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RECENT ECONOMIC 
 
 DEVELOPMENTS IN 
 
 THE PUNJAB 
 
 A PAPER READ BY 
 
 Sir JAMES WILSON, K.C.S.L, 
 
 TO THE 
 
 ROYAL ECONOMIC SOCIETY 
 
 ON THE QTH FEBRUARY, 191O 
 
 1 :• 
 
 
 Printed by RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, Limited, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, E.G., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK 
 
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 Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, 
 brrad street hill, k.c., and 
 
 BDNOAV SUFFOLK. 
 
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; • .*. '• ;• : ; .. 
 
 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 IN THE PUNJAB 
 
 I PROPOSE in this paper to give some account of the changes 
 which have occurred within the last quarter of a century in the 
 economic conditions of the British districts of the Punjab, and 
 of the effect those changes have had on the material welfare of 
 the different classes of the people. It has been my official duty, 
 for the last 34 years, to take a deep interest in all that concerns 
 the well-being of the population in many parts of the Province, 
 and especially of that large portion of it which is dependent on 
 agriculture ; so that the opinions and conclusions I have to offer 
 are the result of long and close study and personal experience. 
 I have however thought it desirable to correct and support them 
 by statistics obtained from the official returns. Those statistics 
 would require some explanation and modification before they could 
 be made the basis of any definite action, such as the assessment 
 of the land revenue ; but for my present purpose it is sufficient to 
 take them as they stand and to make merely arithmetical calcula- 
 tions of equivalents, comparisons, and averages. I may explain 
 that the Indian standard measure of weight is the maund, which 
 weighs 8'2f lb. avoirdupois; but in converting maunds into tons, 
 I have taken the maund as 80 lb., and reckoned 28 maunds as 
 equal to one ton. A quarter of Indian wheat is expected to weigh 
 492 lb., or almost exactly six maunds. The Indian rupee, which 
 is divided into sixteen annas, has for the last eleven years been 
 exactly equal in value to 16 pence ; so that the present value of the 
 anna is exactly one penny, it follows that, for wheat, every 
 two annas per maund is equivalent in gold to one shilling per 
 quarter. 
 
 M43399 
 
RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 Area and Kainfall. 
 
 The Punjab, up lo 1901, included what is now called the 
 { N^rth-wGist.Fiontier Province, and the totals given in the volumes 
 of statistics up to that year included the figures for the districts 
 which have since formed that separate province. Some of the 
 statistics — as, for instance, those for trade and for post-office 
 transactions — include not only the North-west Frontier Province, 
 but the Native States under the control of the Lieutenant- 
 Governor. Where possible, as in the case of the census and 
 agricultural statistics, I have excluded from my figures both those 
 ; for the North-west Frontier Province and for the Native States, 
 ; so that these figures relate only to the 29 British districts of the 
 present Punjab, to v^-hich I desire to confine attention. It has 
 not been possible to make a similar exception in the case of the 
 ■^ trade statistics, which relate to a total area of 150,000 square 
 miles and a population of "27 millions, while the districts of the 
 present Punjab directly under British rule have an area of only 
 97,000 square miles and a population of only 20 millions. Trade 
 depends more on population than on area, and it will be sufficient 
 for present purposes to deduct, roughly, one-fourth from the total 
 figures for trade , in order to make them applicable to the present 
 British province. It is useful to remember that the area of these 
 29 Punjab districts is about three-fourths of that of the United 
 Kingdom, and their population a little less than half the popu- 
 lation of the United Kingdom. 
 
 The Province includes a large area of sparsely inhabited, 
 I mountainous country, but five-sixths of the total population live 
 ' in a portion of the great alluvial plain, which stretches from the 
 foot of the Himalayas down to the sea, and is crossed by the five 
 great tributaries of the Indus, which give it its name of the 
 "Punjab," or "five waters." These rivers bring down the melted 
 snows and the drainage from the hills, and have now been har- 
 nessed by massive engineering works, and made to irrigate vast 
 tracts of country ; but a large proportion of the crops grown is 
 still dependent on the local rainfall, which varies very much from 
 place to place and from year to year. The average rainfall for 
 the year, in the plains, varies from about 35 inches in the sub- 
 montane districts to 6 inches in the extreme south-west of the 
 Province. For the whole area the arithmetical average for a 
 long series of years is 25 inches ; but in 1907-8 it was only 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 5 
 
 17 inches, and in 1908-9 it was 32 inches : that is to say, the 
 Province in the last agricultural year received almost twice as 
 much rain as it did in the year before last. 
 
 Cultivation, Irrigation, and Crops. 
 
 The area under cultivation very rapidly increased immediately 
 after annexation brought peace and security to a distracted 
 country sixty years ago, and has since been steadily expanding 
 almost without a break. In 1887 the cultivated area of the present 
 Punjab was 22 million acres ; now it is over 28 million acres, an 
 increase of 27 per cent. The irrigated area was then 6 million 
 acres ; now it is nearly 11 million acres, and it will soon be double 
 what it was a quarter of a century ago. This increase of irrigation 
 is partly due to an increase in the number of wells, made by the "■'■/ 
 people themselves, from about 200,000 to about 280,000, which 
 means that in that period landowners have spent £2,000,000 
 sterling in making new wells ; but it is chiefly due to the construc- 
 tion at State expense of the great canals, which are the pride of 
 the Province, and which now irrigate 6^ million acres of crops 
 as compared with only 2 million acres 22 years ago. 
 
 The area of crops sown in any one year often differs greatly 
 from the area under cultivation, partly because a certain area, 
 not very large, is intentionally left fallow, but chiefly because 
 every year there are considerable areas all over the Province 
 which, owing to a partial failure either of the rainfall or of 
 the canal supply, fail to receive sufficient moisture at sowing 
 time to make it worth while to sow them. Again, we have two 
 harvests in the Punjab, one reaped in October and the other in 
 April, and although most of the land produces only one crop in 
 the year, a considerable area, aided by irrigation and manure, 
 produces two crops in the year. The area so double-cropped has 
 increased from less than 3 million acres 22 years ago to about 
 4 million acres now. The last three agricultural years may be 
 taken as fairly typical of present circumstances, the first of them 
 having been a good year, the second excessively dry, and the 
 third excessively wet. On the average of those three years the 
 area of crops sown was 28 million acres, almost equal to the total 
 area under cultivation : but in the first year 30 million acres of 
 crops were sown, in the second, the dry year, only 24| million 
 acres, and in the third, the wet year, 29^ million. Further, even 
 after a field has been sown with a crop, the outturn varies 
 
 B 
 
8 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 of the present average value of the agricultural produce of the 
 Punjab, to deduct from last year's estimate 10 per cent, for high 
 yield and 20 per cent, for excessive prices, or say 30 per cent, 
 altogether, and estimate the present average value of the gross 
 produce at 48 crores of rupees, or ^32,000,000 sterling. The 
 present land revenue demand of the Punjab is a little less than 
 3 crores of rupees, or dG2,000,000 sterling ; so that, if this estimate 
 is approximately correct, the land revenue equals about 6 per 
 cent, of the average value of the gross agricultural produce, with- 
 out taking into account the very large income from live stock. 
 
 The population of the 29 British districts in 1901 was just 
 over 20 millions : the annual returns of births and deaths show 
 that since then it must have fallen off by about 3 per cent., owing 
 to the ravages of plague and fever ; but it is now increasing again, 
 and for present purposes we may take it at 20 millions. Accord- 
 ing to the most careful estimates, the average annual consumption 
 of food-grain is about 6 maunds per head, or the equivalent in 
 weight of a quarter of wheat. This would give the annual con- 
 sumption of the whole jDopulation as about 4| million tons, to 
 which we may add J million tons for consumption by cattle ; and, 
 if my estimate of the average produce of food-grains at 6 million 
 tons is correct, this would leave on the average about IJ million 
 tons of food-grain available for export. We shajl see how far 
 this estimate agrees with the actual trade returns. 
 
 According to these estimates, the average weight of produce 
 per head of population, besides fodder, is at present about | of a 
 ton ; and including fodder, the present average value of the gross 
 agricultural produce per head of total population is about 24 
 rupees, or 32 shillings. 
 
 A comparison with the state of things in 1887 may be made 
 as follows : 
 
 Average area under cultivation (millions of acres)... 
 
 Average area irrigated (millions of acres) ... 
 
 Average area sown (millions of acres) 
 
 Total population (millions) ... 
 
 Average area sown per head of population (acres) ... 
 
 In the last 22 years the average area sown per head of popula- 
 tion has increased from 1"1 to 1'4 of an acre, an increase of 27 per 
 cent. It is necessary to allow for the great increase in the average 
 yield due to the extension of irrigation ; for an irrigated acre 
 produces on the average about double the produce per sown acre 
 given by unirrigated land. If we allow for this by multiplying 
 the irrigated area by two, we find that the increase in the total 
 
 886-7. 
 
 1908-9 
 
 22 
 
 28 
 
 6 
 
 11 
 
 20-5 
 
 28 
 
 18-5 
 
 20 
 
 1-1 
 
 1-4 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 9 
 
 produce since 1887 must be, not in the proportion of 20" 5 to 28, 
 but in the proportion of 26"5 to 39, that is, it must have increased 
 by nearly 50 per cent. ; and the average produce per head of 
 population must have increased in the proportion of 143 to 19;j, 
 that is, by 36 per cent. These figures are necessarily only 
 approximate, but there can be no doubt that the agricultural land 
 of the Punjab now produces far more per head of population than 
 it did a quarter of a century ago. As I shall show, all classes of 
 the people have shared in the increase of prosperity indicated by 
 these figures. We have no millionaires in the Punjab, and com- 
 paratively few rich landowners and merchants.^ 
 
 Imports and Exports, 
 
 In Appendix III. I have tabulated the principal figures for 
 imports and exports for tLe eight years ending March, 1909, as 
 given in the Internal Trade Eeport for the Province. It is neces- 
 sary to remember that, as already explained, these figures relate 
 to an area embracing not only the 29 British districts of the 
 Punjab, but also its Native States and the North-west Frontier 
 Province, and that, on the basis of population, only about three- 
 fourths of the totals represent the trade of the 29 British districts. 
 The statistics show that for the whole area, on the average of 
 the eight years, as compared with the average of the three years 
 ending 1889, the imports of goods have increased in weight from 
 ^ 10 to 30 million maunds, and in value from 92 to 198 million 
 rupees ; while the exports have increased in weight from 14 to 
 42 million maunds, and in value from 72 to 181 million rupees : 
 that is, both imports and exports have trebled in weight and more 
 than doubled in value, as compared with twenty years ago. 
 During the last eight years (with the exception of the very dry 
 year 1908-9) trade has been increasing, the figures for 1907-8 
 constituting a record, both in imports and exports, and both in 
 w^eight and value ; and if we take the average for the last four 
 years (including the bad year), and turn it into English measures, 
 ^ we find the imports of goods averaged 1'3 million tons, of the 
 value of nearly £16,000,000 sterling, and the exports of goods 
 averaged 1'7 million tons, of the value of £14,000,000 sterling; 
 besides which there was a net import of treasure averaging over 
 
 ^ According to the income-tax returns there are only 6,500 persons in the province 
 who have an income, derived from other souices than laud, exceeding £133 per annum- 
 
10 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 £1,500,000 sterling per annum. It will be noticed that, including 
 treasure, the total imports exceeded the total exports by more 
 than £3,000,000 sterling per annum. For this phenomenon the 
 following reasons suggest themselves. First, there has been 
 during these eight years a very large expenditure in the Punjab 
 and North-west Frontier Province on railways and canals, financed 
 almost entirely by capital raised outside these provinces, and 
 poured into them in the form of railway and other material and 
 wages for labour. Secondly, the amount expended by Grovern- 
 ment within this area on pay of troops and cost of military 
 works, probably exceeds the contribution it makes towards 
 Imperial expenses. Thirdly, a considerable sum is annually 
 remitted to the Punjab and North-west Frontier Province by men 
 who are serving outside that area in the Army and Police, or who 
 are engaged in business abroad. These causes are likely to con- 
 tinue, and we may expect generally to find that the total imports 
 into this area will appreciably exceed in value the total exports. 
 Some people talk of the excess of exports over imports as a drain 
 upon India : in the Punjab, at all events, the drain is the other 
 way. 
 
 Gold and silver are not immediately consumed, like most other 
 articles of trade, and as the imports of these precious metals have 
 in the eight years exceeded the exports to the value of £13,000,000 
 sterling, the quantity of gold and silver in this area at the end 
 of the eight year period must have exceeded the quantity at the 
 beginning of it to that value. The reported net import of gold 
 is only £500,000 sterling, but probably a good deal more escaped 
 registration. The net import of nearly £2,000,000 w^orth of 
 coined rupees may have been largely absorbed in the circulation 
 to meet the rise of prices and the greater activity of trade ; but 
 the £10,000,000 worth of silver bullion, net imported, must have 
 gone to swell the hoards and ornaments of the people, and 
 probably three-fourths of it, or, say, £7,000,000 sterling, found 
 their way to the 29 British districts of the Punjab. This process 
 has been going on for many years, and the quantity of silver now 
 in possession of the residents of the Punjab must be very large. 
 Credit is of slow growth, but if we could find means to persuade 
 the people to invest their savings in productive loans instead of 
 hoarding them in the form of silver, the industries of the province, 
 including agriculture, would receive a great impetus. 
 
 In Appendix III. I have given the figures for the value in 
 rupees of the principal articles of import and export, from which 
 it will be seen that, on the average of the last four years, those 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 
 
 11 
 
 articles represented the following proportion of the total (exclud- 
 ing treasure) : 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Exports, 
 
 Articles. 
 Total articles ... 
 
 Value in 
 millions 
 of pounds. 
 ... 15-73 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 of 
 
 total. 
 
 100 
 
 Value in 
 millions 
 Articles. ofpounds. 
 Total articles 14-00 
 
 Per cent, 
 of 
 
 total. 
 
 100 
 
 Cotton piece-goods 
 
 Sugar 
 
 Metals... 
 Railway })lant... 
 Oils and oilseeds 
 Coal aud coke... 
 Jute goods 
 
 ... 4-35 
 ... 2-01 
 ... 1-40 
 
 ... 0-88 
 ... 0-91 
 ... 0-48 
 ... 0-57 
 
 28 
 13 
 9 
 6 
 6 
 3 
 4 
 
 Total grain and pulse... 7'75 
 Wheat aud wheat-ilour 4 74 
 Raw cotton ... ... 1'51 
 
 Oilseeds 91 
 
 Hides and skins ... 073 
 Wool 31 
 
 55 
 
 33 
 
 11 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 ' Of the import trade 28 per cent, is cotton piece-goods of the 
 annual value of 4 J million sterling, about two-thirds of this total 
 j coming from Lancashire ; 13 per cent, is sugar of the annual value 
 I of £2,000,000. There are large and growing imports of metals and 
 railway plant of the average value of over £2,000,000. The 
 import of coal from Bengal is small, but increasing; and there is 
 a considerable import of jute goods, also from Bengal, chiefly used 
 I as grain sacks. The exports consist almost entirely of raw 
 ! agricultural and pastoral produce. Wheat and wheat flour of the 
 value of £4,740,000 sterling (a third of the value of the total ex- 
 ports) are annually exported, and the exports of grain and pulse of 
 all kinds, including wheat, amount to £7,750,000 sterling annu- 
 ally; raw cotton accounts for £1,500,000, oilseeds for £1,000,000, 
 ■■ and hides, skins, and wool for another £1,000,000 annually. 
 
