220 THE DIRECTION OF INDUSTRY 



' In this district, therefore, the cultivator is not only 

 getting his share in the rise of prices generally, but is 

 also gradually forcing the baniya to give him a better 

 price for his produce ; for whereas bazaar rates have 

 risen for wheat only 42 per cent., the harvest rates 

 have risen 55 per cent. The difference between harvest 

 rates and bazaar rates for this grain was 27 per cent, 

 for the first period (1813-37), 23 per cent, for the 

 second period (1837-57), an d only 17 per cent, for 

 the third (1857-76). It must take time for the 

 benefits of the competition in the export trade to 

 filter down to the cultivator, guarded and hedged 

 as he is by custom and long-standing obligations, 

 but in a longer or shorter time it must reach 

 him.'* 



The improvement in the cultivator's position relative 

 to the grain-dealer must obviously have been a slow 

 and irregular process, and could not have occurred all 

 over the province simultaneously. It is, therefore, not 

 surprising to find the settlement officers of another 

 district hard by coming to a less optimistic conclusion. 

 In 1875 Messrs. McConaghey and Smeaton, in their 

 Report on the Settlement of the Mainpuri District, 

 published the harvest prices of the district from 

 1840-71, and placed next to them the bazaar prices 

 in the Agra and Muttra bazaars. They proceeded to 

 say : ' A remarkable fact is brought out by these figures. 

 While the bazaar price of wheat during the period 

 1859-71 shows an increase of 58 per cent, on that of 

 the preceding period, the corresponding increase in 

 its harvest price is only 42 per cent. That is to 

 say, while both bazaar and harvest prices have risen 

 only since the Mutiny, they have not risen in equal 

 proportions, the divergence between them being 

 considerably wider in the post-Mutiny than in the 

 pre-Mutiny period. This is a fact established by 



* R. S. Whiteway, ' Report on the Settlement of the Muttra 

 District,' 1879. 



