144 THE HUMAN FACTOE 



the rise in daily wages and the rise in wages for piece- 

 work will give some indication of this. In the 

 southern part of the Bombay Presidency it is a com- 

 mon practice to have cultivated fields which are in- 

 fested with deep-rooted grasses dug over by hand once 

 in a long period of years, in order to eradicate the 

 grasses. This is a heavy and laborious operation in- 

 volving the use of the pick-axe and the crow-bar. 

 Fifteen years ago the contract rate for such work was 

 Rs.20 per acre, while it is now Rs.75 per acre. It will 

 thus be seen that in the same period in which daily 

 wages rose by a little over 100 per cent., wages for 

 certain kinds of piece-work went up by nearly 400 per 

 cent. 



So much for the facts about agricultural wages. 

 But it may be inquired what is the meaning of this 

 rise in wages and of the so-called " scarcity of labour " 

 about which we hear so much nowadays. The 

 explanation often suggested is that the population has 

 been reduced by plague and influenza, and that new 

 manufacturing industries have caused a greater 

 demand for labour and attracted the best workmen 

 to the towns. These considerations are not negligible, 

 but are they sufficient to account for the marked 

 change in the situation with regard to labour which 

 has certainly taken place ? The population of the 

 Bombay Presidency (excluding Sind) is roughly 

 23,000,000 and there has been little change in that 

 figure during the last thirty years. During that 

 period, however, there has been an appreciable in- 