 In order to eliminate the effect of rising prices on these 
 statistics, I have given in the appendix the weights of imports 
 and exports of grain and pulse. It will be seen that with the 
 exception of the last very dry year there has been a rapid increase 
 in these eight years in the net exports of these articles, and that 
 on the average of the last four years of the series (including the 
 bad year) the net export amounted to 34 million maunds (or 
 IJ million tons), of which 23 million maunds (or 800,000 tons) 
 were wheat. In ordinary years the greater part of the wheat, 
 oilseeds and cotton exported from the Punjab goes through 
 Karachi to Europe, and in the summer of 1907 there was, as 
 usual, a large export in that direction ; but in the end of that year 
 1 the serious failure of rain in the United Provinces led to a very 
 
12 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 rapid rise of prices there, which attracted great quantities of grain 
 from the Punjab. During the summer of 1908, the scarcity in 
 the United Provinces continued, and as there was also widesi:>read 
 drought in the Punjab, the surplus available for export was much 
 less than usual, and stocks had been depleted by the large export 
 of the previous winter. In the year ending March, 1909, the net 
 exports of grain and pulse from the Punjab area were only 12 
 million maunds, as compared with 50 million in the year before, 
 and the net exports of wheat fell off from 32 to 9 million maunds. 
 The available surplus still went mainly to the United Provinces, 
 in answer to the high prices there , and the exports of wheat from 
 Karachi, in the busy season, April to August, which had averaged 
 514,000 tons for the previous four years, fell off to only 44,000 
 tons. In 1909 the harvests in the United Provinces were good, 
 and high prices in Europe again attracted the Punjab surplus, 
 which was large owing to a favourable year, and during the seven 
 months, April to October last year, the exports of wheat from 
 Karachi amounted to 627,000 tons, most of which must have 
 come from the Punjab, There is also a considerable export of 
 Punjab wheat towards Calcutta and Bombay; and during the 
 present financial year the agriculturists of the Punjab must have 
 received something like £6,000,000 sterling for their surplus wheat 
 alone. 
 
 In framing an estimate of the probable exports of an average 
 year, we must obviously make some allowance for the fact that 
 1908 was an unusually poor year, and that such bad seasons are 
 not likely to recur often. If we take the average of the previous 
 three years, and allow one-fourth off the figures as representing 
 the area outside the Province proper, we find that the 29 British 
 districts actually exported annually IJ million tons of grain and 
 pulse : in the last of those three years, after a fair harvest, they 
 actually exported IJ million tons. Cultivation and irrigation are 
 still extending faster than the growth of population, and the 
 surplus available for export continues to increase. It will be 
 remembered that, after a comparison of "the estimates of produc- 
 tion and consumption, I calculated that at present, on the 
 average, about IJ million tons of food-grain are available for 
 export. After studying the figures for actual export, I would 
 adhere to this estimate : that is, we may expect for some years 
 to come that the average annual exports of grain and pulse from 
 the 29 British districts will be about IJ million tons (42 million 
 maunds), of the value of about ^68,000,000 sterling; and that, of 
 wheat alone, the Punjab will provide an annual surplus for export 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 13 
 
 of about 1 million tons, or over 4^ million quarters. The 
 estimated consumption of wheat in the United Kingdom for 
 the six years ending 190G averaged 32 million quarters; 
 so that the Punjab's annual surplus of wheat, if it were 
 all brought to this country, would furnish one-seventh of 
 the population with all the w^heat they require for a year's 
 consumption. 
 
 The great and rapid increase of trade which has taken place 
 in recent years is due mainly to the improvement in communica- 
 tions by railway, road, post office, and telegraph. During the last 
 23 years the railway mileage in the Punjab has risen from 
 2,000 to about 3,500 miles. Statistics for all the railways of 
 the Province are not available, but the following figures for the 
 most important of them, the North- Western Eailway, owned and 
 managed by the State, which works branches all over the Punjab, 
 as well as in the North-west Frontier Province and in Sind, afford 
 some indication of the progress of railway communication. Since 
 1886 its capital expenditure has risen from £15,000,000 to 
 £45,000,000 sterling, the gross receipts from £1,500,000 to nearly 
 £4,000,000 sterling, the number of passengers carried from 10 to 
 40 millions, and the goods conveyed from 2 to 9 million tons. 
 There has also been a great improvement in the roads almost 
 all over the Province. In the ten years ending 1906-7 the number 
 of post offices in the Punjab and North-west Frontier Province 
 had increased from 1,750 to 3,000 ; the number of miles over which 
 mails are conveyed from 14,000 to 20,000 ; the expenditure 
 from £75,000 to £160,000; the number of letters and post- 
 cards carried from 53 to 99 million ; the number of newspapers 
 carried from 4 to 6| million ; the number of money orders issued 
 and paid from 2^ to 4j million ; and their value from £3,750,000 
 sterling to nearly £5,250,000. This rapid improvement in the 
 means of communication has both cheapened transport enormouslj^ 
 and quickened trade, so that the effect of any important change 
 in prices is at once felt all over the Province and leads to a corre- 
 sponding movement of goods. It has altered the conditions of 
 trade in the most remote villages, giving them better prices for 
 the surplus produce they have to sell, and bringing them goods 
 from outside at cheaper prices than before. The greater competi- 
 tion among traders has also tended to reduce the profits of the 
 middleman, and a larger proportion of the market price reaches 
 the pocket of the peasant farmer. Indeed, it is much more 
 common now than it used to be for the peasant to bring his own 
 produce to market, and sell it for cash at the market price, instead 
 
 
 
12 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 rapid rise of prices there, which attracted great quantities of grain 
 from the Punjab. During the summer of 1908, the scarcity in 
 the United Provinces continued, and as there was also widespread 
 drought in the Punjab, the surplus available for export was much 
 less than usual, and stocks had been depleted by the large export 
 of the previous winter. In the year ending March, 1909, the net 
 exports of grain and pulse from the Punjab area were only 12 
 million maunds, as compared with 50 million in the year before, 
 and the net exports of wheat fell off from 32 to 9 million maunds. 
 The available surplus still went mainly to the United Provinces, 
 in answer to the high prices there, and the exports of wheat from 
 Karachi, in the busy season, April to August, which had averaged 
 514,000 tons for the previous four years, fell off to only 44,000 
 tons. In 1909 the harvests in the United Provinces were good, 
 and high prices in Europe again attracted the Punjab surplus, 
 which was large owing to a favourable year, and during the seven 
 months, April to October last year, the exports of wheat from 
 Karachi amounted to 627,000 tons, most of which must have 
 come from the Punjab. There is also a considerable export of 
 Punjab wheat towards Calcutta and Bombay; and during the 
 present financial year the agriculturists of the Punjab must have 
 received something like £6,000,000 sterling for their surplus wheat 
 alone. 
 
 In framing an estimate of the probable exports of an average 
 year, we must obviously make some allowance for the fact that 
 1908 was an unusually poor year, and that such bad seasons are 
 not likely to recur often. If we take the average of the previous 
 three years, and allow one-fourth off the figures as representing 
 the area outside the Province proper, we find that the 29 British 
 districts actually exported annually 1^ million tons of grain and 
 pulse : in the last of those three years, after a fair harvest, they 
 actually exported IJ million tons. Cultivation and irrigation are 
 still extending faster than the growth of population, and the 
 surplus available for export continues to increase. It will be 
 remembered that, after a comparison of 'the estimates of produc- 
 tion and consumption, I calculated that at present, on the 
 average, about IJ million tons of food-grain are available for 
 export. After studying the figures for actual export, I would 
 adhere to this estimate : that is, we may expect for some years 
 to come that the average annual exports of grain and pulse from 
 the 29 British districts will be about IJ million tons (42 million 
 maunds), of the value of about £8,000,000 sterling; and that, of 
 wheat alone, the Punjab will provide an annual surplus for export 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 13 
 
 of about 1 inillioii tons, or over 4| million quarters. The 
 estimated consumption of wheat in the United Ivingdom for 
 the six years ending 1906 averaged 32 million quarters; 
 so that the Punjab's annual surplus of wheat, if it were 
 all brought to this country, would furnish one-seventh of 
 the population with all the wheat they require for a year's 
 consumption. 
 
 The great and rapid increase of trade which has taken place 
 in recent years is due mainly to the improvement in communica- 
 tions by railway, road, post office, and telegraph. During the last 
 23 years the railway mileage in the Punjab has risen from 
 2,000 to about 3,500 miles. Statistics for all the railways of 
 the Province are not available, but the following figures for the 
 most important of them, the North- Western Kail way, owned and 
 managed by the State, which works branches all over the Punjab, 
 as well as in the North-west Frontier Province and in Sind, afl'ord 
 some indication of the progress of railway communication. Since 
 1886 its capital expenditure has risen from .^15,000,000 to 
 £45,000,000 sterling, the gross receipts from £1,500,000 to nearly 
 £4,000,000 sterling, the number of ijassengers carried from 10 to 
 40 millions, and the goods conveyed from 2 to 9 million tons. 
 There has also been a great improvement in the roads almost 
 all over the Province. In the ten years ending 1906-7 the number 
 of post offices in the Punjab and North-west Frontier Province 
 had increased from 1,750 to 3,000 ; the number of miles over which 
 mails are conveyed from 14,000 to 20,000 ; the expenditure 
 from £75,000 to £160,000; the number of letters and post- 
 cards carried from 53 to 99 million ; the number of newspapers 
 carried from 4 to 6^ million ; the number of money orders issued 
 and paid from 2 J to 4 J million ; and their value from £3,750,000 
 sterling to nearly £5,250,000. This rapid improvement in the 
 means of communication has both cheapened transport enormously 
 and quickened trade, so that the effect of any important change 
 in prices is at once felt all over the Province and leads to a corre- 
 sponding movement of goods. It has altered the conditions of 
 trade in the most remote villages, giving them better prices for 
 the surplus produce they have to sell, and bringing them goods 
 from outside at cheaper prices than before. The greater competi- 
 tion among traders has also tended to reduce the profits of the 
 middleman, and a larger proportion of the market price reaches 
 the pocket of the peasant farmer. Indeed, it is much more 
 common now than it used to be for the peasant to bring his own 
 produce to market, and sell it for cash at the market price, instead 
 
 c 
 
14 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 of allowing the village shopkeeper to take it at a price fixed more 
 or less by himself, and to credit the value to the peasant's running 
 account in his books. 
 
 Prices. 
 
 The rupee is the universal unit of value in India, and, what- 
 ever be the variations in the value of the rupee, due to the rise 
 and fall of exchange or to manipulations of the currency, one of 
 the most important questions both to the cultivator who has surplus 
 produce to sell, and to the consumer who requires to buy it for his 
 daily food, is the rupee price of the principal food-grains. In 
 Appendix IV. will be found the annual average retail prices for 
 the last thirty-seven years of the four food-grains chiefly grown and 
 consumed in the Province. Wheat and gram are reaped in April 
 and bajra and jawar in October. Gram is a pulse which tastes 
 not unlike a pea. Bajra and jawar are millets, of which bajra, 
 though it has a smaller grain, is considered more tasty and 
 nutritious than jawar. On the average for the whole period, 
 taking the price of wheat as 100, the prices of the other grains have 
 been in the proportion of bajra 89, gram 81, and jawar 78. As 
 compared with the average of the eighteen years ending 1890, 
 the average prices for the last 19 years show a rise as follows : 
 wheat, 34 per cent. ; bajra, 35 per cent. ; gram, 40 per cent. ; and 
 jawar, 32 per cent. : so that, from this superficial comparison, it 
 may be said,' roughly, that in the last 20 years the rupee prices 
 of the principal food-grains have risen by about 35 per cent. But 
 a glance at the diagram, which presents pictorially the same 
 annual rupee prices, will show that the real state of things is too 
 complicated to be disposed of in this purely arithmetical fashion. 
 
 It will be seen that prices rise and fall very rapidly according 
 to the character of the seasons. Por instance, in 1894, after a 
 series of good years, the price of wheat went down to 1'67 rupees 
 per maund ; a succession of dry years followed, culminating in 
 
 1897, which was a year of famine over a large part of India, and 
 in that year w^heat sold in the Punjab at 3'85 rupees per maund, 
 a rise in price of 131 per cent, in three years. In the next year, 
 
 1898, the price of wheat suddenly fell again to 2 '46 rupees, but 
 in the dry year 1900 it rose again to 3*35 rupees. It then steadily 
 fell, till in the good year 1904 it was 2'26 rupees— cheaper than 
 it had been for nine years. Since then it has steadily risen, and 
 in the year 1908, which was characterised by a very widespread 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 15 
 
 drought in Northern India, it rushed up to the record price of 
 4" 19 rupees per maund, nearly double the price of four years 
 before. 
 
 It will also be noticed how the prices of the different food- 
 grains rise and fall together ; how closely they coincide in years of 
 scarcity, wdien purchasers think mainly of the sustaining power 
 of food, and are not particular about its toothsomeness ; and how 
 they fall apart in years of plenty, when more of the people can 
 afford to buy wheat, and the demand for the inferior grains falls 
 off. Thus in the famine year 1897, when wheat was selling at 
 3*85 rupees per maund, even jawar (the average price of which is 
 1"93) sold at 3"42 ; and again in the very dry year 1908, when 
 wheat sold at 4" 19, jawar sold at 3'52. On the other hand, in the 
 plentiful year 1904, when wheat was selling at 2 "26, jawar only 
 fetched 1'40, or less than two-thirds of the price of wheat. The 
 figures for the year just ended are not yet available, but to judge 
 from the prices for last September, which I have inserted in the 
 table and diagram, they are likely to show an unusual state of 
 things ; for while the price of wheat remained very high at 3*67 
 rupees per maund, the price of the other grains fell to about 2-^- 
 rupees, or little more than the average price of the last nine years. 
 The reason of this no doubt is that, as wheat is largely exported 
 to Europe, its price in the Punjab is to a great extent determined 
 by its price in the European markets ; while the other three grains 
 are almost entirely consumed in India, and their price depends 
 only on the supply and demand in India itself. 
 
 The Value of the Eupee. 
 
