Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/411

 P UNFAB LAND PRIOE$ 895 the value of fa property in New York State, and a similar shrinkage of land values is shown by Ohio. Even general Rs. 182 Punjab. colonisin now it appears that the farm land in New York per acre as compared The expansion of large newly province has not resulted in the averag? price in rise is not clue to average price of is somewhere about with Rs. 227 in the of cultivation clue to the irrigated tracts n this in any corresponding decline the older districts. The immigration from outside the Province nor does it appear to be due to any realisa- tion that the land will in future yield a bigger income with more skillful treatment. In the Lower Bari Doab Colony an increase in the price realised at Government auctions from Rs. 229 per acre in 1917 to Rs. 881 in 1918 was probably due to the discovery hat the land was suitable for American cotton, but this appears to be exceptional. The continuance the result the owners of the rise appears now to of local conditions. In the are hereditary agriculturists first place attached to There that is the soil and the village  from generations back. is practically no open market for the land; to say a man selling his ancestral acres in his own village could not be certain of finding other land available for purchase in another village. There is hardly any such thing as "land 'for sale '. To t. he influence of the hereditary connection is added the effect of the progressive subdivision of holdings; the ancestral property is t. oo small for economic working and can only be added to by snapping up little plos in the immediate neighborhood. These opportu- nities, however, are very rare. There are roughly 2 million families supported by agriculture in 33,4 villages. In 21.years, as mentioned above, the num- ber of recorded transactions was 962,000, or about