THE CAUSE OF POVERTY 183 



dustry can hardly be ranked among their virtues. 

 Among all classes it is necessity of subsistence and 

 not choice that urges to labour ; a native will not 

 earn six rupees a month by working a few hours 

 more, if he can live upon three ; and if he has three 

 he will not work at all." Such was the Hindu a 

 century ago in the eyes of an observant and judicious 

 man, studying him with all the sympathetic interest 

 of novelty, and such he is now. 



The other reason for the chronic poverty of the 

 Indian peasant is that, if he had money beyond his 

 immediate necessity, he could not keep it. It is 

 the despair of the Government of India and of every 

 English official who endeavours to improve his 

 condition that he cannot keep his land, or his 

 cattle, or anything else on which his permanent 

 welfare depends. The following extract from The 

 Reminiscences of an Indian Police Official gives a 

 lively picture of the effect of unaccustomed wealth, 

 not on peasants, but on farmers owning land and 

 cattle and used to something like comfort. 



" Yellapa, like all cotton growers in that part of 

 the Western Presidency, profited enormously by the 

 high price of the staple during the American war. 

 Silver was poured into the country (literally) in 

 crores (millions sterling), and cultivators who pre- 

 viously had as much as they could do to live, 

 suddenly found themselves possessed of sums their 

 imagination had never dreamt of. What to do 

 with their wealth, how to spend their cash was their 

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