U GROWTH OF POPULATION 



We have not, however, finished with the difficulties 

 inherent in the growth of population, for we may observe 

 that it appears to be almost impossible to avoid a landlord 

 class coming into existence in any tract of country which 

 is highly fertile and where the standard of living of the 

 cultivating class is low. Let us contrast the highly fertile 

 land such as that of the Ganges Valley eastwards from 

 Allahabad to the alluvial lands of Bihar, with the barren 

 hills of parts of Central India or the rocky valleys of the 

 foot-hills of the Himalayas. In those barren lands the 

 cultivator with difficulty ekes out an existence on a holding 

 of, say, 12 acres, and paying only about eight annas per 

 acre revenue. The land is so unfertile that the gross produce 

 can hardly expand sufficiently to support a landlord class. 

 Particularly is this the case where the unfertile but cultiva- 

 ble land is scattered amongst absolutely barren wastes, for 

 there no landlord can find a profit in the task of supervising 

 his estates and collecting the very small rents which alone 

 are possible. Consequently in such regions we generally 

 find no landlord class. 



On the other hand, in highly fertile regions, even if the 

 population is first settled on the land with proprietary 

 rights from Government at quite a low revenue, there is 

 no reason to suppose that the landlord class will not in 

 coarse of time arise as a mere result of the economic con- 

 ditions. The gross produce from the land is capable of 

 considerable expansion by more intensive cultivation. Here 

 and there a cultivator is ambitious and saves a little capital 

 which enables him to work more land. It pays him either 

 to break some land from the waste if available or to rent 

 some fields or to work on some system of sharing with the 

 owner. Often he will save enough to purchase the proprietary 

 right. In the course of years an energetic man will manage 

 to buy so much land that he need not live wholly by his own 



