340 



INDIA. 



the question has been referred to arbitration. The 

 army expenditure had already increased from an 

 average of 130,000.000 before 1892 to an average 

 of 153,000,000 a year. The expense of entertain- 

 ing Indian potentates who visited England as 

 public guests in the times of the East India Com- 

 pany and later was always defrayed out of the 

 Indian revenue. This was changed when the In- 

 dian princes went to attend the coronation in 

 1902, but the English Government restricted the 

 expenditure to 100,000. Deeming this entirely 

 inadequate, the Indian Government offered to pay 

 the excess. The British treasury later assumed 

 the entire cost, but there was a dispute and much 

 public criticism regarding the size of the bill, al- 

 though this was the first coronation at which the 

 sovereign of the British Islands was recognized 

 as Lord Paramount of India, and eventually 

 the cost was shared by both governments. For 

 the coronation durbar to be held at Delhi on 

 Jan. 1, 1903, the Indian Government appropriated 

 250,000. 



The total revenue for 1902 amounted to 44,- 

 000,000 and expenditure to 39,000,000. For 

 1903 revenue was estimated at 42,500,000 and 

 expenditure at 41,500,000. The sum allowed for 

 remission of arrears to tenants was 1,250,000. 

 There was an increase in the land revenue of 

 299,000 in the revised estimate for 1902 over 

 receipts in 1901. Customs revenue showed an in- 

 crease of 644,000; stamps, 147,000; the mint, 

 515,000; railroads, 1,750,000. In the estimates 

 for 1903 the land revenue, counting remission of 

 arrears, was reckoned at 080,000 less than in 

 1902; the mint receipts, at 482,000 less, as no 

 rupees were to be coined; customs revenue, at 

 232,000 less, as a continuance of abnormal im- 

 portation was not expected; railroad receipts, at 

 229,000 less, the extraordinary traffic being ex- 

 pected to subside. With the return of the troops 

 the army expenses were increased 1,535,000, 

 and there were increases for civil departments, 

 including education and police, and for irrigation, 

 so that with a decrease in provincial balances of 

 2,585,000, instead of an increase of 1,400,000 

 in the previous budget, the estimated surplus, 

 which was 4,673,000 in 1902, fell to 838,000. 

 The opium revenue showed an increase of 311,- 

 000 in 1902, and fell off again 680,000 in the 

 estimate for 1903, owing to lower prices; the excise 

 revenue, after increasing 119,000 in 1902, was 

 taken at the same figure for 1903. The Indian 

 Government is criticized for licensing the retail 

 traffic in opium and Indian hemp and for in- 

 troducing liquor of a quality so bad that it is not 

 allowed to be sold to soldiers, which is made in 

 Government distilleries and purveyed in licensed 

 shops. The Government promised to investigate 

 the conditions of the traffic in Assam after the 

 tea-planters had complained of the demoralizing 

 influence of the liquor shops. The labor question 

 is always a pressing one in Assam. Only 3 per 

 cent, of the people living there are laborers, and 

 consequently the British planters have to depend 

 on coolies brought from other provinces. The Gov- 

 ernment licenses labor contractors and places 

 those who are unlicensed under severe restrictions. 

 Native Indians accuse the planters of abusing 

 their laborers in spite of the Assam labor 

 act of 1882, for their protection, which fixed 

 a minimum rate of wages. The labor sup- 

 ply actually diminished after the protective 

 act Avent into operation, and this, combined 

 with overproduction and the English duty on 

 tea, brought on a crisis in the industry. 

 There were over 1,000 tea-gardens, with 660,000 

 laborers, in 1900. The immigration in that year 



was 62,733, about the average number, but in 

 1901 it fell to less than half that number and 

 recruits grew continually scarcer. The Chief Com- 

 missioner of Assam, Sir Henry Cotton, in 1900 

 icported that the laborers were underpaid and 

 badly treated ; yet remunerative and inviting em- 

 ployment could alone attract Indians far from 

 their homes into a region so unhealthy. The 

 statutory rate was 5 rupees a month for men and 



4 rupees for women for three years of the con- 

 tract and 1 rupee more for the fourth year, work- 

 ing nine hours a day, with Sunday a holiday. A 

 new act was passed in March, 1901, which was 

 intended to lessen the expenses of recruiting labor 

 for the planters and secure from them better 

 wages for the laborers, viz., 6 rupees for men and 



5 rupees for women for the whole contract period 

 of four years. Their influence with the Govern- 

 ment was stronger than that of the Chief Commis- 

 sioner, and on the plea of depressed conditions of 

 trade they secured a continuance for two years 

 of the old rates and after that a scale of wage* 

 beginning at the same rates as before and rising 

 by yearly increments to the proposed higher rates, 

 which are given only in the last year, as before. 

 The contract laborer has free housing and medical 

 attendance, and must be supplied with rice at a 

 certain price, while the employer can arrest him 

 without warrant if he absconds and can have 

 him punished as a criminal if he will not work. 

 In the best gardens the laborers, after they are 

 broken in and acclimatized, are allowed to cul- 

 tivate a piece of ground and keep live stock, and 

 thus contentedly settle down and gradually become 

 merged w r ith the peasantry of the country, al- 

 though his prevents the laborer from working 

 full time after he has become efficient, and con- 

 sequently from earning full wages. In some dis- 

 tricts the planters, in order to avoid the incon- 

 venience and expense of Government inspection, 

 have generally given up the advantages of the 

 act and hire free labor at higher rates. It is so 

 in the more accessible regions, but there is no 

 supply of migratory or indigenous labor for the 

 Brahmaputra valley, and there the penal act is 

 in practical operation w T ith all its abuses. The 

 mortality among the laborers was 85 per 1,000, 

 but during the chief commissionership of Sir 

 Henry Cotton it was reduced to 48. In practise 

 the laborers are often, by fines and other sub- 

 terfuges, cheated out of their wages, illegally and 

 cruelly punished, deprived of their rice at the 

 statutory price, and turned out when sick. Sir 

 Henry Cotton and native writers believe that tho 

 statutory wages are insufficient to obtain whole- 

 some food, and that under the penal system 

 as applied the laborers are oppressed in various 

 ways, and therefore they would prefer to have tho 

 act abolished. The planters pay the cost of tin; 

 journey to Assam, equal to six months' wages, and 

 they pay much more for recruiting the laborer-, 

 who are often, with the bought aid of relatives or 

 local officials, forcibly abducted. Hence the plant- 

 ers are charged with preferring to pay a high 

 price for kidnaping men and women whom they 

 can practically treat as slaves under the pcnnl 

 clauses of the act, by the favor of accommodating 

 inspectors, to giving market rates for free labo: 

 hired in the open market. The emigrant labore: 

 suffers sickness and fever for the first two yeai>, 

 but if he survives that period he becomes attached 

 to Assam and seldom ^returns to his old hom<; 

 when the contract expires. The new law did not 

 make contract labor in the tea-gardens more at- 

 tractive to immigrants, as was proved by the rise 

 of the prices for recruitment and finally the total 

 cessation of immigration. 



