Page:Arthur Cotton - The Madras Famine - 1898.djvu/38

Rh times, when Irrigation has produced fever, but I believe this is generally out of the tropics. And it is quite certain that it is the exception, and against this we must set the enormous increase of health, arising from the people being well fed, clothed and housed. The most dreadful fever we have ever had in India, is that which has desolated the country round Calcutta, solely from want of water. This is entirely where the country is unirrigated and undrained. When the Engineer, and the Medical Officer were ordered to enquire into this, they both reported that the first cause of this fatal fever was the shocking state of the people in respect of even food, that they were so dreadfully underfed that they had no stamina, but succumbed at once to a fever, that they might have otherwise thrown off with ease. Think of this under our rule. So the question in England about the deaths from Railways, is not how many are killed, but how many are saved from death by this mode of moving in comparison with the use of horses. Nothing can be more certain than that for one death caused by fever from Irrigation, a hundred are prevented by all the sanitary effects of regulated water. And what shall we say to the deaths caused by Famine? Do they not exceed all those that have ever been imagined to proceed from Irrigation ? These are only specimens of the mistaken notions that men bring forward without taking the trouble to obtain the smallest information on the subject. Of the unaccountable absurdities that enter mens heads, who have not one idea on the subject, we have a notable instance in this days Times, August 28.

It is of course impossible to answer all such fancies. And with respect to the use of water for navigation, the absurd mistakes about this are greater than those about Irrigation.

Probably the first is, you can't have great speed by water. The first answer to this is that in every country, but especially in a poor country where all material improvement has, as it were, but just begun, speed is utterly insignificant in comparison of cheapness. Whether wheat is carried at 40 miles an hour, or at two, is a matter of no importance whatever, but whether it is carried at a cost of a penny a mile, or 20 miles for a penny, makes the whole difference, whether in ordinary years there is any possibility of its reaching the markets of England at all or not. And the second answer is, that there is nothing in the world to prevent any speed on water. There is a boat on the Lake of Geneva at this moment running at a higher speed than most of the mails are carried at on the Railways in India, 24 miles an hour. There is not the slightest object in 99-hundredths of the traffic in India more than 10 miles an hour, even the passenger traffic, nor in the goods going at more than two miles. But whether there are Canals at all or not, depends whether we can afford relief and prevent millions dying of Famine. But let us only consider the question of cost. Suppose the 160 millions that the Railways have cost for 7000 miles, had been spent at the rate of £3000 a mile on 50,000 miles of steam boat Canal, what would have been the state of India now; for instance