178 COTTON 



Conclusions. 



The outlook in general, as regards India as a large 

 supplier of cotton, is most promising, but the Govern- 

 ment will have to engage a much larger staff of farming 

 experts. The few who are at present in the Govern- 

 ment's employment are a great credit to the British 

 nation, and are the most remunerative investment which 

 the Government of India has ever undertaken. I can 

 prove that in almost every province, through the instru- 

 mentality of these farming experts, additional millions of 

 rupees are annually brought into the country. 



The Government of India spends about i per thousand 

 of the population on agriculture, leaving out veterinary 

 expenditure. Comparisons with other countries show 

 how absurdly small this outlay is. The United Kingdom 

 spends 46 per thousand, Queensland 92*5, Austria 

 86'5, Prussia 62*5, United States of America and 

 Canada a little over 36, France and Hungary about 27. 

 The Pioneer of Allahabad, which supplied this informa- 

 tion, in a leading- article dealing with an address I gave 

 before the Board of Agriculture, says this comparison 

 is very instructive, and that no one can fail to see that 

 State expenditure on agriculture in India is only in its 

 infancy, and that an unanswerable case exists for its 

 expansion. 



On my journey I advocated the system of supplying 

 seed on credit, the same as has been introduced by Lord 

 Kitchener in Egypt. All the machinery exists for the 

 collection of the value of the seed through the tax- 

 collector. If this method were adopted in India, we 

 would soon see the Department of Agriculture obtaining 

 a monopoly over the supply of seed, and in this way the 

 ryot would gradually free himself from the hands of the 

 moneylender. The more general establishment of cotton 

 markets, with Government graders, and possibly in some 

 provinces the licensing of ginning factories, would be 

 effective means of stopping the mixing of the various 

 cottons, for not only is the purchaser cheated through 

 this practice, but much greater harm is done when, in 

 the following season, the mixed seeds are sown in the 



