Page:Arthur Cotton - The Madras Famine - 1898.djvu/33

Rh upon it, and it was expected to be finished next month. If this is accomplished, putting Madras in communication with those great Deltas and with the Coal Tracts of the Godavery, it is quite certain that far more will be gained from this small work than the interest of ten millions. It will complete one line of transit of 550 miles from Madras to the second Barrier on the Godavery, and will connect altogether 1200 miles of Navigation with that City. Sir Arthur Cotton has repeatedly pressed upon the authorities, both in India and and [sic] at home, the necessity of providing for these Famines, whenever the failure of the Monsoon renders such a calamity certain, by marking out an important work of Irrigation or Navigation, erecting shelter, and collecting tools and food before hand, so that as soon as the pressure of the Famine is felt, well organized parties may be set to work at once and before they are reduced to a state unfit for work. Now their ribs must show the signal for them to be employed on the Relief Works. There is always time for that but it ashas [sic] never been done. The consequence is almost the whole of the money expended on the works is lost. Whereas a Famine is in fact the opportunity of executing in a single season, important works to raise India out of its present poverty for ever. Hitherto without exception, not a finger has been moved till the people were actually dying, and then it was too late to organize works effectually. What might not the millions that the last 2 Famines have cost have done to make Famines impossible. In Mr. Monier Williams letter to the Times from Manura, December 2nd, he says; “all the Belts of Land reached by the grand system of Irrigation which stretches between the Godavery, Kistnah and Cauvery Rivers,—fertilizing the soil wherever it reaches, and forcing even the haters of English rule to admit that no other Raj ever conferred on India such benefits,—present a marvellous contrast to the immense tracks of arid waste which meet the eye of the traveller as he journies by the great India Peninsular, Madras, and S. India Railway.”

Here are subjects for the Illustrated News. Look here upon this picture and on this. Had half a million more acres been Irrigated in each of these districts, and had they been put in effective communication with the rest of India by Steam Boat Canals, which would have admitted of all India being laid under contribution for food, the Famine would have been nothing comparatively. And had the comparative few who would then have had to be fed, been employed on further great works, the Famine would have been a source of plenty. Gen. Strachey said on May the 18th, at the Royal Institution; “we must be content to pass through a condition of periodical suffering of an acute kind, during which ways of escape from these evils will be gradually perfected, these ways of escape are indeed already sufficiently evident, and so far as they have been hitherto applied, they have been found to be thoroughly efficacious, they are the provision of artificial Irrigation and improved transit.”

And he “has passed a large part of his life in seeking for the