 The price of wheat in the Punjab has in recent years been 
 largely determined by its price for purposes of export, and that 
 price depends upon its price in the world's markets, of which 
 Loudon may be taken as typical. Now, the London purchaser of 
 Punjab wheat naturally reckons his profits in gold, and has to 
 calculate, not only what amount of gold he will get for his wheat 
 in London, and the cost of transporting it from the Punjab to 
 London, but the amount he will have to pay for it in the Punjab, 
 not in rupees, but in gold ; in other words, he has to take into 
 account the rate of exchange between the sovereign and the rupee. 
 In Appendix V. and in the corresponding diagram I have given, 
 for each year since 1873, the average price of silver in London 
 per standard ounce, and the average rate of exchange in pence per 
 
 c 2 
 
16 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 rupee. Previous to 1873 the ratio of value of gold to silver 
 throughout the world had for many years remained fairly station- 
 ary at about 15 J to 1, or, in other words, silver was worth about 
 60 "84 pence per ounce. As silver was freely coined into an equal 
 weight in rupees at the Indian mints the value of the rupee in 
 gold was almost exactly the same as the value of the silver in the 
 rupee ; and when silver sold at 60"84 pence per ounce, the value 
 of the silver in a rupee was almost exactly 24 pence ; so that in 
 those days the exchange value of the rupee remained practically 
 stationary at about 24 pence, or two shillings per rupee ; or, in 
 other words, ten rupees were equivalent in value to one sovereign. 
 Omitting the fraction, and taking 60 pence per ounce as equiva- 
 lent to 24 pence per rupee, I have for pictorial purposes shown 
 in the diagram the price of silver in multiples of 2J pence per 
 ounce. Owing to changes in the world's demand and supply of 
 silver in comparison with the demand and supply of gold, about 
 1870 the gold value of silver began to fall, and as the Indian 
 mints remained open to the unrestricted coinage of rupees until 
 1893, the gold value of the rupee fell in proportion to the fall in 
 the gold value of the silver contained in it ; and a glance at the 
 4iagram will show that the line representing variations in the 
 rate of exchange, that is, in the gold value of the rupee, is for 
 those years almost exactly parallel to the line representing changes 
 in the gold value of silver. The fall in the gold value of silver, 
 and therefore of the rupee, went on so rapidly that in 1892 the 
 rupee was worth in gold only 15 pence in place of the 24 pence 
 it was worth 20 years before ; in other words , it took 16 rupees to 
 buy a sovereign, instead of the old ratio of 10 rupees to the 
 sovereign. This fall in the gold value of the rupee, so far as it 
 was due to the appreciation of gold in relation to all other com- 
 modities, did not so very much matter to the inhabitants of the 
 Punjab, but so far as it was due to the depreciation of silver in 
 relation to all other commodities, and so caused a general rise in 
 silver prices, it acted very unfairly to many people, although it 
 was of advantage to others; for instance, all debtors who were 
 bound to pay a fixed number of rupees benefited, and their 
 creditors suffered, because the debt contracted in rupees worth 
 24 pence could now be paid in rupees worth only 15 pence ; and 
 again, it was hard on all who drew salaries or wages fixed in 
 rupees, as their rupees now purchased much less of general com- 
 modities than before. The fall in the gold value of the rupee 
 had a disastrous effect on the finances of India, which owes a large 
 debt in gold, and has to pay the interest in gold or its equivalent, 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 17 
 
 while its income is almost entirely in rupees. For these reasons 
 the Government of India in 1893 took the bold step of closing the 
 Indian mints to the unrestricted coinage of rupees, with the object 
 of reducing the supply of rupees so that the demand for them 
 should maintain the value of the rupee in gold at 16 pence, what- 
 ever might be the value of silver. The experiment was a risky 
 one , for there was a very large , but unknown , quantity of rupees 
 in hoards, which might be tempted into circulation and upset all 
 calculations ; but ultimately it was completely successful in attain- 
 ing its object. The gold value of silver went rapidly down still 
 further, till in 1895 it was only 30 pence per ounce, just half 
 the traditional rate which had prevailed up to 22 years before. 
 The gold value of the rupee also fell, but not in proportion to 
 the fall in the gold value of silver. It reached its lowest point 
 in the year 1895, and was then worth in gold only 13' 6 pence, 
 w^hile the silver in it was worth only 12 pence. Then the demand 
 for rupees began to overtake the supply, and the gold value of 
 the rupee steadily rose, until in 1898 it reached 16 pence, and 
 has since remained practically at that figure ; that is, 15 rupees 
 have for the last eleven years equalled a sovereign in value. The 
 rupee cannot rise appreciably above 16 pence, because since 1899 
 the sovereign is legal tender in India at the ratio of 15 rupees ; 
 so that, if people found they could buy sovereigns at anything 
 under, say, 14| rupees, it would pay them to purchase sovereigns 
 from anywhere in the world and to pay their debts in sovereigns 
 instead of in rupees. There is still a danger that in seasons in 
 which, owing to a decrease in the demand for currency, there is 
 a redundancy of rupees in circulation , the gold value of the rupee 
 might fall below 16 pence ; and eighteen months ago some anxiety 
 was caused by the enormous number of rupees which were 
 returned from circulation into the Government treasuries, owing 
 to the poorness of the harvests and the slackening of trade ; and 
 it became necessary, by the issue in India of sterling bills, to draw 
 largely on the gold standard reserve in London to keep up 
 exchange : but the measures taken were successful and the danger 
 was tided over. The fact remains that for the last eleven years 
 the gold value of the rupee has continued steady at 16 pence, and 
 there seems no reason to fear that it will ever depart appreciably 
 from that ratio. The closing of the mints, therefore, has resulted 
 in a steadying of the value of the rupee in relation to gold, and 
 has eliminated the very perplexing factor formerly due to the 
 great fluctuations of exchange; as, for all practical purposes, 
 buyers and sellers may now safely assume that a sovereign means 
 
18 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 neither less nor more than 15 rupees. One important result of 
 the closing of the mints is that the rupee is now, like the shilling, 
 a mere token coin, meaning not so much silver but so much gold. 
 Although at present the value of the silver in a rupee is v^^orth 
 only about 10 pence, the rupee coin is worth in gold 16 pence — 
 that is, one-fifteenth of a sovereign's weight of gold. For the 
 last eleven years rupee prices have been really gold prices. Before 
 1899, however, it was not so, and the London purchaser of wheat in 
 the Punjab had to make allowance for the fluctuations of 
 exchange, and calculate how many sovereigns he would have to 
 pay to buy wheat in the Punjab at the varying rate of exchange 
 of the day. I have therefore, in Appendix V. and Diagram II., 
 shown what was the gold price of wheat in the Punjab in each 
 year in shillings per quarter, by w^orking out for each year the 
 gold equivalent of the rupee price at the rate of exchange of the 
 day. 
 
 It will be noticed that the rise in the price of wheat in the 
 Punjab, when measured in gold, is not nearly so great as when 
 measured in silver. I have shown that when we compare the 
 average of the rupee prices of the eighteen years ending 1890 with 
 the average for the last nineteen years, wheat shows a rise of 
 34 percent. ; but, if we make the same comparison as regards gold 
 prices, we find that the average price of wheat in the Punjab is 
 for the former period 20 shillings a quarter, and for the latter 
 period 21"9 shillings a quarter, a rise of only 9J per cent. The 
 rise in the rupee price is of more practical importance to the 
 Punjab producer and consumer, but it is the cost in gold of wheat 
 in the Punjab that interests the London purchaser. 
 
 Another important item in his calculations is the cost of trans- 
 porting wheat from the Punjab to London. Amritsar, one of the 
 largest and most central grain markets in the Punjab, is 816 miles 
 from Karachi ; and the railway freight for grain from Amritsar 
 to Karachi is at present 10 J annas per maund— that is, 5'2 
 shillings a quarter. Within the last five years freights from 
 Karachi to the United Kingdom have fluctuated between 10 and 
 20 shillings per ton of 18 cwt., and the present quotation is 15 
 shillings for 18 cwt.— that is, 3"6 shillings per quarter ; so that the 
 total cost of transport of wheat from Amritsar to London is at 
 present about 9 shillings a quarter. Thus, allowing for insurance 
 and other charges, and for profit, one would expect that the 
 London purchaser, whenever he finds that wheat is selling in the 
 Punjab at more than, say, 12 shillings a quarter below what he 
 might get for it in London, would buy wheat in the Punjab for 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 19 
 
 export to Europe, until the price in the Punjab rose to within 
 that margin. As a matter of fact, in all the large grain markets 
 of the Punjab, there are agents of exporting firms who study the 
 world's prices of wheat, and buy whenever they think export will 
 be profitable ; and since 1898, when exchange became stable, 
 there has only once been a difference of more than 10 shillings a 
 quarter between Punjab prices and the London price of British 
 wheat. The difference has often been less than this, because the 
 Punjab prices I have given are retail prices, and although they 
 do not in India vary very much from wholesale prices, yet large 
 quantities of grain, such as are bought for export, can be pur- 
 chased at considerably below the retail price of the day ; because 
 Punjab wheat sells in the London market at better prices than 
 British-grown wheat (for instance, during the past year, when 
 the average London price of British wheat was 36'9 shillings per 
 quarter, the price in London of Punjab wheat varied between 
 37 and 45 shillings per quarter) ; because grain for export is 
 generally bought before or at harvest time, when its price is 
 lower than the average for the year ; and because bad harvests in 
 India raise the local prices until it does not pay to export. For 
 instance, in the famine year 1897 the average price of wheat in 
 the Punjab was 29'6 shillings a quarter, while in London it was 
 30 shillings a quarter; again, in the dry year 1900, it was 26"8 
 shillings a quarter in the Punjab and 26'9 in London ; and in 
 1908, a year of widespread drought in Northern India, it was 
 actually dearer in the Punjab than in London, the Punjab average 
 price being 33"5 shillings a quarter, and the London average price 
 32' 1. In such a year, the amount exported to Europe falls to a 
 minimum, and the grain is diverted to those parts of India which 
 are suffering from scarcity, as in that year it went by the train- 
 load to the famine-stricken districts of the United Provinces. 
 
 On the average of the eighteen years ending 1890, the differ- 
 ence between the gold prices of wheat in the Punjab and in 
 London was 22 shillings a quarter ; on the average of the last 
 nineteen years it has been only 7 shillings a quarter. In the earlier 
 period freights were much higher and trade less active, and the 
 price of wheat in the Punjab depended mainly on the demand in 
 India itself. But nowadays, except in years of scarcity in India, 
 the price of wheat in the Punjab depends mainly on its price in 
 the world's markets. It is proverbially dangerous to prophesy, 
 but if I may venture to make a guess at the future, it seems 
 probable that the course of prices will be somewhat as follows. 
 At present Punjab wheat is selling in the London market at 40 
 
20 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 shillings a quarter, and so long as it remains near that figure, 
 which it seems likely to do for some months to come, it will pay 
 to buy wheat in the Punjab at about 28 shillings a quarter, or 
 3 J rupees per maund, and export it to London. In December last 
 the wholesale price of wheat at the important market, of Lyallpur 
 was exactly this figure, 3^ rupees per maund. There is every 
 prospect of a bumper wheat crop in Northern India, but yet the 
 price of wheat in the Punjab is not likely, for some months to 
 come, to fall much below this export price. On the other hand, 
 we may expect a continuous fall in the prices of the inferior food- 
 grains, which are not exported in any quantity, and a good year 
 for both producers and the poorer classes of consumers in the 
 Punjab. Looking farther ahead, it seems probable that for some 
 years to come the world's demand for wheat will increase almost 
 as fast as the supply : the price of Punjab wheat in London is not 
 likely to fall much below 35 shillings a quarter; and therefore, 
 allowing for years of local scarcity, the average retail price of 
 wheat in the Punjab markets is not likely to fall much below 
 24 shillings a quarter^that is 3 rupees a maund, or 50 per cent, 
 above the average rupee price of twenty years ago. The com- 
 paratively high price of wheat will lead to an increase in its 
 cultivation at the cost of the inferior grains, and this increase will 
 also be encouraged by the completion of the new canals now under 
 construction ; and the Punjab will become, more than ever, a 
 wheat-growing province. The average area under wheat, which 
 already exceeds 8 million acres, is likely soon to be well over 
 10 million acres — that is, more than a third of the total area under 
 all crops ; and the amount of wheat available for export is likely 
 to go on steadily increasing, to the great advantage of the 
 producer. 
 
 Live-Stock. 
 
 A careful census of the live-stock of the 29 British districts 
 was taken last February, and the following statement gives the 
 results as compared with those returned for the same area twenty- 
 two years ago. 
 
 Livk-Stock in the Punjab (29 British Districts), in thousands. 
 
 
 In 1886-7. 
 
 In 1909. 
 
 Increase per cent 
 
 Horned cattle ... 
 
 10,711 
 
 14,317 
 
 34 
 
 Horses and ponies 
 
 232 
 
 358 
 
 54 
 
 Mules and donkeys 
 
 400 
 
 621 
 
 55 
 
 Sheej) and goats 
 
 5,739 
 
 8,675 
 
 51 
 
 Carts 
 
 192 
 
 288 
 
 50 
 
 rioughs at work 
 
 1,881 
 
 2,169 
 
 15 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 21 
 
 There has been a great increase in numbers under every head. 
 There has also been a marked improvement in the average quality. 
 Formerly it was common to find large herds of wretched cattle 
 roaming the prairie wastes, many of which died of starvation when 
 the rains failed. Now tlic spread of cultivation and irrigation 
 has provided much greater and more secure supplies of fodder, 
 a larger proportion of the cattle are stall-fed, and the mortality 
 from starvation in bad years has been greatly reduced. Especially 
 marked is the increase in the number of valuable buffalo-cows, 
 whose milk is rich in butter. Prices of stock, too, have gone up 
 at least 30 per cent., and the present value of the live-stock of 
 the Province must 'be more than £30,000,000 sterling, probably 
 double what it was a quarter of a century ago. There is a very 
 large income from the profits of live-stock in butter, young 
 animals, wool, skins, and hire of carriage. 
 
 Eights in the Land, 
 
 Of the whole population of the Punjab, 88| per cent, live in 
 villages and only 11 J per cent, in towns ; so that the interests of 
 the rural population are of much more importance than those of 
 the urban population. It may be pointed out that, unlike Western 
 countries, there is no marked tendency for the population to drift 
 from the villages into the towns, for the proportion of rural to 
 total population at the last three censuses has been 87*1, 88'4, 
 and again 88'4; the fact being that agriculture has been so pros- 
 perous that there is little temptation for the rural population to 
 forsake it for a town life. The townspeople have prospered 
 greatly, but I will deal chiefly with the changes which have 
 affected the more important agricultural classes. 
 
 When the British Government first assumed control of the 
 Punjab sixty years ago, they found that their predecessors, the 
 Sikh rulers, had imposed a crushing taxation on the land, which 
 absorbed almost all the profits of cultivation. Practically the 
 State was the universal landlord, exacting a full rent from the 
 cultivator, and exercising almost all the rights of an absolute 
 proprietor. The first thing the British revenue officers did was 
 to reduce the land revenue demand, so as to leave some margin 
 of profit to the cultivator ; the next was to define private rights 
 in the land, so as to secure every man in the possession of such 
 rights as he had. Over a great part of the Province the people 
 were found living in villages and cultivating the surrounding land, 
 
 D 
 
22 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 and the first step in the definition of rights was to define the 
 boundaries between the lands attached to the different villages, 
 map the township area, and declare that that area was reserved 
 for the village community. Inside the village community it was 
 generally found that there was a body of men, usually related to 
 each other, and often tracing their descent from tKe traditional 
 founder of the village , who were acknowledged to possess superior 
 rights to the land. These were declared by Government to be 
 the proprietors, subject always to the payment of land revenue, 
 of all the land within the township boundaries, whether cultivated 
 or waste. Under them were the tenants, usually few in number 
 and of an inferior class, who cultivated some of the land under 
 the proprietors, and paid them rent for it. The other members 
 of the village community were the shopkeepers, artisans, and 
 menial labourers, who in those days seldom possessed any rights 
 in land, except the customary right of grazing their cattle in the 
 village waste or collecting firewood and other jungle produce from 
 it. Every field was measured and mapped, and a record was 
 made of the possession and rights of each individual proprietor or 
 tenant. Any large block of waste land, over which no individual 
 or village community could establish a claim , was declared to be 
 at the absolute disposal of the State, and left to be utilised for 
 the time as a grazing ground by the pastoral tribes who roamed 
 over it with their cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. It is these 
 large areas of State-owned waste lands which have recently been 
 made culturable by the construction of great canals, and have 
 been so successfully colonised. I have recently given some account 
 of the colonisation operations, and need only repeat that during 
 the last twenty years about 2J- million acres of this waste land 
 have been rendered irrigable and brought under the plough, and 
 about a million people, or a twentieth of the whole population of 
 the province, have migrated from their old homes in the more 
 congested districts, and settled down in the new country in great 
 comfort and prosperity. 
 
 The map and record of rights of each of the 33,000 townships 
 in the Province are carefully revised every twenty or thirty years , 
 and are kept up to date from year to year by an army of 8,000 
 village accountants. There are altogether 40 million separate 
 fields and 9 million separate holdings, and anyone who wishes can 
 for a few pence obtain a map and particulars of any one of these 
 fields and holdings. For accuracy, cheapness, and up-to-dateness 
 of the record of rights in the land there are few countries in the 
 world which can compare with the Punjab. This system of land 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 23 
 
 record confers on the smallest peasant the benefits of security of 
 title, freedom from disputes, and cheapness of transfer, which add 
 greatly to the value of his land and to his peace of mind. 
 
