usual
value, as represented in coined silver; because jewellery was not
current; it was not a medium of exchange. And when it is remembered
that even money fell to between one-fourth and one-sixth of its usual
value as compared with food grains, it will be seen that the value of
jewellery, as compared with that of food grains, fell to between
one-sixteenth and one-forty-eighth part of its usual value. If in
ordinary times a ryot in distress, by selling
a small ornament, could procure fourty-eight measures of millet and
feed his family for a fortnight, during the great famine, it might in
some large villages and towns have procured him three measures of the
same grain on which his family might have contrived to feed for two or
three days with diminished meals; while in the smaller and more remote
villages the same jewel coidd with difficult}- procure him
one measure of millet for a day's short commons. And men and women were
often too weak to walk the five, ten or fifteen miles that would bring
them to the slightly better market for their jewels. Furthermore, the
great famine exposed the dimensions of another evil connected with
jewellery, which is always known to exist, but seldom known to its full
extent ; and that is the frightful, indeed the cruel, dishonesty of
many Native jewellers. They debase the gold given them, and make up the
jewels of wretched metal; and where the jewels are supposed to be more
or less massive, as in armlets, anklets, beads, &c., they use but a
very thin sheet of the precious metal to cover a large quantity of
lead, iron, or even lac. Ignorant rustics, therefore, who flatter
themselves that they are hoarding twenty rupees by making up jewellery,
often really receive from the jeweller only five rupees' value,
sometimes much less than that. During a great famine, when ryots do not
buy from one another, they bring their jewels to the traders; and these
knowing once expose the cheat; and the poor ryot finds himself utterly
bankrupt. This is why Native jewellers in the interior charge so very
little as they do for their work. Indeed, in towns, workmanship appears
to cost between four and five times what it does in the country; but
when the fraud in the country is considered, town workmanship is often
cheaper. This accounts too for the very extensive use of European coins
as jewels. It is not simply that the coins are beautiful specimens of
workmanship; for the gold could be put into better form for ornamental
purposes; nor is it that the coins could be used again as circulating
medium ; for they are sufficiently affected by the addition of loops,
&c, to prevent that; but it is felt that, if the gold were put into
the melting pot, the chances are very greatly against its coming out
purified, or anything like as pure as when it was put in. To leave the
sovereigns, half-sovereigns, and French gold coins unaltered,
therefore, is to leave proof, to possible purchasers of the standard of
purity in the precious metal.
If
then it can be urged in favour of converting money into jewellery that
it escapes income-tax and can be re-converted into money, on the other
hand it may be urged that it is unproductive and yields no profit; that
it seldom fetches in ordinary time of need more than the value of the
metal, so that the value of the workmanship is lost; that the metal is
often of less real value than is supposed; and that in famine time it
is immensely depreciated.
India
is glutted with jewellery ; and yet India presents so mean an
appearance to strangers that they believe it poor. In other countries
the wealth that here runs into jewellery would be employed to cherish
life and improve morality. The country at large has most urgent need of
better dwelling-houses. The want of these is the cause of much
sickness, mortality and immorality. The same, though to a less extent,
may be said of better clothing. It would considerably improve health as
well as comfort, if better furniture—in many cases we should say, some
furniture—were used. A very large amount indeed of sickness is caused
by sitting and sleeping on thin mats spread on damp floors by going
barefoot, and by deficient protection of the skin from chills. But
barefooted, half-naked or nearly unclad dwellers in damp huts,
destitute of any furniture but a few pots and mats, may be found
wearing jewels of gold I And the
