THE INDIAN INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 557 



low among the great bulk of the population ; it is hardly 

 possible that it could have been much lower but the numbers 

 to-day are certainly double, possibly treble, what they were 

 three centuries ago. Famine and plague still devastate the 

 land but their terrors are much diminished and the ravages 

 of war and intestine feuds have entirely ceased. Roads and 

 railways have opened up the country, irrigation works have 

 converted waste, desolate tracts into fertile fields and the 

 pax Britannica ensures to every man the enjoyment of his 

 possessions ; but the people themselves have not changed — 

 their ruling passion is still to hoard their wealth in a portable 

 form and they still live much as their forefathers did. The 

 main result of British rule has been a startling increase in 

 numbers rather than a marked rise in the standard of living. 



A striking commentary on this unproved charge against 

 British administration is that in the five years ending with 

 April 1908 the net imports of bullion into India amounted to 

 £92,287,000, nearly the whole of which has gone to increase 

 native hoards of precious metal, that still represent to the people 

 the most desirable form in which to accumulate wealth. This, 

 it must be remembered, is in addition to the gold raised in 

 India itself, which amounted during the same period to more 

 than ten millions sterling. For all practical purposes these 

 hoards are useless, save as an indication that the material 

 development of India under foreign stimulus is really at a faster 

 rate than that at which the people are deriving benefit from it. 



What a capital expenditure of twenty millions a year 

 would effect in India may be inferred from the fact that in a 

 single year it would furnish sufficient capital to establish the 

 whole of the cotton mills of Bombay and of the jute mills of 

 Bengal. In a year and a half it would provide the forty-four 

 crores of rupees which the Irrigation Commission reported 

 could be judiciously expended by Government in bringing a 

 further six and a half million acres under irrigation. It is five 

 times the whole amount annually spent on education — on the 

 education of an empire containing three hundred million 

 people — and it is approximately equal to the land revenue of 

 the whole country and to the total annual expenditure in the 

 military department. Surely, then, it cannot be contended that 

 when so large an amount is put on one side every year and 

 merely hoarded, that the people are becoming poorer ? Is it 