 In Appendix Vll. I have quoted the figures showing how the 
 land was occupied in 1889 and in 1907. It will be seen that in 
 the latter year, of the 27 million acres of land under tillage, 13 
 million acres, or nearly half, were cultivated by the owners of 
 the land themselves, 2 J million acres were cultivated by tenants 
 with a right of occupancy — that is, tenants protected by law from 
 arbitrary eviction or enhancement of rent, and 11 J million acres 
 by tenants-at-will. This latter class of tenant, although the law 
 requires that he shall be given due notice of eviction and be paid 
 compensation for permanent improvements made by him on his 
 holding, is left to fix his rent by agreement with his landlord, 
 and these rents, which used to be determined largely by custom, 
 are now determined mainly by the law of supply and demand. On 
 the one side the great rise of prices and activity of trade in recent 
 years has been in favour of the landlord, and on the other the 
 rapid increase of cultivation and irrigation has led to a greater 
 demand for tenants, while the recent loss of population has 
 lessened the supply, and at present tenants are at a premium and 
 are not likely to agree to anything above a fair competition rent. 
 It will be noticed that of the whole area held by tenants-at-will, 
 8 million acres, or 69 per cent., pay rent in kind; that is, the 
 landlord takes as rent a fixed fraction of the actual crop of each 
 harvest. In 1889 the proportion of such land paying rent in kind 
 was only 62 per cent., so that this mode of taking rent, which has 
 the merit of making the landlord and tenant share in the pros- 
 perity or adversity of the year, is growing in favour. This form 
 of rent is more influenced by custom than are cash rents, but is 
 by no means unaffected by competition. The nominal fraction 
 of the produce which is the landlord's due may remain the same, 
 but the net share he actually receives as rent may be less or more , 
 according to the leniency or strictness with which he divides the 
 crop, or to the advances he makes to his tenant for seed or 
 manure, or to the extra fractions he exacts in the name of cesses 
 for this or that purpose, or to the share he makes the tenant pay 
 of the land revenue or water-rates. All these matters are carefully 
 inquired into when an assessment of the land revenue is paid, and 
 it is found that the actual share of the crop taken by the landlord 
 varies according to the fertility of the soil and the supply of 
 tenants, much in the same way as cash rents do. On about one- 
 third of the total area paying rent in kind throughout the Province 
 
 D 2 
 
J^ 
 
 24 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 the tenant pays the landlord as rent half the gross produce. On 
 inferior land or in sparsely populated country common rates paid 
 as rent are two-fifths, one-third, or one-fourth of the gross pro- 
 duce ; and I have known rents as low as one-fifth. On the whole, 
 notwithstanding the dearth of tenants, the share of the gross 
 produce taken by the landlord as rent shows a tendency to rise. 
 
 The area held by tenants-at-will paying cash rents not fixed 
 in terms of the land revenue has increased from 2^ million acres 
 in 1889 to 2| million acres in 1907, when it was 24 per cent, of 
 the whole area held by tenants-at-will. These cash rents have 
 risen very rapidly in recent years, owing partly to the rise of 
 prices and the extension of irrigation, but mainly, I think, owing 
 to the growth of the spirit of competition and the stronger position 
 of the land-owners, due to the excellence of the record of rights 
 and their better knowledge of the law. Tenancy legislation in 
 the Punjab has not been nearly so much in favour of the tenant 
 as in some other provinces of India, because there we have to 
 legislate not so much for a large body of helpless tenants under 
 rich and sometimes unscrupulous landlords, as for the peasant or 
 yeoman, who lets his surplus land to his neighbour and may at 
 any time want it back to cultivate himself. On the whole, the 
 relations between landlords and tenants are satisfactory, there 
 is comparatively little litigation between them, and the tenants 
 as a body are contented and prosperous, notwithstanding the rise 
 of rents. The average incidence of cash rents, which was 1"8 
 rupees per acre in 1880, rose to 2'4 rupees per acre in 1890, and 
 4*4 rupees (that is, nearly 6 shillings) per acre in 1900, and must 
 be higher now. Considerable areas of good irrigated land pay a 
 cash rent of as much as 10 shillings an acre, and good unirrigated 
 land as much as 4 shillings an acre ; but the rates, of course, vary 
 with the fertility of the soil, and there are large areas of poor 
 land paying as rent 1 shilling an acre or less. 
 
 On comparing the statistics for 1889 with those for 1907 it 
 will be seen that the number of holdings has increased from 
 6 million to over 9 million, and that while the number of holdings 
 cultivated by the owners themselves has increased from 2,720,000 
 to 3,499,000, owing no doubt to increase of population and sub- 
 division of holdings, the area cultivated by the owners themselves 
 has decreased from 14 J to less than 13 million acres, and the 
 average area cultivated in an owner's holding has decreased from 
 5*4 acres to 3" 7. The number of holdings of tenants-at-will has 
 increased from 2^ to 4^ million, and the area cultivated by them 
 from 7-^ to 11 J million acres, so that the average "area of a tenant's 
 
»^ 
 
 IN THE PUNJAB 25 
 
 liolding has decreased from 3*1 to 2"7 acres. Now, these figures 
 require some explanation, and must not be taken as they stand; 
 
 \ more especially, it must not be understood that the area cultivated 
 
 I per individual owner or per individual tenant is so small as this. 
 Many owners cultivate land belonging to themselves alone, other 
 land belonging to themselves and otliers jointly, and other land 
 belonging to the whole village community, and in such a case 
 their holdings would come into the reckoning more than once. 
 Again, many tenants cultivate land belonging to different owners, 
 and would be counted more than once in the total number of 
 holdings. So that the actual number of owners and of tenants 
 is much less than the number of holdings, and the true average 
 size of a holding per owner or per tenant is much larger than 
 the figures given above would indicate. The size of holdings 
 varies very greatly according to the fertility of the soil and the 
 means of irrigation. (For instance, in the Eohtak Tahsil, not 
 far from Dehli, now under reassessment, it is found that the 
 average area of holdings cultivated by owners is less than 4 
 acres in the fertile canal-irrigated tract, and more than 10 acres 
 in the sandy unirrigated tract not many miles away.) For the 
 whole Punjab I would guess roughly that the arithmetical 
 averages would be for the cultivated area, leaving out of account 
 the very large area of uncultivated land, something like the 
 following : Average area owned per owner, 15 acres ; average area 
 cultivated by owners, per owner, 7 acres ; average area cultivated 
 by tenants, per tenant, 5 acres. There are a certain number of 
 large estates, cultivated almost entirely by tenants, and the figures 
 for these swell the averages. On the other hand, there are a large 
 number of very small ownership holdings, of less than two acres. 
 The typical peasant proprietor of the Punjab however may be 
 taken to be the man owning from two to ten cultivated acres, 
 
 J which he works himself with his family and cattle, and with the 
 occasional help of his fellow- villagers. 
 
 According to the census returns of 1901, of the total popula- 
 tion of 20 millions, the number of owners of land (including the 
 canal colonists, who have a permanent right to their holdings, 
 and no landlord over them but the State) and of their families 
 is 6,788,000, or almost exactly one-third of the whole population ; 
 and the number of tenants and their families is 3,771,000, or 
 
 f more than a sixth of the whole population. Between them these 
 two classes make up more than half the total population. The 
 rent-receiving landlords who do not cultivate land themselves, 
 together with their families, are only 300,000 in number, and 
 
26 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 6 J million belong to families who both own and cultivate land. 
 It will thus be seen how preponderant in the Punjab are the 
 interests of the owners and tenants of agricultural land, and 
 especially of the peasant proprietors , who cultivate the land owned 
 by themselves. In my recent paper read to the Koyal Society of 
 Arts I estimated the number of persons owning agricultural land 
 at about 2 millions, but I think we must follow the census figures, 
 and allow at least four persons to a family ; so that the number 
 of heads of families, who are the actual owners of the land, is 
 j more likely to be about 1^ million. It would not be difficult to 
 collect fairly accurate figures showing what is the actual number 
 of persons who own rights in the land, and I trust a suggestion I 
 recently made that these statistics should be collected will soon 
 be carried out. On the same basis of four persons to a family, 
 the census figures would make the number of tenants having a 
 right of occupancy about 250,000, and as 2,368,000 acres are held 
 with a right of occupancy, the average holding of such a tenant 
 appears to be about nine acres. This seems large compared with 
 my estimate of seven acres as the average area cultivated by a 
 peasant proprietor ; but the large holdings of poor land held with 
 a right of occupancy in the south of the Province unduly swell 
 the average of this class of holdings. Similarly it would appear 
 that the actual number of heads of families, who do not own land 
 I or hold land with a right of occupancy , but are merely tenants-at- 
 ! will, is about 700,000. We cannot apply this figure to the total 
 area of llj million acres held by cultivators as tenants at the will 
 of the land-owner, because a very large number of persons who 
 own land of their own or possess holdings with a right of occu- 
 pancy also cultivate land belonging to other persons, and so far 
 as that land is concerned appear in these statistics of cultivating 
 occupancy as tenants-at-will, beside those tenants who own no 
 land of their own and are nothing but tenants-at-will. 
 
 A comparison of the statistics for cultivating occupancy for 
 1907 with those for 1889 brings out certain tendencies which have 
 been marked in the Punjab for a long series of years. The average 
 area cultivated by an owner himself has shown a tendency to 
 ' decrease, and so has the average area cultivated by a tenant, 
 while the total area cultivated by tenants-at-will has increased very 
 rapidly. To some extent this change was due to the process by 
 which comparatively wealthy village shopkeepers, traders, pro- 
 fessional men, and large land-owners were buying up the land 
 of the smaller or less thrifty peasants and letting it at full rents 
 to tenants-at-will— a process which has been stopped by the 
 
w 
 
 IN THE rUNJAB 27 
 
 passing of the Alienation of Land Act in 1901, so far as regards 
 the acquisition of land by tlie classes who had no hereditary 
 connection with agriculture. But this was not the only, or the 
 main reason of the tendency. One reason was the spread 
 of irrigation, as, acre for acre, irrigated cultivation is both 
 more productive and more laborious than unirrigated cul- 
 tivation ; and the land-owner to whose land irrigation was 
 extended, whether from a canal or from a well, found 
 I that his time would be fully occupied by the cultivation 
 I of a smaller portion of his holding than before, and that a 
 I smaller area would give him a larger produce than before, so 
 ' that he found it profitable to contract his own cultivation and 
 to let his surplus land to some other cultivator as his tenant-at- 
 will. On the other hand, the great rise in the prices of agricultural 
 produce, and the consequent increase in the profits of cultivation, 
 made those peasant proprietors wdio had not enough land of their 
 own to employ all their energies, those tenants whose holdings 
 were small, and those artisans and labourers who were ambitious, 
 as many of them are, to have fields to cultivate, very willing to 
 take the surplus lands of the land-owners as tenants paying a full 
 rent. Thus the large area brought under cultivation in recent 
 I years has chiefly been occupied by persons who hold it as tenants- 
 1 at-will, and the peasant proprietors, while retaining enough land 
 under their own cultivation to employ fully their own energies 
 and resources, also enjoy a greatly increased rent from their 
 surplus land. The result is that the profits of agriculture have 
 been spread more equally over a much larger number of culti- 
 vators, and the average prosperity of the whole body of agricul- 
 turists, proprietors, tenants, and labourers has been greatly 
 increased. At the same time the energies and growing capital of 
 individuals have been more fully employed, cultivation has become 
 more intensive, and the average amount of produce, per acre or 
 per individual cultivator, has steadily increased. 
 
 Another change of great importance to the efficiency of agri- 
 culture has been taking place with increasing rapidity in recent 
 years. I mean the partition of holdings. By almost universal 
 ^ custom among the agricultural castes of the Punjab, land is 
 I inherited by all the sons equally, so that, if a peasant dies leaving, 
 say, four sons, they succeed jointly to his holding in four equal 
 shares. What usually happens is that they continue for some 
 time to cultivate the land jointly and share its produce, as they 
 did in their father's life-time. Then disputes or jealousies may 
 arise, and the joint ownership is found irksome, and recourse is 
 
28 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 had to partition, the result of which is that each shareholder, 
 instead of having a share in a joint holding, has now certain fields 
 in his exclusive possession and ownership, and can do with them 
 what he likes, without interference by the other shareholders. 
 The partition proceedings are cheap and easy, and are carried out 
 as far as possible in the village itself and in the presence of all 
 parties interested. In the early years of our rule such partitions 
 were comparatively uncommon ; holdings were held joint for 
 generations, and large areas of land were held in joint ownership 
 by numerous shareholders in very complicated shares. In such 
 cases the strong or shrewd shareholder often managed to possess 
 himself of a larger share of the joint holding or of its produce than 
 he was entitled to, and the weaker shareholders, after acquiescing 
 for a time, felt compelled to apply for partition as the only means 
 by which thoy could obtain possession of their fair share. The 
 growing value of land and its produce also made them more 
 anxious to obtain separate possession of their portion, that they 
 might secure its profits to themselves ; and the growth of the 
 spirit of individual liberty , which has been greatly fostered by our 
 laws and policy, encouraged many to shake off the trammels of 
 custom and get rid of the burden imposed upon them by regard 
 for the rights and wishes of the other shareholders. This was 
 especially the case with the more enterprising and intelligent 
 among them. So long as the holding remained joint, such a man 
 had to carry on his cultivation in accordance with time-honoured 
 custom, and could not easily introduce changes not approved by 
 his fellows, or make improvements on the fields he cultivated 
 without running the risk that at some future partition those fields 
 might be allotted to some other shareholder. When he has 
 obtained by partition separate ownership of certain fields, he can 
 safely improve them, manure them, and sow them at the time 
 he pleases, or with the crop he pleases, secure in the knowledge 
 that he will retain for himself the whole profits of his industry, 
 intelligence, and expenditure of capital. Partition of holdings has 
 ji thus given a great impulse to agricultural improvement; and it is 
 satisfactory to find how general has been the demand for partition. 
 On the average of the four years ending 1907-8, the number of 
 such cases annually decided was 8,000, involving the partition of 
 600,000 acres of land, worth £'2,000,000 sterling. 
 
 Like the enclosure proceedings which formed such an im- 
 portant feature in the agricultural history of the eighteenth 
 century in England, these partitions, while highly advantageous 
 to the owners of the land, have not been carried out without 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 29 
 
 some hardship to the other members of the village communities. 
 When a large area of waste land was owned in common by the 
 whole proprietary body, it w'as usual for the shopkeepers, artisans, 
 and menial labourers resident in the village to graze their cattle 
 on it and to collect firewood from it, either free of charge or on 
 payment of a nominal sum to the proprietary body. When the 
 village common is partitioned and each owner is put in separate 
 possession of his own portion of it, he generally brings it under 
 cultivation, or puts a hedge or ditch round it, and retains all 
 the produce to himself. The grazing-ground of the other residents 
 of the village is thus curtailed, and their interests so far suffer. 
 It is usual for the official in charge of the proceedings to insist on 
 the retention of a portion of the common as a general grazing- 
 ground, so as to minimise this hardship to the non-proprietors; 
 but it is generally recognised that the interests of agriculture come 
 first, and that the acknowledged owners of the land have a prior 
 claim to possession of it ; and it must be remembered that in 
 most cases of the sort the land is not partitioned among a few 
 large land-owners, but among a considerable body of peasant 
 proprietors, and that the increase of cultivation, which generally 
 follows the partition of the common waste, adds to the total 
 produce of the township, gives more employment to all classes, 
 and increases the prosperity of the whole village community. 
 
