26 HAPPY INDIA 



of the British Empire would enable me to proclaim 

 to the world that I had raised the economic condition 

 of the people of India to one which might claim 

 comparison with the other great peoples of the 

 world. But the Governors of India have come 

 from a class which knows no hardship, which has 

 not got to consider the wages of the husbandmen 

 or the amount of food necessary to keep a working 

 man and his family in good health. Their minds 

 for the most part run on military achievement, upon 

 spectacular receptions and sporting expeditions. If, 

 on the other hand, we were to send out a Governor- 

 General from our own working classes or some engineer 

 accustomed to deal with them, one of the first things 

 he would enquire into would be the economic condi- 

 tion of the working classes, and he would naturally 

 give his time and attention to considering how to 

 ameliorate that condition where such amelioration 

 was obviously necessary. 



It is said that the Emperor Augustus boasted 

 that he had found Rome a city of bricks and left 

 it a city of marble, so a modern aristocratic Governor- 

 General of India might boast that he found the 

 new city of Delhi a city of ruins and that he left 

 it a magnificent city of palaces. But the working- 

 man Governor- General would be more likely to 

 boast that when he went to India he found the wages 

 of the poorest cultivator of the soil were about 

 4d. a day, and when he left he had raised those 

 wages to is. a day, whilst the price of the necessities 

 of life remained at the same level as when the wages 



