1904-5.] THE CAUSES OF FAMINES IN INDIA. 219 
Sir Auckland Colvin, a Finance Minister of India, describes the tax-paying 
community as made up in the main of men ‘‘whose income at the best is 
barely sufficient to afford them the sustenance necessary to support life, 
living as they do upon the barest necessaries of life.’’ Sir Charles Elliott, 
Chief Commissioner of Assam, wrote in 1888, ‘“‘I do not hesitate to say 
that half the agricultural population do not know from one year’s end to 
another what it is to have a full meal.” 
AVERAGE INCOME OF THE PEOPLE. 
Says the Indian Witness: ‘‘It issafe to assume that 100,000,000 of the 
population of India have an annual income of not more than $5.00 a head.”’ 
Writes an American missionary, located in southern India (1902): 
‘“‘T think the most trying experience I ever had was a three weeks’ tour 
in September of last year (1901)....My tent was surrounded day and 
night, and one sentence dinned in my ears perpetually—‘We are dying 
for lack of food.’. . . . People are living on one meal every two or three days. 
As one of our Christians said, ‘If we can eat food once in two days we will 
not ask for more!’ In my own missionary experience I once carefully 
investigated the earnings of a congregation of 300, and found that the 
average amounted to less than a farthing a head per day. They did not 
live; they eked out an existence. I have been in huts where the people 
were living on carrion.. Yet in all these cases there was no recognized 
famine!”’ In Heaven’s name, if this is not recognized as famine, what 
is it? Think of human beings compelled to live on a farthing a day! The 
missionary continues: ‘‘The extreme poverty of the poorer classes of 
India offers conditions which are altogether extraordinary. Life is the 
narrowest and hardest conceivable, with no earthly prospect of any im- 
provement; the necessities of life have been so cut down on every hand 
that to a Western man, even though familiar with the poverty of the 
West, it never ceases to be a wonder how such a delicate and complex 
organism as that upon which human life is physically dependent can be 
kept running on the scanty supply afforded. For a family of, say six 
persons, there is many an outfit, which including house, utensils, furniture, 
clothing and all, is worth less than $10.00. The average income for 
such a family will not exceed fifty cents per head per month, and will more 
frequently be found to be very little over half that. It may, therefore, be 
surmised that not much of this income is spent upon the cultivation of 
the mind, sanitation, or the appearance of the dwelling and surroundings. 
Even the luxury of a bit of soap, some clean water and a towel, is, on the 
cheapest possible scale, far beyond their means, as soap and towel would 
take, if regularly used, about ten per cent. of the entire income.’’* 
* Quoted in ‘‘Condition of the People of India,’’ by Wm. Digby, (1902) pp. 14-15. 