 Another change which is taking place also reminds one of the 
 English enclosures, and may be expected to have a similar effect 
 in encouraging the improvement of agriculture. In the typical 
 Punjab township only the more valuable fields near the village 
 are surrounded by walls or hedges to protect the crops and keep 
 out the cattle. The whole of the rest of the area, sometimes 
 thousands of acres in extent, consists of open, unenclosed fields, 
 over which, after the crops have been cut, the cattle roam at 
 pleasure. The land is not uniform in character, and from time 
 immemorial, whenever a partition took place, each shareholder 
 endeavoured to obtain a bit of land of each different quality, so 
 as to be rendered more secure against the vicissitudes of season, 
 which affects the different blocks of land differently according to 
 their soil or position. The consequence is that the typical 
 peasant's holding consists not of a continuous plot of land all in 
 one place, but of a field here and a field there, scattered over 
 the whole area of the township, often a mile or more apart. This 
 leads to a great waste of time in going from one field to another, 
 and makes it difficult for the peasant to protect) his crops, or 
 cultivate them at different times or in different ways from those 
 
30 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPJMENTS 
 
 adopted by his neighbours ; and when an enterprising peasant 
 proprietor wishes to make a well, or embank his fields, or try 
 a new crop, or alter his method of cultivation, he finds this 
 scattered open-field system a great obstacle in his way. A move- 
 ment is therefore growing up for consolidation of holdings by 
 exchange of isolated fields, so that the individual peasant may 
 have as much as possible of his holding in one continuous block, 
 which he can enclose within a ring-fence and treat as he pleases. 
 So far this process has been entirely voluntary, but I am inclined 
 to think that the time will soon come when it will be recognised 
 as so necessary to the progress of agricultural improvement as to 
 justify and require the State to aid in it by compelling an exchange 
 of fields on fair terms, when the majority of the land-owners in a 
 village desire it on reasonable grounds. Kecently, in hundreds 
 of townships into which canal irrigation has been introduced , the 
 peasant proprietors have unanimously agreed to give up their old, 
 crooked field boundaries and accept new straight boundaries for 
 their holdings, so as to facilitate the application of the water 
 to the land ; and the advantages of such a change are so great 
 that the movement is likely to grow, and the more intelligent of 
 the peasants are likely to demand a similar exchange of fields and 
 straightening of boundaries. 
 
 The Land Eevenue and Canal Charges. 
 
 All land in India has from time immemorial been liable to 
 pay a share of its produce to the ruler for the time being. This 
 State's share we now call "land revenue." The share taken has 
 varied greatly from one period to another ; but when the Punjab 
 came under British rule, it must on the average have absorbed 
 at least one-third of the gross produce of the agricultural land of 
 the Province. It was usually taken in the form of an actual share 
 of the produce, or of the money value of the share at current 
 prices, and so varied according to the outturn of the harvests. 
 The first British officers reduced the demand, and fixed it in 
 rupees for a term of years. It was revised from time to time, 
 and still further reduced, and the term of years lengthened, until 
 the usual form of land revenue assessment came to be a sum, 
 fixed in rupees, for each township, much below the average 
 realisations of the Sikhs, and not liable to enhancement for a 
 term of twenty years, however much the cultivation and produce 
 of the township might increase in the interval. At the end of the 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 31 
 
 twenty years' term the circumstances of each township are care- 
 fully investigated, and the assessment due from it for the next 
 twenty years revised with regard to the existing circumstances 
 of the township and current prices. At first the general standard 
 of assessment was, roughly, one-sixth of the gross produce, or 
 about half the share taken by the Sikh Government ; but for the 
 last forty years the basis of assessment has been, not the gross 
 produce, but the net profits of cultivation, as shown by the rent 
 paid for the land by tenants, whether in cash or kind, or where 
 the land is cultivated by the owner himself, by its renting value ; 
 and the maximum limit of the assessment has been, and is now, 
 half this renting value. As a matter of fact, the actual assessment 
 has not in recent years kept pace with the rise of prices, and the 
 present average land revenue assessment of about 1 rupee, or 
 about 16 pence, per cultivated acre is much the same as it has been 
 for the last thirty years, although prices have gone up so much, 
 and although the average produce of the land per acre is greater, 
 owing to the extension of irrigation. In 1889 the average assess- 
 ment was just under 1 rupee per cultivated acre, and as for the 
 ten years ending 1890 the average price of the maund of 82 f lb. 
 of wheat was 2"09 rupees, it took 40 lb. of wheat to pay the land 
 revenue of an average acre ; on the average of the last nine years 
 the price of a maund of wheat was 2"89 rupees, so that it took only 
 29 lb. weight to pay the present average land revenue per acre ; and 
 the true incidence of the land revenue, measured in wheat, has 
 fallen at least in that proportion, 40 to 29, in the last twenty years. 
 As the average produce of wheat per sown acre is 13 bushels, or 
 780 lb., it now only takes 4 per cent, of the gross produce of an 
 average acre of wheat to pay the land revenue due on the land. 
 For all crops taken together I have estimated that the present 
 average value of the annual gross produce of the cultivated land 
 of the Province is about £32,000,000 sterling. To this has to be 
 added the produce from the live-stock, firewood, timber, and other 
 products of the uncultivated areas belonging to villages, which 
 must be worth several millions per annum. So that the present 
 land revenue assessment of the Punjab is well below one-sixteenth 
 of the annual value of the present gross produce of the land in 
 possession of private individuals, instead of the one-third taken by 
 the Sikh Government sixty years ago. So cautious are the 
 estimates of Settlement officers, and so reluctant is the Govern- 
 ment to make large and sudden enhancements of the assessment 
 levied on townships, that the present land revenue of the Province, 
 instead of approaching the theoretical maximum of one-half the 
 
32 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 net profits or renting value of the land, must be only about one- 
 fourth of that renting value. Besides the land revenue, the owner 
 of land has also to pay local rates, which within the last six years 
 have been reduced from about 22 per cent, to 13 J per cent, of the 
 land revenue demand : of this 5 per cent, goes to the village 
 headman and 8^ per cent, to the District Board — the County 
 Council of the district. On average land paying 16 pence per 
 acre, the local rates amount to about 2 pence per acre, making 
 the whole compulsory levy of land revenue and rates 18 pence per 
 acre. Subject to this charge, the peasant proprietor is, so far as 
 the State is concerned, practically absolute owner of his holding. 
 There is another important charge which has to be paid out 
 of the produce of the crops. The great canals, which have been 
 constructed at the expense of the State — that is, of the general 
 body of Indian taxpayers — cost over d£10,000,000 sterling, and 
 interest has to be paid on this borrowed money. Government has 
 also to spend large sums on clearance and maintenance, and to 
 keep up an enormous staff to watch over the working of the canals, 
 the fair distribution of the water to each of millions of fields, 
 and the assessment of the charges due for the water. These 
 charges are assessed on the area actually irrigated, at rates per 
 acre, fixed for each kind of crop and based on the estimated value 
 of the water to the cultivator ; but they are carefully kept well 
 below its true value, as is shown by the keen competition there is 
 for canal water, especially in dry seasons. The total amount 
 realised as the price of canal water in 1907-8 was £1,350,000, or 
 about 4 shillings per acre irrigated. This charge stands on quite 
 a different footing from the land revenue, which, once it has been 
 fixed for a term of years, is a compulsory charge, while each 
 cultivator is free to take the canal water or not as he pleases, 
 and only pays water-rates on the area he chooses to irrigate. Still, 
 the amount has to be paid out of the produce of the crops, and if 
 we add it to the land revenue and local rates, we find that the 
 State realises altogether from the crops about £'3,600,000 per 
 annum, or just about 10 per cent, of the average annual value 
 of the gross agricultural and pastoral produce. 
 
 Value of Land. 
 
 As the share of the net profits of cultivation left to the land- 
 owner, after deduction of canal charges, land revenue, and local 
 rates, has rapidly increased, owing to the rise of prices and the 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 33 
 
 progressive leniency in the pitch of the land revenue demand, the 
 selling price of his rights in the land has naturally risen with 
 equal rapidity. Everyone — peasant, largo landlord, shopkeeper, 
 trader, lawyer, and even artisan or labourer — who has managed 
 to accumulate any capital, has been keen to buy land ; and as the 
 prosperity of recent years has led to a great accumulation of 
 savings by all classes, the effective demand for land has been 
 great, and any land-owner willing to sell has been able to secure 
 a high and rising price for his rights of ownership. Among a 
 million and a half of land-owners, there are always a considerable 
 number who are driven by misfortune or improvidence to sell part 
 of their holdings, or tempted by high prices to dispose of their 
 surplus land instead of letting it, and although the Alienation of 
 Land Act has achieved its object of stopping the purchase of the 
 peasants' land by members of the non-agricultural classes, it leaves 
 the hereditary agriculturists free to buy and sell land among 
 themselves. On the average of the two years ending 1907-8 the 
 number of sales was 43,000 per annum, the cultivated area sold 
 128,000 acres, with an assessment of 120,000 rupees, or £8,000, 
 and the price paid 12,500,000 rupees, or £830,000; so that the 
 average price per cultivated acre was 98 rupees, or £6 10s., and 
 equalled 104 times the land revenue assessed upon the land. The 
 bulk of the transactions are between peasants, and for small areas, 
 as is shown by the fact that the average area sold in each transac- 
 tion w-as only three cultivated acres. Now that sales to the 
 shopkeeper are forbidden, the price returned is not to any serious 
 extent a fictitious one , but in most cases represents the actual cash 
 that has passed between the parties ; and seeing that the total area 
 transferred is so large, it may be taken as representing approxi- 
 mately the price which the average peasant could obtain for 
 average land, if he chose to sell it.-^ If we apply the average price 
 of £6 10s. to the 28 million cultivated acres in the Province, we 
 get £182,000,000 as the selling value of all the cultivated land. 
 I think therefore that, making all allowances, it is safe to say 
 that the million and a half of men who own the cultivated land 
 of the Province possess, in that land alone, a property which is at \ 
 present worth in the market more than £150,000,000 sterling, or \ 
 about £100 per ow^ner on the average. Twenty years ago the 
 average sale price per cultivated acre was only 38 rupees, or 
 forty-one times the land revenue assessment on the land sold : 
 the rupee was worth then, as now, about 16 pence, and the 
 
 ^ I notice that the present average vahie of occupied farm land in the Dominion ot 
 Canada is estimated at about £8 per acre, or not much above the Punjab price. 
 
34 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 cultivated area was only 23 million acres ; so that a similar 
 
 calculation gives the total value of the land at that time as less 
 
 I than £60,000,000 sterling. It appears, therefore, that in the last 
 
 /twenty years the market value of the land has about trebled, and 
 
 I that it is worth to its owners something like £100,000,000 sterling 
 
 more than it was a generation ago. These figures, discount them 
 
 as we may, show how enormous has been the recent increase in 
 
 the prosperity of the large and important land-owning class. 
 
 A further proof of this prosperity is the rapidity with which the 
 owners of land are redeeming their land from mortgage. In 
 1903-4 the cultivated area under mortgage was 3 ,869 ,000 acres ; 
 in 1907-8 it had been reduced to 3,584,000 acres; and the mort- 
 gages are being taken up, not so much as formerly by the shop- 
 keeping and professional classes, but by the hereditary land- 
 owning classes themselves. In those four years members of the 
 I agricultural tribes redeemed from mortgage 1,019,000 acres, and 
 ' although they mortgaged 844,000 acres, 783,000 acres of this area 
 were mortgaged to members of the agricultural tribes themselves ; 
 so that the area of peasants' land held on mortgage by non- 
 agriculturists is rapidly decreasing. Thus the general effect of the 
 Alienation of Land Act and of all those numerous sales and mort- 
 gages is that no longer is the land of the peasants passing into 
 the hands of traders and town-dwellers, but the more thrifty 
 among the peasants themselves are extending their holdings at 
 the cost of the less thrifty, and in this respect also the efficiency 
 of agriculture is being steadily improved, without any lowering 
 of the status of the agricultural classes as a whole. 
 
 Interest and Credit. 
 
 It is somewhat surprising that, with all the accumulation of 
 capital that has taken place in the last twenty years, and indeed 
 in the last fifty or sixty years, the rate of interest charged on 
 ordinary loans remains very high. For instance, the State itself 
 and the private railway companies, have spent in the Province 
 something like £30,000,000 on railways and £10,000,000 on 
 canals, almost all borrowed from outside, and there also has been 
 a very large amount of saving. Much of the accumulated capital, 
 however, has been sunk in improvement of the land both in 
 the shape of large public works and of numerous small private 
 works such as wells and embankments, and is accounted for by 
 the rise in the market value of the land. Much has been secured 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 35 
 
 by the labouring classes in the rise of wages, and much has been 
 utilised by all classes in improving their standard of living. They 
 have more and better food, clotlies, houses, agricultural imple- 
 ments, cattle, household utensils. Much has been put away by 
 the people in the form of hoards or ornaments of gold or silver. 
 After an inquiry into the prevalent rates of interest, I have come 
 to the conclusion that, on the average, the ordinary small peasant 
 has to pay something like 20 per cent, per annum for loans. The 
 actual rates charged vary very much — say, from 12 per cent, to 
 50 or more — but perhaps the commonest rates are 18 and 27 per 
 cent, per annum. Among the reasons for these high rates are that 
 the peasant's borrowings are mainly made in hard times, when 
 his need is urgent, and he is prepared to agree to almost any terms 
 in order to get money ; that he is generally ignorant and illiterate, 
 and often thriftless, so that he is at the mercy of his more astute 
 creditor, the village shopkeeper; that his chief security, besides 
 his land, with which he is now more unwilling than ever to part, 
 is his crops, which are still, even on irrigated lands, subject to 
 great vicissitudes of season ; and that the procedure of the Civil 
 Courts, though recently greatly improved, is still too complicated 
 for the petty disputes of peasants and shopkeepers, and although 
 it is not difficult for a creditor, at the cost of some money and 
 trouble , to get a decree , it is by no means easy for him to execute 
 it, so that the expense of litigation and the lender's fear of losing 
 part of his capital keep up the general rate of interest. 
 
 The Government have taken measures to improve this state 
 of matters. One-sixth of the land revenue and the whole of the 
 large sum levied as the price of the canal water are now assessed 
 on the crops actually harvested, and realised only when the cul- 
 tivator has produce in his hands from which to pay them. The 
 old policy of suspending the fixed land revenue demand in years 
 of bad harvest has been made much more liberal, and in the dry 
 year 1907-8 £330,000, or nearly one-fifth of the whole fixed 
 land revenue demand, was suspended, to be realised only when a 
 good harvest made it easy for the peasant to pay it. State money 
 is freely advanced to land-owners at 65 per cent, for land im- 
 provements, and in bad seasons free of interest for the purchase 
 of seed and fodder, and the loan is recovered by easy instalments 
 in years of good harvest. The amount at present out on loan in 
 this way is about £'200,000, and I think myself it might well be 
 increased to £1,000,000. Much is to be hoped for from the 
 recently started co-operative movement, which has been fostered 
 by Government by the passing of a special Act and by the 
 
36 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 appointment of a Kegistrar, who, assisted by a competent staff, 
 preaches the benefits of co-operation to the peasants, advises 
 them, and audits their accounts free of charge. The number 
 of co-operative societies is rapidly increasing. Last year there 
 were in the Province 316, with 23,000 members, and assets worth 
 ^960,000, of which the members themselves had subscribed 
 .£40,000. The societies charge their borrowing members about 
 9 per cent., and much success has already been attained in a 
 number of villages in freeing the poorer members from the crush- 
 ing burden of old debts at much higher rates of interest. Many 
 of the leading peasants, who manage these little banks themselves, 
 are keen and careful managers, and as the societies have recently 
 come successfully through a bad year, the movement is likely to 
 spread rapidly, and, by a reduction in the rate of interest and the 
 encouragement of a spirit of thrift and co-operation, to confer 
 immense benefits on the poorer classes of the peasantry. 
 
 The Laboueing Classes. 
 
 In the Punjab, where the land is almost entirely cultivated 
 by small peasant proprietors or tenants, who do most of the 
 field-w^ork themselves, and where large industries are only in 
 their infancy, the classes of landless labourer and artisan are of 
 little importance in comparison with the position they hold in 
 such a country as England. In 1901 the number of agricultural 
 labourers and their families was returned as less than 2 per cent, 
 of the total population, the other unskilled labourers as 3^ per 
 cent., the number of weavers as 6 per cent., and the number of 
 leather- workers as 3 per cent. — and 3 per cent, of the population 
 were returned as subsisting by mendicancy^a tribute to the 
 charity for which Indians of all classes are distinguished. It is 
 these poorer classes, however, who are most helpless and who 
 soonest succumb to bad times; and so long as they are well off, 
 there cannot be much doubt as to the general prosperity of the 
 country. It is desirable therefore to consider how they, and 
 especially how the unskilled labourers, have fared in recent years. 
 
