220 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Vo.. VIII. 
Let us turn to official estimates of income. In 1882 Major Evelyn 
Baring, Finance Minister to India (now Lord Cromer), made an estimate 
of the average income per head of the Indian people, and placed it at about 
twenty-seven rupees a year. In a speech delivered March 27, 1901, Lord 
Curzon, the present Viceroy, estimated the average income of the agricul- 
tural portion of the Indian population (85 per cent. of the whole) to be 
twenty rupees per person. In his Budget speech of August 16, 1901, Lord 
George Hamilton, then Secretary of State for India, claimed that the 
average Indian income is thirty rupees. These are the most authoritative 
official estimates that we possess. On the other hand, Mr. Wm. Digby, 
C.I.E., who had long experience in India, published in 1901, the most 
full and exhaustive study ever given to the world of the financial and 
industrial condition of the Indian people, in which he furnishes evidence 
which seems to be overwhelming and unanswerable (certainly it has not 
yet been answered) to show that the average annual income of the people 
is not higher than seventeen and a half rupees per head.* Mr. Digby’s 
conclusions are probably as near the truth as it is possible under present 
conditious to attain. 
However, even if we accept the higher estimates of Major Baring, 
Lord Cuxzon and Lord George Hamilton, we have a state of things that 
is quite startling enough. A rupee is equal to about thirty cents in Can- 
adian or American money. ‘Thus we see that the average sum upon which 
the people of India must subsist (according to estimates of these officials, 
whose interest it is of course to make the sum appear the highest possible), 
is not above from $6.00 to $9.00, per year, or about two cents a day for 
each person. The average annual income of the people of England is 
about £40 per person, or twenty-six times that of the people of India. 
The average annual expenditure on intoxicating drinks in Great Britain 
is about £4 per person, or two and a half times as much as the people 
of India have to expend upon food, drink, clothing, fuel for cooking and 
warmth (in many parts the winters are cold) education, recreation, relig- 
ion, medicine, everything necessary for a civilized existence! Is it any 
wonder that the Indian peasant can lay up nothing for a time of need? 
Is it any wonder that when his crops fail for a single season he finds 
nothing between himself and starvation ?} 
In these figures, and these quotations from men who know whereof 
they speak, mostly Englishmen and many of them present or past high 
* “* Prosperous’ British India,’’? London, T. Fisher Unwin, pp. 46 and 661. 
7 {In this connection we may well bear in mind that it is the extreme destitution of the people 
of India that is principally responsible also for the devastations of the Plague. The loss of life from 
this terrible scourge is very startling. It reached 272,000 in 1901, 500,000 in 1902, 800,000 in 1903, 
and over 1,000,000 in 1904. The plague feeds upon those multitudes of the people whose physical 
vitality has been reduced by long semi-starvation. So long as the present destitution of India con- 
tinues, there seems small ground for hope that the plague can be overcome. 
