An ignorant people is always a poor people, and we have already seen that only 10 per cent. of the men in India can read or write, and of these 10 per cent. the majority are Brahmins. {253} Then, again, the people use only the crudest tools and machinery; and a third factor in keeping them poor is the system of early marriage. When it is a common thing for a boy of fifteen or sixteen to be the father of a growing family, it is easy to see that not much can be laid up for rainy days.

Owing to the absence of diversified industries, the crudeness of the tools, the ignorance of the men behind the tools, and the over-crowded population of folk hard-pressed by poverty, the wages are what an American would call shamefully low. An Englishman who had lived in an interior jungle-village, five days by bullock-cart from a railway, told me that twenty years ago laborers were paid 2 rupees (64 cents) a month, boarding themselves, or 4 rupees ($1.28) a year and grain. The wages have now advanced, however, to 5 rupees ($1.60) a month where the man boards himself; and for day labor the wages are now five annas (10 cents) instead of two annas (4 cents) twenty years ago.

In Madura a well-educated Hindu with whom I was talking rang the familiar changes on the "increasing cost of living," and pointed out that in four or five years the cost of unskilled labor has increased from eight to twelve cents. "And in some towns," he declared, looking at the same time as if he feared I should not believe his story, "they are demanding as much as 8 annas (16 cents) a day!" In Bombay I was told that coolies average 16 to 20 cents a day; spinners in jute factories, $1.16 a week, weavers, $1.82. In a great cotton factory I visited in Madras, employing about 4000 natives (all males) the average wages for eleven and a half hours' work is $3.84 to $4.85 a month. In Ahmedabad, another cotton manufacturing centre, about the same scale is in force. Miners get 16 to 28 cents a day. Servants, $3.20 to $3.84 a month.

The women in Calcutta (some of them with their babies tied out to stakes while they worked) whom I saw carrying brick and mortar on their heads to the tops of three and four story buildings, get 3 to 4 annas a day--6 to 8 cents. In {254} Darjeeling the bowed and toil-cursed women laden like donkeys, whom I found bringing stone on their backs from quarries two or three miles away managed to make 12 to 16 cents a day for their bitter toil up steep hills and down, for eight long hours. Women who carried lighter loads of mud, making 50 trips averaging 20 miles of travel, earned only 8 cents, as did also the women with babies strapped on their backs, who nevertheless toiled as steadily as the others.

"As for the men I pay these strong, brawny Bhutia fellows 8 annas (16 cents) a day," the contractor told me, "but those Nepalese who are not so strong get only 5 annas for shovelling earth."

Director of Agriculture Couchman of the Madras Presidency gave me the following as the usual scale of wages for farm work: men 6 to 8 cents; women 4 to 6; children 3 to 5, the laborers boarding themselves.

With this Mr. Couchman, whom I have just mentioned, I had a very interesting interview in Madras which should shed some light on Indian agriculture.

"In Madras Presidency," he told me, "we cultivate 10,000,000 acres of rice, which is the favorite food of the people. As it is expensive compared with some cheaper foods, however, the people put 4,500,000 acres to a sort of sorghum--not the sorghum cultivated for syrup or sugar but for the seed to be used as a grain food--and also grow 4,000,000 acres of millet the seed of which are used as a grain food.

"Then we grow 2,000,000 acres in cotton, but cotton in India is grown only on black soils. We want some for red soils, and we are also seeking to increase the yield and the length of staple in the indigenous varieties. In both these points the Indian cotton now compares very badly with the American. Our average yield is only about 50 to 100 pounds lint per acre, and the staple is only three quarters to five eights of an inch in length, and not suitable for spinning over 20s in warp.

{255}