 The figures for wages available for past years are the arith- 
 metical averages of the rates reported as prevalent in each of 
 the 29 districts of the Province, and although only approximate, 
 are sufficient to give a general idea of the rise of wages. I have 
 quoted them as they stand in Appendix VI. and in Diagram III., 
 from which it will be seen that the rates reported as the average 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 37 
 
 monthly wages in rupees of agricultural labourers for the Province 
 iiave on the whole risen fairly steadily during the last thirty- 
 seven years, and that there has been a very extraordinary rise 
 during the last four years, the average for which is practically 
 10 rupees a month against a little more than 5 rupees in the 
 early years of the series : that is, at present an ordinary agricul- 
 tural labourer can earn nearly twice as many rupees a month as 
 he could thirty-seven years ago. If we take the arithmetical 
 averages for different periods, we find that for the eighteen years 
 ending 1890 the wages of the agricultural labourer averaged 
 6*1 rupees, and for the last nineteen years 7'6 rupees, an increase 
 of 25 per cent, over the average for the previous period, but if we 
 take the average for the last four years, it is 9'9 rupees, an in- 
 crease of 62 per cent, over the average of twenty years ago. 
 
 I have given also the figures for the daily and monthly wages 
 paid for unskilled labour in the railway workshops at Lahore, the 
 capital of the Province. These figures are much more trustworthy 
 than the others, as they represent rates actually paid, but they 
 reflect the demand and supply of labour in one locality only, and 
 not for the whole Province. According to these figures, the 
 average monthly wages of unskilled labour at Lahore were for 
 the first period 5" 4 rupees, for the second period 6'8 rupees, and 
 for the last four years 8" 3 rupees — a rise of 26 per cent, for the 
 second period over the first, and of 54 per cent, in the last four 
 years, compared with thirty years ago. So that these figures for 
 Lahore corroborate to some extent those for the Province gener- 
 ally. Daily wages paid for unskilled labour at the Lahore work- 
 shops were 3 annas thirty-seven years ago, and 5^ annas last 
 year, and the averages for the different periods have been, for 
 the first eighteen years 3"2 annas, for the last nineteen years 4'2 
 annas, and 5 annas for the last four years. It is more usual, 
 even in the case of agricultural labour, to pay by the day than 
 by the month, and if we take the monthly wages reported for 
 the Province and spread them over twenty-seven working days 
 in the month, we get the following figures for daily wages as 
 the average for the Province : for the three years ending 1875, 
 3"1 annas; for the eighteen years ending 1890, 3'6 ; for the last 
 nineteen years, 4"5 annas; and for the last four years, 5"9 annas. 
 Broadly speaking, then, it may be said that the average wages of 
 an agricultural labourer in the Punjab, measured in annas, are 
 now nearly double what they were forty years ago, and at least 
 50 per cent, higher than they were twenty years ago. For the 
 last eleven years the gold value of the anna has been exactly 
 
38 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 1 penny, so that it may be said that at present, on the average, 
 an agricultural labourer in the Punjab can earn between 5 pence 
 and 6 pence a day. As a matter of fact, the demand for labour 
 varies very much from place to place and according to the seasons ; 
 but it is seldom that a labourer cannot earn at least 4 pence a day 
 by labour in the fields, or in the towns, or on canal, railway, and 
 other public works ; and at harvest time, especially in the irrigated 
 tracts, when very large areas of crops have to be rea^^ed in a short 
 time, his earnings often amount to more than 1 shilling a day. 
 
 The true measure of the labourer's prosperity is the margin 
 he has left over from his wages after providing for his necessary 
 wants, and we must therefore make allowance for the recent rise 
 in prices of food-grains. As compared with his daily food, his 
 other needs are of little importance. For clothing, the poorer 
 class of agricultural labourer is content with a few garments of 
 coarse cotton and a woollen blanket or two. For shelter, he is 
 happy in a house of sun-dried bricks, made with his own hands 
 and with the help of his neighbours. For fuel, he or his family 
 can always pick up enough sticks or dung to make a fire to bake his 
 scones, or heat his milk, or boil his vegetable broth. He rarely 
 tastes meat or spirits, and his chief luxuries are sugar and tobacco, 
 which are not taxed inside India and are therefore cheap. After 
 long experience on famine relief works, we have found that a 
 man doing a fair daily task of spade-work is kept in good con- 
 dition if he is given a daily wage sufficient to enable him to buy 
 2 J lb. weight of the cheapest grain; not that he eats so much 
 grain, but this covers also the cost of salt, firewood, and vegetables. 
 Few labourers actually consume more than 2 lb. of flour in a 
 day. In ordinary times this amount of millet or pulse can be 
 bought for 1 penny , and even in famine times it rarely costs more 
 than 1^ pence, so that the unencumbered labourer, who can earn 
 even 4 pence a day, can easily afford himself more than his daily 
 necessary food and save money. I take, however, the case of a 
 man who has to support out of his own earnings a wife and two 
 children. Such a family will not consume more than 2 maunds — 
 that is, 165 lbs. weight of grain in a month, so that the price 
 of 2 maunds of jawar, the cheapest grain, is enough to allow for 
 the monthly expenditure on necessary food for such a family. I 
 have accordingly shown in the statement and diagram the cost of 
 
 2 maunds of jaioar at the average price for each year, and the 
 difference between that and the average monthly wage I have 
 called "the margin of comfort," as it represents what the married 
 labourer has over, after providing enough food to keep his family 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 39 
 
 in good health, to spend on clothing, comforts, and petty luxuries, 
 or to save. It will be seen that the cost of 2 maunds of cheap 
 millet averaged 3"3 rupees for the first eighteen years of the 
 period taken, 4*4 rupees for the last nineteen years, and 5'2 rupees 
 for the last four years ; so that the margin of comfort of such a 
 family averaged 2" 8 rupees for the first eighteen years, 3'2 rupees 
 for the last nineteen years, and 4'7 rupees for the last four years. 
 Thus, notwithstanding the rise of prices, the average labourer is 
 much better off than he was formerly, and has now nearly twice 
 as much to spend on comforts and luxuries as he could reckon 
 on twenty years ago. The diagram shows, however, that in years 
 of scarcity, when grain is dear, this margin of comfort for the 
 married labourer is dangerously reduced. In 1896, and again in 
 1900, it took nearly all his wages to provide his family with 
 necessary food. In 1908, though prices were very high, the 
 phenomenal rise in the rate of wages left the margin of comfort 
 not much below the average. This is the condition of the married 
 labourer who obtains constant employment at the average rate of 
 wages. But, of course, there are often times when he finds it 
 difficult to do so, and must be content to accept lower w^ages 
 temporarily, or go in search of work, or do without it for a time. 
 This is especially the case in seasons of widespread drought, when 
 the soil is too dry and hard to be worked, and agricultural opera- 
 tions are at a standstill over many square miles of country. 
 Formerly such conditions gave rise to famine, and it required all 
 the resources of the State to keep the people alive. In the Punjab, 
 thanks to the great recent development of cultivation and irriga- 
 tion, to the accumulation of capital, and to the constant demand 
 for large bodies of unskilled labourers on the canal and railway 
 works, there is now little fear, except in small isolated tracts of 
 country, of the development of famine conditions to such an 
 extent as to necessitate the opening of large relief works. When 
 the prices of the inferior grains fall , as they are already showing a 
 tendency to do, and the population recovers its normal health, 
 wages will probably fall a little, but they are not in the near 
 future likely to be again much below their present level, because 
 the conditions which have chiefly caused the rise are more or less 
 permanent. Cultivation and irrigation are likely to continue to 
 expand, the demand for labour on canals, railways, and other 
 public works is likely to continue ; all classes have recently added 
 greatly to their accumulations of capital, and the total produce of 
 the Province is still increasing rapidly, while the population has 
 decreased, and the number of hands to work and of mouths to 
 
{ 
 
 40 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 eat is less than before. The advance in prosperity which has been 
 secured by the labouring classes in recent years is likely to be 
 permanent, and I do not think we shall soon see the average 
 rate of wages for unskilled labour fall below 5 pence a day, or 
 9 rupees a month. 
 
 The Punjabi peasant has always been ready to take service in 
 the Army or the Military Police and to wander in search of 
 fortune, and he may be found in numbers in Burma, China, or 
 even in far-distant Australia or California ; and the recent changes 
 in the economic conditions of the Punjab have made the labourer 
 much more inclined to move in search of better wages. The 
 great colonisation schemes, which have been so successful, and 
 which have tempted more .than a million persons to migrate 
 from their old homes within the last twenty years, have led to 
 a loosening of old ties ; and the demand for labour on newly 
 irrigated land and on the large public works have also encouraged 
 the labourers to migrate for the better wages they could earn 
 elsewhere. In the old villages it is now a common complaint 
 among the yeomen and peasants that their hereditary dependents, 
 the village menials, who used to help them in the fields, rcjoair 
 their implements, and do odd jobs for a customary wage, usually 
 paid in kind, have left them for better-paid work on cash wages 
 elsewhere ; so that they have either to do the menial labour them- 
 selves or to pay high wages in cash to get it done. There is no 
 doubt that there has in this way been a great unsettling of the 
 quiet old village life, custom giving way before competition, and 
 cash payment taking the place of payments in kind. But the 
 change has led to a great advance in the independence and pros- 
 perity of the menial classes, and the greater cost of labour to 
 the yeomen and peasants is more than made up to them by the 
 greater value of their crops, due to the rise of prices. 
 
 There has been a similar rise in the wages of the skilled artisan 
 classes, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and masons, due to 
 similar reasons. According to the reports from the different 
 districts, the averages for these classes have been as follows per 
 month: for the three years ending 1875, 12"7 rupees; for the 
 eighteen years ending 1890, 14'6 rupees; for the last nineteen 
 years, 20"4; and for the last four years, 27'4 rupees — so that an 
 artisan of these classes can now earn nearly double the wages he 
 could earn twenty years ago. The demand for better houses, 
 better implements and utensils, and the growth of public works 
 of all kinds, have provided much regular employment for this 
 class of skilled workman, and their prosperity seems assured. 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 41 
 
 The great and sudden rise of prices and wages has not been 
 without its hardships, especially to those classes whose income 
 is a fixed number of rupees, as they now find it difficult to make 
 both ends meet and to maintain their previous standard of com- 
 fort. But there is a tendency, in discussing the effects of this 
 rise, to dwell upon the interests of the consumer, and to forget 
 those of the producer. Practically all the officials, thinkers, 
 speakers, and writers, who deal with the question are, so far as 
 regards material wealth, more consumers than producers, and 
 they naturally think first of the interests of their own class. But 
 the great mass of the population of the Punjab, land-owners, 
 tenants, and labourers, are producers as well as consumers, and 
 there can be no doubt that for them the net result of the recent 
 rise in prices and wages has been a great increase in wealth. There 
 is another tendency to be avoided. In dealing with questions 
 affecting the land we have, naturally and properly, concentrated 
 our attention on the unfortunate members of the land-owning 
 community, those who have lost their land or become involved in 
 serious debt, and have been busied in devising means for their 
 protection. But let us not forget that they are a small minority 
 of the whole body, and that the great mass of the peasant land- 
 owners are well off and free of debt, many of them possessing, 
 besides their land, property of considerable value in houses, cattle, 
 utensils, clothes, and ornaments. The land-owning and tenant 
 classes of the Province are able, after meeting their own needs 
 and those of the rest of the population , to export annually agricul- 
 tural and pastoral produce to the value of £12,000,000 sterling, 
 or about one-third of the gross produce of the land. Only about 
 one-eighth of the land is under mortgage ; and the total indebted- 
 ness of the agricultural to the non-agricultural classes cannot much 
 exceed £15,000,000 sterling, or about one-tenth of the selling 
 value of their land. There are few countries in the world which 
 can show a better state of things than this. 
 
 Manufactures. 
 
 At first sight it seems strange that it should be found profitable 
 to send such articles as raw cotton 800 miles by rail and 6,000 
 miles by sea to Europe, and to bring back from England manu- 
 factured piece-goods in great quantity, more especially when 
 labour is comparatively so much cheaper in the Punjab than in 
 England. Among the reasons why manufactures have not yet 
 
42 RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS 
 
 been started on a large scale in the Punjab are the dearness of 
 fuel, the cost of importing machinery, the absence of skilled 
 labour, and, still more, of skilled superintendence, and the diffi- 
 culty of starting factories on a scale large enough to enable them 
 to turn out great quantities of cheap goods. But the chief reason 
 seems to be that hitherto agriculture, the hereditary occupation 
 of the mass of the people, has been so profitable that the available 
 capital and labour have been content to employ themselves in 
 increasing the produce of the land, and to purchase manufactured 
 goods from outside the Province, whether from Europe or from 
 other parts of India, in exchange for their surplus agricultural 
 produce. There are signs of a coming change in this respect. 
 During the last few years there has been a steady increase in 
 the number of factories ; but in 1908 there were still only 264 
 at work, most of them quite small, employing altogether only 
 26,000 hands. Of these no fewer than 182 are engaged in ginning 
 cotton, mainly for export, and there are only eight cotton-spinning 
 and weaving mills, seventeen flour mills, five rice mills, nine iron 
 and brass works, and ten steam printing presses. Although these 
 factories offer wages generally a little higher than those paid for 
 agricultural labour, they have difficulty in securing enough hands 
 at busy times. It is desirable to encourage manufactures in order 
 to provide more steady work for the labouring classes and a 
 profitable investment for the rapidly accumulating capital, and 
 to save the cost of transporting raw produce and bringing back 
 manufactured goods over such great distances. The Government 
 have been making endeavours to find local supplies of coal and 
 to develop electrical power from the Punjab rivers ; and the 
 exhibition recently held at Lahore may stimulate interest in 
 industrial development ; but for many years to come agriculture 
 will remain the most important and the most profitable industry 
 of the Province, and the greatest benefit can be conferred on the , ^»- ^j 
 greatest number of the population by encouraging the improve- '^''^ 
 ment of agriculture, and thus increasing the produce of the land. 
 
 Agricultural Improvement. 
 
