Feb. 1908.] 



147 



Miscellaneous. 



from the people, who saw no advantage 

 in growing the superior quality of lint. 

 The cotton exports of those days were 

 barely five per cent, of the total produce, 

 and the inferior fibre not only was suit- 

 able for the internal consumption of 

 India, but commanded an equal price, 

 and was more secure in out-turn. What- 

 ever the reasons may have been, it was 

 reported that in many places the native 

 capitalists employed men to go out at 

 night and root up the American seedlings 

 in the experimental farms. 



Up to 1850 the East India Company had 

 paid little attention to roads, canals, ' or 

 other public works. The Court of Di- 

 rectors stated that their average annual 

 expenditure on all public works in India 

 was about a quarter of a million sterling. 

 An urgent demand sprang up for the 

 construction of roads and railways. The 

 railway mania in England was at its 

 height, and the English commercial com- 

 munity raged with indignation against 

 the apathy of the Indian Government. 

 Those critics who complain now of the 

 insufficiency of an annual Budget of 

 £10,000,000 for the extension and equip- 

 ment of railways would find consolation 

 and support in reading the remarks of 

 their predecessors, when it took fifteen 

 years of negotiation to build the first 

 fifteen miles of railway fioin Bombay to 

 Thana. 



The famines that occurred then were as 

 terrible in their results as those that 

 preceded the establishment of British 

 rule. In a petition presented to the 

 House of Lords in 1853, we read : 



" Famines occur decennially, some of 

 which, within our time, have swept their 

 millions away. . . . The living preyed 

 upon the dead ; mothers devoured their 

 children, and the human imagination 

 could.scarcely picture thejfecenes of horror 

 that pervaded the land. In twenty 

 months' time 1,500,000 people must have 

 died of hunger or of its immediate con- 

 sequences. The direct pecuniary loss 

 occasioned to Government by this single 

 visitation exceeded £5,000,000 sterling, a 

 sum which would have gone far to avert 

 the calamity had it been expended in 

 constructing thoroughfares to connect 

 the interior with the sea coast, or districts 

 where scarcity prevailed with those 

 where human food was to be had in 

 abundance." 



The strong arm of the English adminis- 

 tration has within the space of half a 

 century banished these horrors into the 

 abyss of oblivion, but it is well for us 

 occasionally to reflect on the methods by 

 which this humanitarian resolution has 

 been accomplished and the fundamental 

 conditions of its maintenance. 



During this period of unbroken inter- 

 nal peace, the energies of the Govern- 

 ment have been devoted to the prosecu- 

 tion of railways, roads, irrigation canals, 

 and education— the four requisites which 

 are equally essential to preservation from 

 famine and the economic and agricul- 

 tural development of the country. 



At a cost of some £250 million sterlingj 

 over 30,000 miles of railway have been 

 constructed, of which two-thirds are the 

 property of the State ; metalled roads 

 cover 37,000 miles, and unmetalled roads 

 some 140,000 miles, and the annual ex- 

 penditure on their extension and upkeep 

 approximates £3,000,000. In irrigation 

 works, the capital expenditure up to 

 date amounts to £30,000,000, and 43,000 

 miles of canals and distributaries irrigate 

 an area of 16 million acres. Incidentally, 

 I may observe that the State assets in 

 the form of railways and canals represent 

 three-fourths of the whole public debt of 

 the country. 



The policy thus steadily pursued has 

 transformed the agricultural economy of 

 whole provinces. I will mention a few 

 instances only. When visitations of 

 famine occur now, the people are spared 

 the ultimate calamity of the absence 

 of supplies of;food. The network of adja- 

 cent railways brings an ample pro- 

 vision of grain into the afflicted area ; 

 when all hope of,a harvest is at an end, 

 and the labourer and small peasant 

 can no longer find employment in the 

 barren fields, they are secure of subsis- 

 tence by labouring on the relief works 

 organised by the State. Let me illus- 

 trate the result of this change. In the 

 famine of 1876-77 a corner of the district 

 of Bijapur was cut off from the railway 

 by 150 miles of difficult country ; grain 

 was scarcely obtainable, the people fled 

 in all directions, and out of an area of 

 360,000 acres 60,000 acres were utterly 

 abandoned in the following years, the 

 owners either having died or having 

 been reduced to the class of landless 

 labourers. Thirty years later, when a 

 railway traversed this district, the same 

 tract was smitten by an equally severe 

 drought, but not a single acre fell out of 

 occupation. No impediment to agricul- 

 ture was comparable to the devastation 

 caused by famine when villages were 

 deserted and fields lay waste and 

 untitled ; and the protection conferred 

 on the cultivator by the railway was 

 the first step to the improvement of 

 agriculture. 



It is difficult for us now to imagine the 

 days when the greater part of British 

 India possessed no roads that would 

 allow of the employment of carts ; yet 

 such was the case fifty years ago, when 



