During Famine in India, Girls Sold for Pennies, Boys Abandoned, May 3, 1900

"Girls Selling for 20 Cents in India," from the Watauga Democrat, May 3, 1900. The headline on the front page said 20 cents, but the article said 30 cents.

The Rev. Rockwell Clancy, a missionary at Allababad, who is visiting his brother in Medford, said last night:

"The condition of the famine-stricken India today is something perfectly awful to contemplate. I cannot tell anything about the number dying, but when I left Bombay last February there were 60,000,000 people suffering from famine and over 30,000,000 were in dire distress, and of these but 5,000,000 were receiving government aid.

"It is not the cities but the country places which are stricken and when you know that it is mostly among the agricultural classes and that 80 per cent of the population of India is made up of tillers of the soil, you may be able to grasp in some slight manner the extent of the suffering at the present time.

"When the famine set in the people began to sell everything they had that they might get a little grain for food. They took the doors from their houses and sold them; they sold their furniture and farming utensils, and then when they had no longer anything to sell they sold their children. The boys don't sell well, and the traffic is largely in girls.

"I saw girls in one town just before I came away being sold for 30 cents apiece. They were bought up by Mohammedans. But they won't buy the boys, so when the parents can no longer support their children they abandon them and henceforth they must get on as best they can. These cast-offs congregate about the doors of the grain merchants shops, and the only way the proprietors can get rid of them is to throw out handfuls of grain, scattering it wide. The children pick and pick all day and at night perhaps are rewarded by having collected a single handful.