very great due to the resources of the country make them millionaires. This excessive wealth gives them power. They own the newspapers and form the public opinion. They can hire persons to fire on the labour-strikers and punish anybody they please. All legislative and executive authority is practically vested in them. They are the sole rulers of their country and it was they who declared war with Germany when they found that their trade with allies had to be stopped owing to German submarines. This power commands for them social respect from the masses. Economists write (or are they made to write?) about the self-sacrifice of these capitalists who invest their all in their industry purely from a philonthropic motive of supplying the wants of their fellowmen. It is no wonder then, that money at all costs naturally becomes the byeword with its attendant social evils and moral degradation as pointed out in the report of the ChiefCommissioner of Police, New York, the other day. No wonder to find theft and dishonesty cultivated under the name of smartness, want of faith and suspicion, under the name of prudence, the people thinking all these and many more Machiavellian virtues as a necessary equipment from the business point of view. It is also thus natural to find American neswspapers full of divorces, swindlings, murders and mercantile crimes of all kinds or American slums discontented and stricken with poverty and wasting diseases, as inevitable consequences of blind money worship.

We thus see that the condition of America is far from enviable and that a policy of protection is liable to be fraught with grave economic, social and moral dangers. If, as some American economists affirm, material progress cannot be separated from its accompanying moral and social degeneration, where lies the use of cherishing it as a human ideal? This, however, is not true and there are remedies to avert the dangers. These

are, chiefly, (1) free internal competition and state control or supervision of important industries and public goods, the interests of the State, of course, being supposed identical with those of its subjects. This will prevent exploitation of labour and unnecessary rise in prices and equalize distribution. It will also make management in time of crises much easier. (2) Sound ethical training to would-be citizens in their impressive periods of childhood and youth implanting in them a strong sense of justice and moral value of the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would be done by," also explaining them clearly how self-sacrifice, compromise and co-operation lie at the root of all progress and make modern society possible. And last but not least (3) business men should never be honored by the State or public at large as if they are doing their country a great service; recognition should be given only to men like Cadburys and Lever brothers who deserve it through their philanthropic work or marked unselfishness. The desire of making money has in it more than sufficient initiative for the building-up and carrying-on of industries. These precautions will keep the various evils generally associated with capitalism at bay.

It is exceedingly fortunate for India that she has started late in the race for material prosperity. In case she gets home rule or fiscal autonomy, she has a rich mine of history and experience to profit by and can avoid, if she wishes, the short-comings and pit-falls of Western civilization. Being for the most part agricultural like Russia, it would pay her to devote more attention to agriculture and make her balance of international trade more favorable. Now let us all wish her with one accord an all-round progress, moral, intellectual, material, social and political in her new industrial campaign.

All this above discussion, however, presupposes a certain common standard of living, which is not justified. Economics, after all, is based on the satisfaction of human desires and these being subjective can vary within widest possible limits. Hence it is quite possible, nay probable, that a people might so subjugate its desires as to be content with a simple life supported by the products of its soil. Thus lived our ancestors of old leaving India defenceless at the mercy of the foreign invader with the result that we find ourselves in our present position.

NE of the commonplaces of books in India is a statement to the effect that Indian labour is extremely inefficient; and that it is to this inefficiency in part that the slow development of the country is due. But so far as exact data on the subject are concerned there is little or none in existence, or at any rate presented in most of the books or papers which speak so confidently on the matter. And yet it is a matter on which the greatest caution, it seems to me, should be exercised in expressing an opinion, for efficiency in labour is such a complex matter that unless it is very carefully investigated, and the various factors included in the term "efficiency" are isolated, it may be possible to come to totally erroneous conclusions. I will only suggest one factor which has, I believe, been forgotten in most statements on the subject-namely, that of the efficiency of supervision in the west, the ques. tion of supervision and the means by which the most can be got out of the actual workers has been reduced to a science. The methods of appealing to the workers, of giving stimuli to which they most readily repair, of encouraging regularity of work, and so on, have been very carefully studied and applied. In India, on the other hand, little has been done, and the usual methods of trying to get the best out of Indian workers differ little from those who are employed elsewhere, although the mental attitude of the latter is very different. I do not wish to discuss the matter, however, further on general lines. My purpose to-day is rather to lay before you the scheme I have made for investigating the efficiency of Indian Agricultural Labour, and request criticism from a body of economists like the present. I also wish to lay before you some of the first results which I have obtained, in spite of the very great difficulty I find in interpreting them and in comparing them with figures obtained in the west. The method which I have adopted, in

co-operation with one of my old students, Mr. P. K. Mody, in these inquiries is to analyse the factors which determine and measure the actual amount of work performed in a day by a man in various agricultural operations. There is one difficulty which is almost peculiar to agricultural work which makes such measures of the work done by a worker in a normal day's work. This is the fact that in most agricultural work you have animals and man co-operating. How much of the efficiency or lack of efficiency is due to the man or men involved, and how much is due to the animals? If we compare a man's work in ploughing, for instance, in India with that of a man in America, how much of the greater work done in America, is due to the fact that horses are used instead of bullocks,—leading to quicker work and possibly to better work. As a consideration of this point would necessitate a preliminary study into the relative efficiency of different types of animal labour, and for this I have no facility at present, I feel I must for the moment abandon the idea of getting at the absolute efficiency of the man himself, and only consider what he can do under the conditions of equipment under which he finds himself.

