INDIA. 



315 



cially commissioned for the purpose. The census 

 shows a large increase in population wherever irri- 

 gation canals exist. Sir Colin Seott-Monerieff has 

 been placed at the head of a commission that will 

 lay down rules for the interlacing, encouragement, 

 and control of irrigation works. Of the existing 

 large productive works 22 realized in 1901 a net 

 revenue of 9.52 per cent, on the capital invest- 

 ment, while 13 others yielded only 0.79 per cent., 

 the average of all being 7 per cent. There was 

 an increase of 750,000 acres in the irrigated area 

 during the year. The great Jehlum Canal, opened 

 in October, 1901, irrigates a vast tract, part of 

 which has lain waste, between the Jehlum and 

 Chenab rivers. Other large projects are being car- 

 ried out in the Punjab. Since irrigation was under- 

 taken by the Government the works have yielded 

 a surplus revenue of nearly 10,000,000 aside 

 from their economic value and the increased land 

 revenue obtained from waste tracts brought under 

 cultivation. The famine relief officers were handi- 

 capped by having no programs of public and vil- 

 lage works. Advances for the construction of 

 temporary and the repair of permanent wells and 

 village improvements were not made at a suffi- 

 ciently early stage or were inadequate in amount. 

 The test works for gaging the existence or the 

 pressure of distress were not appreciated, and in 

 Bombay were converted too late into regular relief 

 works. Payment by results is found to be a bet- 

 ter method on relief works than a minimum wage 

 suggestive of Government employment. 



The bubonic plague appears to have become en- 

 demic throughout the greater part of India. 

 When the fall rains of 1901 began in August the 

 mortality rose to between 1,500 and 2,000 a week. 

 The number of deaths reported from the first 

 visitation in the winter of 1896 to March 31, 

 1901, was 480,000, and the unreported deaths 

 would make the total over 600,000 at the least 

 computation. The disease has entered nearly a 

 tenth of the villages of India. In the winter of 

 1900 there were widely extended outbreaks in the 

 Behar districts of Bengal and in the Northwestern 

 Provinces and recrudescences in western India 

 and elsewhere. Little has been learned regarding 

 the causation of the plague or the manner in 

 which it spreads. The compulsory methods 

 adopted by the Government when the pestilence 

 first appeared, which drove the people to conceal 

 cases and to flee from Bombay in all directions, 

 carrying the germs of infection into the country 

 districts, have been abandoned, and now the 

 people often cooperate with the sanitary authori- 

 ties and voluntarily adopt preventive precautions. 

 They resort in increasing numbers to the Haff- 

 kine antiplague serum inoculation, which the 

 plague commission approve as not injurious to the 

 general health of the patient and generally, 

 though not invariably, affording protection for 

 five or six months. 



A mines bill which has been under discussion 

 for two years was intended to prohibit the labor 

 of children and to restrict and regulate the em- 

 ployment of women. The mine-owners contended 

 that this would interfere with the family system 

 of labor which has obtained from time imme- 

 morial. It was regarded as a measure forced upon 

 India in fulfilment of pledges undertaken by the 

 English Government at the Berlin Labor Confer- 

 ence of 1890, if it was not indeed designed to crip- 

 ple the infant coal-mining industry of India for 

 the benefit of English mine-owners. The bill was 

 modified so as to permit the employment of 

 women and children except in mines where the 

 Government after consultation with a mining 

 board decides that it is dangerous or unhealthful 



A labor bill compelling tea-growers to p !lv coolies 

 higher wages in the second and third y.;irs of 

 their engagement was made operative only alter 

 two years in view of the depressed stale of 1he 

 tea industry, which is so critical that nearlv three- 

 fourths of the companies have passed their divi- 

 dends. The construction of the great Gokirik 

 Viaduct, 2,260 feet long and 320 feet high, in the 

 railroad from Mandalay into the Shan States l>v 

 an American company drew forth but few pro- 

 tests because no British contractor was willing to 

 build the bridge in less than twice the time or for 

 less than twice the price. American engines were 

 ordered for Indian railroads about the same time, 

 and American rails were imported. The railroad 

 in Upper Burma was begun with the object of 

 tapping the trade of Yunnan, but although a 

 French line is being built into that Chinese prov- 

 ince the British line is not likely to go beyond 

 Thibaw, half-way to the frontier. Development in 

 another direction is being followed up by means 

 of railroads connecting the ports of Bassein and 

 Moulmein with Rangoon. The mountainous 

 frontier of Yunnan can not be crossed by a rail- 

 road except at enormous expense. The Kachin 

 tribes which inhabit these mountains are con- 

 stantly at war among themselves. The Chinese 

 Kachins make raids across the frontier, and the 

 Kachins of Burma have applied in vain at Man- 

 dalay for protection. 



The northwestern frontier districts beyond the 

 Indus inhabited by Pathan tribes, the scene of 

 all the costly and indecisive frontier wars, the 

 hill states and tribes which were accounted a 

 part of Afghanistan until the British Government 

 first declared them independent and then pro- 

 ceeded to conquer them and annex them to India, 

 have been detached from the Punjab and consti- 

 tuted into a separate province under the direct 

 control of the Central Government. A new policy 

 toward the frontier tribes was inaugurated when 

 Lord Curzon arrived in India and ordered the with- 

 drawal of the advanced posts. The place of the 

 British troops was taken by tribal levies, and the 

 British posts commanding Samana, Tochi, and 

 Wana were still held 'in the spring of 1901 until 

 the Pathan recruits could be organized. The 

 Northwest Frontier Province, of which Col. Deane 

 was appointed chief commissioner in October, 

 embraces the four districts of the Punjab lying 

 beyond the Indus, viz., Peshawar, Kohat, Baimu, 

 and Dera Ismail Khan, with the tribal country 

 beyond their limits, Hazara, and also the po* 

 litical agencies of Dir, Swat, Chitral, the Khaibar. 

 the Kuram,, Tochi, and Wana. Lord George 

 Hamilton was induced after a long correspond- 

 ence to agree to Lord Curzon's plan of forming a 

 frontier province, having proposed before Lord 

 Elgin retired from the viceroy alty in 1899 that 

 the commissioner at Peshawar should be under 

 the Government of India as regards political rela- 

 tions with the frontier tribes while remaining 

 under the Punjab Government as regards adminis- 

 trative functions, a proposal that frontier admin- 

 istrators condemned as being likely to create con- 

 fusion and friction. The Northwestern Frontier 

 Province was started on Nov. 1. Meanwhile there 

 was a disturbance among the Pathan tribes on 

 the unsettled border of Waziristan. The Mahsuds 

 and the Darwesh Khel Waziris have raided their 

 neighbors for years and have several times come 

 into collision with the British authorities. Fines 

 have been imposed, but they would not pay, and 

 to enforce them proved difficult and expensive. 

 The experiment of trying to rule the wild tribes 

 by the Sandeman system, which has succeeded in 

 Baluchistan, the method of subsidizing the head 



