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ture of salt, profit to the manufacturer depends on the minute 

 attention given to details at every stage of the process of production 

 and on the small and individually almost inappreciable saving in cost 

 effected in a hundred ways. 



3. It may perhaps be argued that even under the monopoly 

 system the Government employs the ryots to manufacture the salt 

 and recognizes to some extent a right of occupancy in these ryots, 

 who may be supposed to have an interest in making as much salt and 

 as cheaply as possible. This, however, is not the case, and it is 

 exactly in this respect that the monopoly system grievously fails. 

 The quantity to be manufactured by each ryot is fixed at the com- 

 mencement of the manufacturing season by a Government officer, and 

 any outturn in excess of the quantity required by Government must 

 be destroyed. The ryot has thus no certainty as to the quantity of 

 salt he will be allowed to manufacture in coming years, or even as to 

 whether he will be permitted to manufacture at all ; for manufacture 

 must be closed if the stocks in the factory in question and adjoin- 

 ing factories are sufficient. He cannot, therefore, look beyond the 

 immediate present in any of his arrangements for carrying on manu- 

 facture and is practically reduced to the position of a labourer paid 

 at a fixed rate on the quantity of salt which the Government chooses 

 to take. The variableness of the seasons renders salt manufacture a 

 somewhat precarious industry ; and the monopoly system makes it 

 still more precarious. 



4. The salt, whether good or bad, must be taken by Government 

 when it is not below a certain standard in quality ; and in years in 

 which the outturn, owing to unfavourable season, is deficient, any salt 

 that is delivered must be accepted. As the Government pays at the 

 same rate for good and bad salt, the incentive to the production of 

 good salt is weakened. It is to the interest of the Government 

 officer having large stocks of bad salt to force it on the public by 

 withholding the sales of good salt until the former are got rid of. 

 This very frequently happened when the monopoly system was in 

 force throughout the Presidency. It is no doubt true that the portion 

 of the population which cares for good salt is at present a small one, 

 but small as it is, it is increasing. Under the monopoly system there 

 is no chance of the taste of the higher classes of the community for 

 good salt at increased prices finding satisfaction, and the result must 

 be that so long as the system is in force, the demand for good salt 

 will be smothered, unless the Government undertakes to supply salt of 

 different qualities at different costs to suit the tastes of the different 

 classes of consumers. This, it is hardly necessary to say, will be a 

 chimerical undertaking and lead to peculation and waste. That any 

 part of the community should be debarred from getting salt of good 

 quality when it is willing to pay for it, is a considerable grievance, and 

 the grievance is all the greater when it is remembered that good salt 

 is really cheap salt too. For instance, A manufactures salt containing 

 96 per cent, sodium chloride and 4 per cent, impurities, while B turns 

 out salt with 99 per cent, chloride of sodium and 1 per cent, im- 

 purities. Under the excise system if each man be allowed to sell the 

 salt at such price as he can get for it, A may realize for his salt 3 

 annas and B 4^ annas over and above the duty of Rs. 2-8-0 paid to 



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