border-landers

Updated: May 5, 2025

Now, if not one wastrel only, but 1,000,000 such are raised, a mighty impetus is given to industry of every kind, and the border-landers, instead of being driven on the black rocks by the tide of adverse surroundings, begin to drive back the tide, and conquer the earth, and subdue it, till the border-landers will be border-landers no longer, and the dreadful days of hunger will live only in the stories of famine and want, which the grey old man will tell to his happy and prosperous grandchildren, and ten thousand links of love between emigrant sons and home-staying fathers will bind the fertile plains of Ceylon, Burmah, Africa, and other countries to the populous shores of India.

Frederick St. George De Lautour Booth-Tucker - Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"

But if we do nothing beyond rescuing a considerable mass of the totally submerged, we shall considerably ameliorate the condition of these border-landers.

Frederick St. George De Lautour Booth-Tucker - Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"

Inch by inch the tide rolls up, pushing the border-landers closer and closer upon the black rocks of famine, to escape which they at length plunge into the sea amongst the submerged millions, who, weary and bitter and despairing, or with blind submission to the iron hand of fate, have grown hopelessly and miserably indifferent. Now, it is notorious that millions live thus on the border-land.

Frederick St. George De Lautour Booth-Tucker - Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"

By rendering independent of charity thousands who now depend upon the gifts of the more fortunate, by making large tracts of land productive which at present lie waste, by enlarging the stream of emigration, and partially draining the morass of crime, it is absolutely certain that the conditions of life will become more favourable for the border-landers.

Frederick St. George De Lautour Booth-Tucker - Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"

Granted that after the harvest border-landers may for a time get two good meals a day. Yet as the reserve store dwindles down and long before harvest-time comes round, again, they get but one, and that frequently a scanty one. They do live, multitudes of them, it is true, amidst conditions that seem to us impossible. But how many of them die on this one meal a day, there is nobody to chronicle.

Frederick St. George De Lautour Booth-Tucker - Darkest India: A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out"