AVERAGE DAY'S WORK.

that figures can be made comparable at all. Thus for instance in comparing the day's work done by a man with a country plough, and with a modern iron plough, it is necessary to recognise that the furrow in the former case is nearly triangular while in the latter the furrow is rectangularhence at a similar depth the amount of soil moved will be very much greater in the latter case. In the figures which follow I have tried to reduce all the records to the area which would be covered in a day by a plough giving a rectangular furrow, four inches deep. One more difficulty arises in the interpretation of the results. In most cases one man both drives the bullocks and guides the plough; in a few, a boy is employed to drive the animals. If this is needed, it is obvious that the efficiency of the man is less than if he does the whole operation. I have taken-how far I am justified in the figure I am not sure-in my calculation a boy as equal to three-fifths of a man, and have reduced my figures accordingly. Again, in certain cases, a plough requires two pairs of bullocks, while another plough in the same land works with one. In comparing the work done by the labourer, should this be taken into account? After careful consideration, I have ignored it and the day's work which I have recorded is that done by one average good ploughman, with the animal equipment which he thinks is necessary. With this explanation I may give the figures I have got in several of our districts and on several of our soils. They are as follows:One man's work per day in ploughing, (4 in deep rectangular, furrow). (1) Light, moist garden land (Charoter Gujarat), country plough 0.65 acres. (2) Moist clay loam (Alibag, Konkan); country plough, 0'44 acres; Meston plough, 0.20 acres. (3) Moist sandy loam (Kumta, Kanara); country plough, 0·13 acres; Meston plough, 0.50 acres (4) Dry, black cotton soil, (Gadag, Dharwar; country plough 0·47 acres; Ransome's C. T. I plough 0 72 acres. (5) Wet, black cotton soil,

I quote the figures as I have collected them. I doubt the record of the Meston plough at Alibag—and before any of these figures will deserve full credence, the number of records on which they are based will have to be very much increased. But, with the above exception, it would seem that the efficiency of a man's labour can be very much increased 'by adopting modern iron ploughs rather than those of the country. At Gadag the increase was about 50 per cent; in Kanara by between three or four-hundred percent. The amount is probably greater than this because no allowance has been made for the quality of the work done-though I hope to do this in my further investigations. Now let us compare these figures with those obtained in America using ploughs drawn by two horses, and managed by one man. There is only one of my figures which can be easily compared with those recorded in America, namely, that obtained in the dry black cotton soil at Gadag with Ransome's C. T. I. plough. In this case one man and a boy were actually required for the work, but I have calculated the results for man as described above. In this case we have (1) Ransome's C. T. I. plough at Gadag (8 hour day work of one man), 0.72 acres. (2) Similar plough in America (8 hourThis would day work of one man), 1.08 acres. indicate that the plough man in America, using his horses is fifty per cent more efficient than the ploughman here, using his bullocks. From a paper prepared for the Economic Conference, Bombay.

The Improvement of Indian Agriculture: Some Lessons from America. By Cathelyne Singh. 2nd Edn. Price Re. 1. To Subscribers of IR., As. 12.

G. A. Natesan & Co., Publishers. George Town, Madras.

a great part of the human race especially in this era of territorial division of labour, cannot be carried on without the safety of the various trade routes, both overseas and overland. It is this dominant fact of international dependence that emboldened Norman Angell even to deny the possibility of a world-war like the present. The work of international money market cannot but be jeopardised by an outbreak of war, and just imagine what an amount of suffering this results in. It is the vital importance of these and allied world-problems that gave rise to the codes of International Law, to the famous Hague Tribunal, and to arrangements like the International Postal Union at Berne. The present conflagration of Europe has threatened all these with extinction and by its ruthless submarinism and inhuman air-raids has dislocated the world's industry, commerce and all that go in their train. So let us make an end of war-this is the cry of Humanity.

Rome carried this process of Hellenisation further, and for a time it appeared that Pax Romana was a reality throughout the known world. Christianity then acted as a unifying force wherever it spread; and at least in the Middle Ages, Christendom was indeed a unity under the twin swords of Empire and Papacy. That Papacy has acted as a useful international agency for long, at least in Europe, is now acknowledged by all; and the careers of Hildebrand and Innocent III assume a new importance looked at from this standpoint. The Reformation cut off the unity of Christendom, and Europe became thenceforth disunited into warring creeds and competing nations. With the

growth of independent nationalities, the ideal of cosmopolitanism fell into disrepute, in spite of the occasional dreams of a Henry IV or a Leibnitz. Napolean repeated Alexander's experiment but with less success, and only evoked the force of absolute nationalism in all its vehemence. After ́ Napolean's downfall came the grand scheme of a Holy Alliance as the arbiter of Europe-the product of the faith and imagination of Czar Alexander I. This scheme fell through chiefly by the indifference of England, and the concert of Europe became merely a name. After this came the various congresses for the settlement of specific disputes, but those did not produce any lasting understanding between the powers. The establishment of the Hague Tribunal seemed to improve international relations for a time, but this hope was frustrated when in 1914 the Austrian Prince was murdered at Serajevo.

IS IT PRACTICABLE ?

There have been, and now are, many thinkers who contend that an International State must always remain an unrealisable Utopia, and they base their judgment on the past failures of international schemes and on the belief in the eternal verity of national sovereignty and independence. With them, Mr. Hobson has no patience. He points out, denying the truth of the so-called repetition of history, "that a psychological and sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have taken place in the psychical and social conditions." To him sovereignty of the state is a mere delusion, and the modern development of federalism affords ample evidence for it.

Certainly the national state is in no way the apex of political evolution. All history bends towards the final goal of world-unity. "The centripetal or co-operative powers that forged the national state out of smaller social unities are not exhausted but are capable of carrying the organis. ing process further." The forces that made the