152 THE HUMAN FACTOE 



short time ago are now covered with prosperous 

 homesteads. Or take a man in the same locality or 

 in California who has an irrigated holding of 20 acres. 

 He may be worth 1 or 2 lakhs of rupees ; yet he 

 not only works the land himself, but frequently does 

 the whole of the work, his hours being from sunrise 

 to sunset. The American holder of somewhat less 

 means will not disdain to work for hire as a navvy in 

 any spare time that he can filch from his farm, and 

 will thus provide himself with additional capital for 

 developing his land. In India does any man worth 

 Rs. 20,000 engage personally in field labour on his 

 own farm, or does any farmer worth Rs.5000 employ 

 his spare time in working for hire ? Such instances 

 must be very rare. The natural tendency of such 

 men is to engage labour for the performance of their 

 current field operations, and to finance any permanent 

 improvement that they may contemplate by. means 

 of a loan. Of course it may be said that the reason 

 why the American farmer does not hire more labour 

 is that it is not available, and that the reason why 

 the Indian farmer hires so much labour is that it is 

 available. This is so. But it is the heavy bill paid 

 for labour which is often inefficient that runs away 

 with the profits of the substantial cultivator. The 

 cry nowadays is that owing to the rise in wages the 

 position of the small cultivator who gets his work 

 done by hired labour has become very difficult. The 

 onlooker may feel inclined to say " would that it 

 were impossible ". If the wages for field labour were 



