten to convert Calcutta into the most disorderly city of the East; and thai, of course, is saying a good deal, and appaiently there has been a very marked increaase of violent crimes in the streets during this year.