Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/164

 GLBI{T SLATER was practised I believe, tha in India as in England it was a subsidiary occupation of agricultural families. We have next a third cause of agricultural poverty which I may exemplify by a particular example. In a village near Palni I had a conversation with an elderly ryot who was. one of the leading inhabitants of his village. He told me that he owned four acres of wet land which he valued very highly and eight acres of dry land which had but little value. In that particu- lar village the dinfall is small and the soil is a some- what barren red earth, and I have no doubt that the d'y land was as a matter of fact of very little value. Up to tle age of fifty he kept clear of debt; in the following ten years he had accumulated debts, which, with the help of unfortunate litigation and compound interest, had gwelled to Rs4000. He told me that usually the whole produce of his four acres was required to feed his family, and that he had no rice to send to the narket to pay hs kist or the interest on his debt. As his fanily grand-children that the Now of divided between his probably have also including numbered statement sons, daughters-in-law, twenty-five people you is a perfectly credible consider when this man dies, wet land and eight acres. of five sons equally, grand in turn and four must his dry and they children as well can OllO. acres be will as children to support in considerable numbers. hen can he descendents do into deeper and deeper poverty? How otherwise than fall As long as .under Hindu law a 'holding must be divided equally between sons, and somewhat similarly under Muhammadan law which makes provision for widows and daughters, and all the heirs cling to their portion of land, there is a continual drift towards a subdivision of land, till a more and more minute large proportion of the holders have so lit. fie land that they cannot utilise their