Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/564

 from students. It is hard to tell whether the 8tuAont who explains the exhibits or the landowner who asks the shrewd questions gets most good from it. It is, however, with the human element again that the student's greatest opportunity lies. I have some- times wondered, in these days o! high prices, if it would be possible to .orgsui.e consumers' purchasing leagues upon the basis of the caste organization. The extravagance of the poor, unavoidable in. small pur- chases, works with great severity in our ei&ies. If purchases could be made by the brotherhood a con- sider. able saving would result. The feasibility of such a scheme might well be a vestigation; and if leadership. The increase possible, subject for student in- for student setion and of the health and ecieney, the con- serving of the life of the working population, appeals to me as one of our great and most dioult problems. or example, in the city of Indore, which is corn* menoing industrial development, Prof. Geddes has pointed out in his Eeport on the planning o[ the city that the expectation of life' is only s little over 18 years. My own, so far inoompleted, study of the birth and death returns in the Indore Besidehey shows that over 50 per cent of the deaths are of people less than twenty years of age. The average productive period of the workin classes is very short; and it would be an interesting study for Indian economists to determine whether in this fact rests the cause o[ the poverty of India, rather ttum in some other reasons .to which it is frequently of the workers of India assigned. Were increased by only the life one year the resulting surplus' production would be sufficient to pay for the vast schemes outlined by Prof. Jevons in his paper read at this (]onference. Yet we are some. times told that disease is not an economic problem!