xlii 



is rarely or never above the latter sum for purely agricultural labour, 

 and this is paid not in money but in grain. The occasional presents 

 to the yearly laborers are partly in money and partly in clothes ; 

 the entire earnings of a lalsorer engaged for a year do not exceed 

 from 16 to 20 rupees for that whole term. 



11. It appears from the foregoing detail that the condition of the 

 agricultural laborer in this country is very poor. Taking his earn- 

 ings at the highest rate, viz., 20 rupees a year, this would be equiva- 

 lent in real value, using the same standard of comparison as above, 

 to £10 a year in England. The English field laborer earns on the 

 average not less than £28 a year, including his extra grains in harvest 

 time ; and thus it appears that the real wages of a field laborer in 

 regular employ, his command of the necessaries and conveniences of 

 life, are in this country little more than a third of what they are in 

 England. It is no doubt true that some things are necessaries there 

 which are not so in so high a degree here ; the laborer in this coun- 

 try does not need to spend so much on firing, clothing or shelter 

 from the weather as in England ; in other words, an equal amount of 

 physical comfort in those respects may be purchased here at a smaller 

 outlay. But making full allowance for this difference, the labourer 

 here will still be found to be much the worse off. In fact, almost the 

 whole of his earnings must necessarily be consumed in a spare 

 allowance of coarse and unvaried food and a bare sufficiency of cloth- 

 ing. The wretched hut he lives in can hardly be valued at all. As 

 to anything in the way of education or mental culture, he is utterly 

 destitute of it. 



