14 On the Conditions of Wheat-Growing, in India. 
foreign trade into cotton, wheat, or any otter article that may 
be called for. As to wheat, he has this advantage, that his 
crop comes into the European markets when prices are ruling 
high. 
All the facts go to prove that the wheat trade up to its 
present stage is a perfectly natural one. The people are 
exporting only what they specially cultivate for that purpose. 
So long as wheat is a remunerative crop they will continue to 
cultivate it. The moment better profits can be realised on 
another crop they will turn from wheat, without being in the 
smallest degree incommoded, just as they.^ssumed and again 
resigned a greatly extended cotton-cultivation. It must be 
admitted, however, that there is a fixed limit to the cultivation 
of Indian wheat. That limit has yet to be clearly defined ; but 
it rests in the degree to which minor crops can be advantageously 
replaced by wheat. When that point has been finally reached, 
extension can alone take place in either of two directions — the 
displacement of such important crops as oil-seeds and cotton, 
if wheat should prove more remunerative, or the extension of 
the agricultural areas. 
That new land would for some time be unsuited to wheat 
goes without saying ; but there is abundant evidence that the 
agricultural area is being extended. The millets and other 
inferior crops will doubtless be at first cultivated on new land, 
but the history of the Panjab wheat-cultivation proves that it 
does not take long before new lands can be advantageously thrown 
under wheat. A difficulty exists in the opposition which the 
native usually shows to migrating far from the neighbourhood 
of the hut which he calls " home." That this difficulty is being 
largely overcome we have notable examples in the way in which 
Burma is being peopled, and in the colonies of coolies who are 
year by year settling in Assam after the expiration of their tea- 
garden contracts. Indeed, the whole history of tea-cultivation 
points to a new direction in which agi-icultural progress 
might be effected. If left to themselves, the natives of India 
would never have thought for a moment of tea as a profitable 
enterprise, or of Assam as a favourable region to mig^-ate to ; 
the valley of Assam would not have been in its present pro- 
sperous condition but for European enterprise in tea-cultivation. 
Were it possible to offer to European capitalists large tracts 
of laud to be held for considerable periods, the homesteads of 
the European farmer or zemindar would soon form the centres 
around which new populations would accumulate. More in a 
few years might in this way be effected in the agricultural reform 
of India than seems likely to be accomplished by a century of 
Government experimental farms. 
