Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/183

Rh. He manages to meet the debtor on pay day, on the very threshold of his office. He offers every facility to the debtor to earn money enough to repay. If the debtor seems to bear the Marwari's exactions with ease, he may be sure he will not be out of his debt. But the moment the Márwári finds difficulty in repayment, he sets about squeezing the last drop out of the unhappy wretch. He removes from the house everything worth removing. He appeals to the debtor's employers to give him the month's wages; he puts himself in communication with the debtor's rich relatives. He appeals to their abru. He takes the debtor's wife and sisters and daughters in hand. He opens out new avenues of income for them. He sends some of them to factory work, others into domestic service. The Márwári does not scruple to put his victims to the vilest uses, so he can recover what he thinks to be his due. It is suspected that full half of the inmates of the brothels of Bombay are the victims of the Márwári's cruel persecutions, the female friends of the wretch who began his acquaintance with the