 Much has been done in this direction by the Government, and 
 much more is being done. In continuation of the very successful 
 irrigation policy of the past, a series of three great canals is now 
 under construction, which will bring water from the Jhelam river 
 into the Chenab, and from the Chenab river across the Pvavi, to 
 
IN THE PUNJAB 43 
 
 irrigate large areas of land at present lying waste between the 
 Kavi and the Satlaj. This scheme will cost some £0,000,000 
 sterling and add 2 million acres to the irrigated area of the 
 Province. It will be followed by a large canal from the Satlaj 
 river, below its junction with the Bias, which will irrigate land 
 on the borders of the Eajputana desert. And some day a still 
 more stupendous work will be undertaken to draw water from 
 the mighty Indus itself and irrigate the desert to the east of that 
 river. Land-owners are encouraged to invest capital in the 
 improvement of their land by the grant of an exemption of the 
 improvement from assessment to land revenue for a period long 
 enough to enable the land-owner to recoup himself double his 
 capital expenditure from the additional profit derived from the 
 improvement. An excellent Veterinary College at Lahore turns 
 out annually a large number of well-trained veterinary assistants, 
 who are employed by the District Boards to give advice and 
 medicine free of charge to the peasants, and who are rapidly 
 gaining the confidence of the people and doing useful work, 
 especially in preventing the spread of epidemics among cattle. 
 Within the last few years an elaborate scheme of agricultural 
 education has been adopted, and last year a well-equipped 
 Agricultural College was opened in the centre of the largest canal 
 colony. The staff consists of a professor of agriculture, an 
 agricultural chemist, and an economic botanist, recruited from 
 this country, wdth assistants trained in India. A beginning was 
 made last September with a class of sixteen students, and as 
 there were nearly six hundred applications for admission, it is 
 evident that there will be no lack of demand for agricultural in- 
 struction. Attached to the College is a farm for experiment, 
 observation, and demonstration, and already there is good promise 
 of the production of improved varieties of wheat, cotton, and other 
 important staples. One of the great needs of the Province is a 
 rust-resisting variety of wheat, and in obtaining this we hope to 
 benefit from the study of wheats, which has been so successfully 
 carried on at Cambridge and elsewhere. Other agricultural 
 stations w^ill be started in other typical tracts of the Punjab, and it 
 is hoped that the expert staff, who are in touch, on the one hand, 
 with scientific developments in Europe and America, and on 
 the other wdth the practical needs and traditional experience of 
 the Punjab peasant, will soon be able to demonstrate improved 
 methods of cultivation wdthin the reach of the small farmer, which 
 will lead to a large increase in the produce of his fields and give 
 him a better return for his labour. The recent rise of wages has 
 
44 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE PUNJAB 
 
 led to a demand for better agricultural implements, and reaping 
 machines, winnowers, bullock hoes, chaff-cutting machines, and 
 improved ploughs are becoming popular. Insects and fungus 
 diseases do an immense amount of harm to the crops in India, 
 and the labours of the skilled entomologist and biologist at the 
 Imperial Agricultural College at Pusa promise to result in great 
 benefit to the agriculturists all over the country. It may take 
 some time before the knowledge acquired by these scientific 
 experts filters down to the millions of conservative and illiterate 
 peasants, and before the improved methods suggested by them 
 are generally adopted ; but there is good reason to hope that in 
 India, as elsewhere, the application of science to agriculture will 
 ultimately result in a much larger outturn of produce. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 On a survey of the economic history of the Punjab during the 
 last quarter of a century, I think it may fairly be claimed that, 
 owing to the improvements made in communications, especially 
 by road and railway, to the construction of the great canals, to 
 the leniency of the State's demands in the form of land revenue, 
 water-rates and general taxation, to the security given by the 
 laws, and, last, but not least, to the industry and thrift of the 
 people, there has been a marvellous increase in the material 
 wealth of the Province, and that this increase has been equally 
 spread over practically all classes, the largest share in it having 
 been secured by the most important class of all, the great body 
 of small land-owners. There seems every reason to hope that 
 this jjrogress will continue, and that, as time goes on, the Punjab 
 will become more and more a rich granary of the Empire, the 
 home of a prosperous and contented peasantry. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 Cultivated, Irrigated, and Cropped Area of the 29 British 
 Districts of the Punjab (Millions of Acres). 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 
 
 Average of 
 
 Year ending 31st May. 
 
 1906-7. 
 
 1907-8. 
 
 1908-9. 
 
 the 
 three years. 
 
 Area sown... 
 
 29-9 
 
 24-5 
 
 29-3 
 
 27-9 
 
 Area irrigated — total 
 
 10-8 
 
 10-8 
 
 10-4 
 
 10-7 
 
 ,, — by wells 
 
 3-1 
 
 4 
 
 3-1 
 
 3-4 
 
 ,, — by canals 
 
 7-4 
 
 6-3 
 
 6-9 
 
 6-9 
 
 Number of wells in use (thousands) ... 
 
 279 
 
 294 
 
 285 
 
 286 
 
 Crops that failed to mature 
 
 4-0 
 
 8-1 
 
 5-1 
 
 57 
 
 Crops that matured 
 
 25-9 
 
 16-4 
 
 24-2 
 
 22-2 
 
 Principal crops — sown area — 
 
 
 
 
 
 Wheat 
 
 9-6 
 
 7-4 
 
 8-4 
 
 8-5 
 
 Gram 
 
 4-5 
 
 1-8 
 
 4-2 
 
 3-5 
 
 Bajra . 
 
 2-5 
 
 2-6 
 
 3-2 
 
 2-8 
 
 Jawar 
 
 1-6 
 
 1-4 
 
 1-6 
 
 1-5 
 
 Barley 
 
 1-3 
 
 1-4 
 
 1-2 
 
 1-3 
 
 Maize 
 
 1-2 
 
 1-2 
 
 1-2 
 
 1-2 
 
 Pulses 
 
 1-7 
 
 1-6 
 
 1-7 
 
 1-7 
 
 Oilseeds 
 
 1-6 
 
 1-0 
 
 1-4 
 
 1-3 
 
 Cotton 
 
 1-3 
 
 1'3 
 
 1-4 
 
 1-3 
 
 Sugar-cane 
 
 0-3 
 
 0-4 
 
 0-4 
 
 0-4 
 
 Fodder crops 
 
 2-5 
 
 2-9 
 
 27 
 
 2-8 
 
 47 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 Estimated Outturn and Value of the Crops in the 29 British 
 Districts in the Agricultural Year 1908-9 (Ending 
 31st May). 
 
 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Average harvest prices in 
 
 Gross value at Punjab 
 
 
 Area i 
 
 weight of 
 
 rupees in 190S-9. 
 
 prices of the year. 
 
 
 sown in < 
 millions 
 of 
 
 produce 
 
 in 
 thousands 
 
 
 
 
 
 Crop. 
 
 
 
 
 In thousands 
 
 
 acres. 
 
 of 
 tons. 
 
 Per niaund. 
 
 Per ton. 
 
 In thousands 
 of rupees. 
 
 of pounds 
 sterling. 
 
 Rice (unliusked) 
 
 0-7 
 
 347 
 
 2-7 
 
 74 
 
 25,678 
 
 1,712 
 
 Wheat 
 
 8-4 
 
 2,895 - 
 
 3-6 
 
 98 
 
 283,710 
 
 18,914 
 
 Barley 
 
 1-2 
 
 379 
 
 2-4 
 
 66 
 
 25,014 
 
 1,668 
 
 Jawar 
 
 1-6 
 
 311 
 
 2-6 
 
 71 
 
 22,081 
 
 1,472 
 
 Bajra 
 
 3-2 
 
 646 
 
 3-1 
 
 85 
 
 54,910 
 
 3,661 
 
 Maize 
 
 1-2 
 
 394 
 
 2-9 
 
 79 
 
 31,126 
 
 2,075 
 
 Gram 
 
 4-2 
 
 1,157 
 
 2-7 
 
 74 
 
 85,618 
 
 5,708 
 
 Spring oilseeds 
 
 1-3 
 
 189 
 
 4-3 
 
 117 
 
 22,113 
 
 1,474 
 
 Sugar-cane ... 
 
 0-4 
 
 278 
 
 4-6 
 
 126 
 
 35,028 
 
 2,335 
 
 Cotton 
 
 1-4 
 
 298 
 
 5-6 
 
 153 
 
 45,594 
 
 3,040 
 
 Other food crops 
 
 2-6 
 
 370 
 
 3-0 
 
 82 
 
 30,340 
 
 2,023 
 
 Fodder and otli 
 
 er 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 non-food crops 
 
 3-1 
 
 Omitted. 
 
 Omitted 
 
 Omitted. 
 
 31,000 
 
 2,066 
 
 Total .. 
 
 ... 29-3 
 
 7,264 
 
 
 — 
 
 692,212 
 
 46,148 
 
 Food 
 
 
 6,777 
 
 i 
 
 — 
 
 
 
 
 
 Non - food besic 
 
 as 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 fodder 
 
 1 . . — 
 
 487 
 
 " 
 
 " 
 
 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 Trade of the Punjab, Including the Native States and the 
 North-west Frontier Province. 
 
 A. — Total Imports and Exports. 
 
 
 Total Imports. 
 
 Total Exports 
 
 • 
 
 Year ending 
 
 Goods. 
 
 
 Goods. 
 
 
 
 
 Treasure- 
 value in 
 
 
 Treasure- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 value in 
 
 
 Weisht in 
 
 Valnc in 
 
 millions of 
 
 Weight in 
 
 Value in 
 
 millions of 
 
 
 millions of 
 
 millions of 
 
 rupees. 
 
 millii>ns of 
 
 millions of 
 
 rupi-es. 
 
 
 maunds. 
 
 rupees. 
 
 
 maunds. 
 
 rupees 
 
 
 Average of tliiee 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 years ending 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1889 
 
 10-3 
 
 92 
 
 Not known 
 
 13-8 
 
 72 
 
 Not known 
 
 1901-2 
 
 20-3 
 
 155 
 
 31 
 
 38-4 
 
 155 
 
 7 
 
 1902-3 
 
 25-3 
 
 156 
 
 22 
 
 2ti-3 
 
 119 
 
 12 
 
 1903-4 
 
 21-9 
 
 151 
 
 30 
 
 36-1 
 
 147 
 
 11 
 
 1904-5 
 
 •24-4 
 
 175 
 
 55 
 
 52-6 
 
 187 
 
 11 
 
 1905-6 
 
 34-2 
 
 221 
 
 39 
 
 43-2 
 
 184 
 
 18 
 
 1906-7 
 
 28-7 
 
 224 
 
 34 
 
 54-8 
 
 219 
 
 14 
 
 1907-8 
 
 40-3 
 
 259 
 
 55 
 
 62-9 
 
 286 
 
 6 
 
 1908-9 
 
 42-2 
 
 242 
 
 21 
 
 24-4 
 
 153 
 
 15 
 
 Average of four 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 years en'Hnt; 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1904-5 ... 
 
 23-0 
 
 159 
 
 34 
 
 38 4 
 
 152 
 
 10 
 
 Average of fonr 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 years ending 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1908-9 ... 
 
 36-4 
 
 236 
 
 37 
 
 46-3 
 
 1 
 
 210 
 
 13 
 
 B. — Value of Princijml Imports into the Punjab and North-west 
 Frontier Province {hu7idreds of thousands of rupees). 
 
 1 
 
 Year ending 31st March. 
 
 Cotton 
 piece 
 goods. 
 
 -uigar. 
 
 Metals. 
 
 Railway 
 
 jslant and 
 rolling 
 stock. 
 
 Grain 
 
 and 
 
 jiulse. 
 
 Oils and 
 oilseeds. 
 
 Coal 
 
 and 
 
 coke. 
 
 J ate 
 goods. 
 
 1901-2 
 
 423 
 
 239 
 
 136 
 
 39 
 
 46 
 
 62 
 
 47 
 
 67 
 
 1902-3 
 
 
 391 
 
 185 
 
 156 
 
 49 
 
 56 
 
 57 
 
 54 
 
 47 
 
 1903-4 
 
 
 397 
 
 201 
 
 159 
 
 73 
 
 43 
 
 47 
 
 43 
 
 27 
 
 1904-5 
 
 
 517 
 
 214 
 
 149 
 
 113 
 
 37 
 
 46 
 
 58 
 
 86 
 
 1905-6 
 
 
 595 
 
 354 
 
 140 
 
 149 
 
 67 
 
 86 
 
 63 
 
 70 
 
 1906-7 
 
 
 640 
 
 279 
 
 240 
 
 84 
 
 46 
 
 127 
 
 47 
 
 88 
 
 1907-8 
 
 
 719 
 
 294 
 
 242 
 
 175 
 
 100 
 
 173 
 
 91 
 
 126 
 
 1908-9 
 
 
 656 
 
 281 
 
 219 
 
 120 
 
 131 
 
 161 
 
 89 
 
 55 
 
 Average of four years 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ending 1904-5 ... 
 
 432 
 
 210 
 
 150 
 
 68 
 
 46 
 
 53 
 
 50 
 
 57 
 
 Average of four years 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ending 1908-9 ... 
 
 652 
 
 302 
 
 210 
 
 132 
 
 86 
 
 137 
 
 72 
 
 85 
 
 49 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 C. — Value of Principal Exports {hundreds of thousands of 
 
 rupees). 
 
 
 Grain and pulse. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Raw 
 
 cotton. 
 
 Oilseeds. 
 
 Hides 
 and 
 
 
 Year ending 31st March. 
 
 
 Wheat 
 
 Wool. 
 
 
 Total. 
 
 and wheat 
 flour. 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 1901-2 
 
 639 
 
 418 
 
 127 
 
 332 
 
 53 
 
 44 
 
 1902-3 
 
 442 
 
 334 
 
 193 
 
 38 
 
 45 
 
 81 
 
 1903-4 
 
 648 
 
 556 
 
 256 
 
 43 
 
 63 
 
 60 
 
 1904-5 
 
 936 
 
 753 
 
 275 
 
 118 
 
 75 
 
 67 
 
 1905-6 
 
 917 
 
 596 
 
 224 
 
 119 
 
 136 
 
 50 
 
 1906-7 
 
 1200 
 
 746 
 
 221 
 
 156 
 
 135 
 
 53 
 
 1907-8 
 
 1881 
 
 1136 
 
 269 
 
 158 
 
 77 
 
 41 
 
 1908-9 
 
 651 
 
 367 
 
 194 
 
 116 
 
 88 
 
 44 
 
 Average of four years ending 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1904-5 
 
 666 
 
 515 
 
 213 
 
 133 
 
 59 
 
 63 
 
 Average of four years ending 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1908-9 
 
 1162 
 
 711 
 
 227 
 
 137 
 
 109 
 
 47 
 
 D. — Weight of Grain and Pulse {hundreds of thousands of 
 
 mamids) . 
 
 
 Total grain and 
 
 pulse. 
 
 Wheat and wlieat flour. 
 
 Year ending 31st March. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Exports. 
 
 Net exports. 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Exports. 
 
 Net exports. 
 
 1901-2 
 
 14 
 
 250 
 
 236 
 
 3 
 
 172 
 
 169 
 
 1902-3 
 
 19 
 
 186 
 
 167 
 
 4 
 
 147 
 
 143 
 
 1903-4 
 
 14 
 
 279 
 
 265 
 
 4 
 
 242 
 
 238 
 
 1904-5 
 
 12 
 
 423 
 
 411 
 
 5 
 
 328 
 
 323 
 
 1905-6 
 
 19 
 
 332 
 
 313 
 
 5 
 
 217 
 
 212 
 
 1906-7 
 
 13 
 
 446 
 
 433 
 
 6 
 
 290 
 
 284 
 
 1907-8 
 
 20 
 
 524 
 
 504 
 
 5 
 
 317 
 
 312 
 
 1908-9 
 
 30 
 
 151 
 
 121 
 
 5 
 
 87 
 
 82 
 
 Average of four years 
 ending 1904-5 
 
 15 
 
 285 
 
 270 
 
 4 
 
 222 
 
 218 
 
 Average of four years 
 ending 1908-9 
 
 20 
 
 363 
 
 343 
 
 5 
 
 228 
 
 223 
 
 50 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 EuPEE Prices of Principal Pood-grains — Annual Average of 
 23 Markets in the Punjab and North-west Frontier 
 Province— Eetail Prices — Rupees per Maund of 8'2f lbs. 
 Avoirdupois. 
 
 Year ending 3lst De<\ 
 
 AVliciit. 
 
 Bajra. 
 
 Gram. 
 
 Jawar. 
 
 1873 
 
 1-80 
 
 1-42 
 
 1-45 
 
 1-32 
 
 1874 
 
 1-73 
 
 1-61 
 
 1-25 
 
 1-45 
 
 1875 
 
 1-61 
 
 1-37 
 
 1-25 . 
 
 1-30 
 
 1876 
 
 1-54 
 
 1-29 
 
 1-09 
 
 1-20 
 
 1877 
 
 1-72 
 
 1-40 
 
 1-26 
 
 1-31 
 
 1S78 
 
 2-48 
 
 2-61 
 
 2-47 
 
 2-40 
 
 1879 
 
 310 
 
 261 
 
 2-76 
 
 2-55 
 
 1880 
 
 2-74 
 
 2-24 
 
 2-20 
 
 2-34 
 
 1881 
 
 2-31 
 
 2-12 
 
 1-90 
 
 1-80 
 
 1882 
 
 1-87 
 
 1-64 
 
 1-50 
 
 1-39 
 
 1883 
 
 1-80 
 
 1-34 
 
 1-30 
 
 1-15 
 
 1884 
 
 1-68 
 
 1-47 
 
 1-27 
 
 1 26 
 
 1885 
 
 1-62 
 
 1-34 
 
 1-25 
 
 1-21 
 
 1886 
 
 2 07 
 
 1-86 
 
 1-41 
 
 1-62 
 
 1887 
 
 2-74 
 
 2-53 
 
 1-93 
 
 2-31 
 
 1888 
 
 2 58 
 
 2-42 
 
 1-98 
 
 2-07 
 
 1889 
 
 2-05 
 
 2-00 
 
 1-58 
 
 1-58 
 
 1890 
 
 2-21 
 
 1-90 
 
 1-80 
 
 1-69 
 
 1891 ... 
 
 269 
 
 2-47 
 
 2-03 
 
 2-28 
 
 1892 
 
 2-96 
 
 2 -55 
 
 2 00 
 
 2-09 
 
 1893 
 
 2-46 
 
 2-06 
 
 1-58 
 
 1-68 
 
 1894 
 
 1-67 
 
 1-73 
 
 1-18 
 
 1-28 
 
 1895 
 
 2-11 
 
 1-98 
 
 1-60 
 
 1-65 
 
 1896 
 
 3-18 
 
 3-17 
 
 2-57 
 
 2-72 
 
 1897 
 
 3-85 
 
 3-88 
 
 3-83 
 
 3-42 
 
 1898 
 
 2-46 
 
 2-05 
 
 2-11 
 
 1-83 
 
 1899 
 
 2-55 
 
 2 36 
 
 2-32 
 
 2-06 
 
 1900 
 
 3-55 
 
 3-38 
 
 3-46 
 
 3-24 
 
 1901 
 
 2-65 
 
 2 00 
 
 2-21 
 
 1-85 
 
 1902 
 
 2-52 
 
 2-26 
 
 2-42 
 
 1-87 
 
 1903 
 
 2-45 
 
 2-14 
 
 1-91 
 
 1-84 
 
 1904 
 
 2-26 
 
 1-73 
 
 1-54 
 
 1-40 
 
 1905 
 
 2-67 
 
 2-18 
 
 1-95 
 
 1-87 
 
 1906 
 
 2-73 
 
 2-85 
 
 2-36 
 
 2-51 
 
 1907 
 
 2-90 
 
 2 33 
 
 2-45 
 
 2-14 
 
 1908 
 
 4-19 
 
 3-79 
 
 3-89 
 
 3 '52 
 
 1909' 
 
 3-67 
 
 2-52 
 
 2-59 
 
 2-35 
 
 Averagea. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Eight years ending 1880 
 
 209 
 
 1-82 
 
 1-72 
 
 1-73 
 
 Ten years ending 1890 
 
 2-09 
 
 1-86 
 
 1-59 
 
 1-61 
 
 Ten years ending 1900 
 
 2-73 
 
 2-56 
 
 2-27 
 
 2 25 
 
 Nine years ending 1909 
 
 2-89 
 
 2-42 
 
 2-37 
 
 2-15 
 
 Thirty-seven years ending 1909 
 
 2-46 
 
 2-18 
 
 1-99 
 
 1-93 
 
 1 Prices of September, 1909. 
 51 
 
APPENDIX V 
 
 Gold Price of Silver, Gold Value of Kupee, Gold Prices 
 
 OF Wheat. 
 
 
 Price of silver in London 
 X>er standard ounce. 
 
 Average rate 
 
 of exchange 
 
 in jicnce per 
 
 rupee. 
 
 Gold price of 
 
 wheat in 
 
 Punjab in 
 
 shillings per 
 
 quarter. 
 
 Average jirice 
 
 in London of 
 
 British wheat 
 
 per quarter 
 
 in shillings. 
 
 Year. 
 
 In pence. 
 
 In multiples 
 of 2W. 
 
 1873 
 
 59 
 
 23-6 
 
 22-4 
 
 20-2 
 
 58 7 
 
 1874 
 
 58 
 
 23-2 
 
 22-2 
 
 19-2 
 
 55-7 
 
 1875 
 
 57 
 
 22-8 
 
 21-6 
 
 17-4 
 
 45-7 
 
 1876 
 
 53 
 
 21-2 
 
 20-5 
 
 15-8 
 
 46-2 
 
 1877 
 
 55 
 
 22-0 
 
 20-8 
 
 17-9 
 
 56-8 
 
 1878 
 
 53 
 
 21-2 
 
 19-8 
 
 22-6 
 
 46-4 
 
 1879 
 
 51 
 
 20-4 
 
 200 
 
 31-0 
 
 43-8 
 
 1880 
 
 52 
 
 20-8 
 
 20-0 
 
 27-4 
 
 44-3 
 
 1881 
 
 52 
 
 20-8 
 
 19-9 
 
 23 
 
 45-3 
 
 1882 
 
 52 
 
 20-8 
 
 19-5 
 
 18-3 
 
 45-1 
 
 1883 
 
 51 
 
 20-4 
 
 19-5 
 
 17-6 
 
 41-6 
 
 18S4 
 
 51 
 
 20-4 
 
 19-3 
 
 16-2 
 
 35-3 
 
 1885 
 
 49 
 
 19-6 
 
 18-3 
 
 14-8 
 
 32-8 
 
 1886 
 
 45 
 
 18-0 
 
 17-4 
 
 18-0 
 
 31-3 
 
 1887 
 
 45 
 
 18-0 
 
 16-9 
 
 23 2 
 
 32-4 
 
 1888 
 
 43 
 
 17-2 
 
 16-4 
 
 21-2 
 
 31-7 
 
 1889 
 
 43 
 
 17-2 
 
 16-6 
 
 17-0 
 
 29-7 
 
 1890 
 
 48 
 
 19-2 
 
 181 
 
 20 
 
 31-8 
 
 1891 
 
 45 
 
 180 
 
 167 
 
 22-5 
 
 36-8 
 
 1892 
 
 40 
 
 16-0 
 
 15-0 
 
 22 2 
 
 31-2 
 
 1893 
 
 36 
 
 14-4 
 
 14-5 
 
 17-8 
 
 26-3 
 
 1894 
 
 29 
 
 11-6 
 
 13-1 
 
 10-8 
 
 23-3 
 
 1895 
 
 30 
 
 12-0 
 
 13'6 
 
 14-3 
 
 22-8 
 
 1896 
 
 31 
 
 12-4 
 
 14-5 
 
 23 
 
 26 
 
 1897 
 
 28 
 
 11-2 
 
 15-4 
 
 29-6 
 
 30-0 
 
 1898 
 
 27 
 
 10-8 
 
 16-0 
 
 19-7 
 
 34-6 
 
 1899 
 
 27 
 
 10-8 
 
 16-1 
 
 20-4 
 
 25-8 
 
 1900 
 
 28 
 
 11-2 
 
 16 
 
 26-8 
 
 26 9 
 
 1901 
 
 28 
 
 11-2 
 
 16-0 
 
 21-2 
 
 26-7 
 
 1902 
 
 24 
 
 9-6 
 
 16-0 
 
 20-2 
 
 28-2 
 
 1903 
 
 25 
 
 10-0 
 
 16-0 
 
 19-6 
 
 26-8 
 
 1904 
 
 26 
 
 10-4 
 
 16 
 
 18-1 
 
 28 '3 
 
 1905 
 
 28 
 
 11-2 
 
 16-0 
 
 21-4 
 
 29-8 
 
 1906 
 
 31 
 
 12-4 
 
 16-0 
 
 21-8 
 
 28-3 
 
 1907 
 
 31 
 
 12-4 
 
 16-0 
 
 23-2 
 
 30-5 
 
 1908 
 
 25 
 
 100 
 
 16-0 
 
 33-5 
 
 32-1 
 
 1909 
 
 24 
 
 9-6 
 
 160 
 
 29-4 
 
 36-9 
 
 Average of eighteen 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 years ending 1890 
 
 — 
 
 — 
 
 19-4 
 
 20-0 
 
 41-9 
 
 Average of nineteen 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 years ending 1909 
 
 — 
 
 — ' 
 
 15-5 
 
 21-9 
 
 290 
 
 52 
 
APPENDIX VI 
 
 Wages of Labour. 
 
 Year. 
 
 .\veragfi 
 montlily 
 wa^rs in 
 rnpers of 
 
 Prico in 
 
 rujicesof two 
 
 maunris of 
 
 jawar at the 
 
 Margin 
 
 of 
 comfort 
 
 in 
 
 Average 
 monthly wages 
 
 in ru]ic('s of 
 common mason, 
 
 Average wages paid in rnpees 
 
 for unskilled labour at the 
 
 Kailway Locomotive 
 
 workshops at Lahore. 
 
 
 aj^ricultural 
 labourer. 
 
 average price 
 of the year. 
 
 rupees. 
 
 carpenter, or 
 blacksmith. 
 
 
 
 Daily. 
 
 Monthly. 
 
 1873 
 
 5-2 
 
 2-6 
 
 2-6 
 
 12-8 
 
 0-19 
 
 5 1 
 
 1874 
 
 5-4 
 
 2-9 
 
 2-5 
 
 11-9 
 
 0-19 
 
 5-1 
 
 1875 
 
 5-4 
 
 2-6 
 
 2-8 
 
 13-5 
 
 0-19 
 
 5-0 
 
 1876 
 
 57 
 
 2-4 
 
 3-3 
 
 13-6 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-1 
 
 1877 
 
 5-5 
 
 2-6 
 
 2-9 
 
 13-7 
 
 0-19 
 
 5-1 
 
 1878 
 
 5-4 
 
 4-8 
 
 0-6 
 
 13-2 
 
 0-19 
 
 5-2 
 
 1879 ... ... 
 
 6-2 
 
 51 
 
 ri 
 
 15-0 
 
 0-19 
 
 5-2 
 
 1880 ••• * ••■ 
 
 6 '2 
 
 4-7 
 
 1-5 
 
 15-1 
 
 0-19 
 
 5-2 
 
 1881 
 
 6-3 
 
 3-6 
 
 2-7 
 
 147 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-2 
 
 1882 
 
 6-3 
 
 2-8 
 
 3-5 
 
 13-8 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-2 
 
 1883 
 
 6 3 
 
 2-3 
 
 4 
 
 14-6 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-2 
 
 1884 
 
 6-1 
 
 2-5 
 
 3-6 
 
 14-8 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-2 
 
 1885 
 
 6-2 
 
 2-4 
 
 3-8 
 
 15-9 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-2 
 
 1886 
 
 0-9 
 
 32 
 
 3-7 
 
 15 4 
 
 0-20 
 
 5-3 
 
 1887 
 
 6-8 
 
 4-6 
 
 2-2 
 
 15-9 
 
 0-22 
 
 5-9 
 
 1888 
 
 6-6 
 
 4-1 
 
 2-5 
 
 157 
 
 0-23 
 
 6-1 
 
 1889 
 
 6-4 
 
 3-2 
 
 3-2 
 
 16-4 
 
 0-25 
 
 6-5 
 
 1890 
 
 6-4 
 
 3-4 
 
 3-0 
 
 17-3 
 
 0-23 
 
 6-3 
 
 1S91 
 
 6-4 
 
 4-6 
 
 1-8 
 
 15-4 
 
 0-24 
 
 6-6 
 
 1892 
 
 6-8 
 
 4-2 
 
 2-6 
 
 17-1 
 
 0-27 
 
 6-9 
 
 1893 
 
 6-6 
 
 3-4 
 
 3-2 
 
 16-5 
 
 0-27 
 
 6-9 
 
 1894 
 
 6-8 
 
 2-6 
 
 4-2 
 
 16-2 
 
 0-26 
 
 7-0 
 
 1895 
 
 6-7 
 
 3-3 
 
 3-4 
 
 16-8 
 
 0-28 
 
 7-5 
 
 1896 
 
 7-0 
 
 5-4 
 
 1-6 
 
 17-0 
 
 0-21 
 
 5-6 
 
 1897 
 
 6-9 
 
 6-8 
 
 0-1 
 
 18-2 
 
 0-21 
 
 5-6 
 
 1898 
 
 6-8 
 
 3-7 
 
 3-1 
 
 18-9 
 
 0-25 
 
 6-6 
 
 1S99 
 
 6-8 
 
 4-1 
 
 2-7 
 
 19-4 
 
 0-23 
 
 6-0 
 
 1900 
 
 7-3 
 
 6-5 
 
 0-8 
 
 19-2 
 
 0-25 
 
 6-8 
 
 1901 
 
 7-2 
 
 3-7 
 
 3-5 
 
 18-9 
 
 0-22 
 
 5-9 
 
 1902 
 
 7-5 
 
 3-7 
 
 3-8 
 
 21-2 
 
 0-23 
 
 6-2 
 
 1903 
 
 7-0 
 
 3-7 
 
 3-3 
 
 20-4 
 
 0-22 
 
 6-0 
 
 1904 
 
 7-4 
 
 2-8 
 
 4-6 
 
 20-3 
 
 0-25 
 
 6-6 
 
 1905 
 
 7-1 
 
 3-7 
 
 3-4 
 
 227 
 
 0-23 
 
 6-1 
 
 1906 
 
 8-0 
 
 50 
 
 3-0 
 
 23-6 
 
 0-26 
 
 7-1 
 
 19G7 
 
 10-8 
 
 4-3 
 
 6-5 
 
 25-1 
 
 0-:^0 
 
 8-1 
 
 1908 
 
 10-9 
 
 7-0 
 
 3-9 
 
 307 
 
 0-35 
 
 9-4 
 
 1909 
 
 10-0 
 
 4-7 
 
 5-3 
 
 30-0 
 
 33 
 
 8-6 
 
 Average of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Eighteen years 
 ending"lS90 
 
 6 1 
 
 3-3 
 
 2-8 
 
 14-6 
 
 0'20 
 
 5-4 
 
 Nineteeu years 
 ending 1900 
 
 7-6 
 
 4-4 
 
 3-2 
 
 20-4 
 
 0-26 
 
 6-8 
 
 Four J' e a r s 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ending 1909 
 
 9-9 
 
 5-2 
 
 4-7 
 
 27-4 
 
 0-31 
 
 8-3 
 
 53 
 
APPENDIX VII 
 
 Cultivating Occupancy in the Punjab (29 British Districts). 
 
 In Thousands. 
 
 In 1889. 
 
 Number of 
 holdings. 
 
 Total cultivated area ... ... ... ... 5,959 
 
 Owners (including tenants holding directly • 
 
 from Government) 
 Tenants holding free of rent or at a nominal 
 
 rent 
 
 Tenants 
 
 paying -> 
 rent 
 
 With a right of occupancy 
 
 -Paying rents depend- 
 ent on the land 
 
 Without a 
 
 right of 
 occupancy 
 
 revenue 
 
 *l Paying other cash 
 rents 
 
 Paying rents in kind 
 
 Total of tenants without a right of 
 occupancy 
 
 2,720 
 
 638 
 
 257 
 
 735 
 1,417 
 
 Area. 
 
 24,900 
 14,600 
 
 2,547 
 
 607 
 
 2,281 
 4,692 
 
 2,409 ' 7,580 
 
 In 1907. 
 
 Number of 
 holdings. 
 
 9,341 
 
 3,499 
 
 464 
 1,021 
 
 451 
 
 948 
 2,957 
 
 4,356 
 
 Area. 
 
 27,231 
 12,397 
 
 309 
 2,368 
 
 849 
 
 2,734 
 8,075 
 
 11,658 
 
 64 
 
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 ^h.. last date stamped below, or 
 ™' •"'°'' y^X^^^SS?«. recall. 
 
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 University of California 
 
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 M. Reg.U.S. Pat. Off. 
 
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