more food than it requires for its own consumption. Through the widespread operations of this trade the price of wheat all over India has gradually been brought into relations with the rates prevailing in the European markets; and, since wheat is interchangeable in consumption with most of the other food-grains -maize, barley, and the various millets and pulses-produced and consumed in India, the export price of wheat is a governing factor in the prices of food-grains throughout the country, so long as there is a surplus at all. Happily this condition is fulfilled at the present time; the crops of wheat and other grains that ripened this spring over Northern and Central India have been abundant; and, after allowing for local consumption, there is a surplus of wheat available for export which the Government statisticians put at about two million tons, and which may prove to be substantially larger than this estimate. Existing conditions, then, place the Government in a position to regulate the price of food throughout India by regulating the export price of wheat, and render unnecessary any interference with the free course of internal trade. Under the regulations that have been made, anyone in India is left absolutely free to buy or sell wheat and other grains at any price he pleases; and supervision over the internal markets is thus rendered unnecessary, except in so far as temporary interference may be required to counteract the operations of groups of speculators in particular localities. The only general restriction enforced is that no may export wheat; and this restriction does not directly affect anyone but the relatively few shipping firms whose business has been organised with that object in view.

If the action of the State stopped with the prohibition of exports, the situation would be clear. Within the country there would be a large surplus of food, and there would be no means of getting rid of it. Prices would therefore fall substantially; and cheap, perhaps

*The case is somewhat different as regards rice, the staple food of the East and the South. Rice-eaters find it difficult to take to wheat and other hard grains; on the other hand, the eaters of wheat and millet are ready to turn to rice if necessary; and, when food is scarce in Northern India, the imports of rice from Burma become of great importance.

very cheap, food would be assured to the people. On the other hand, food would be retained and consumed which would not be absolutely necessary to the country, and which, if exported, would be of the highest present value to the Empire. Indian producers would be impoverished, while the curtailment of exports might so far affect the balance of trade as to threaten the security of the gold standard of currency, now the corner-stone of India's financial policy. Further measures, therefore, became essential, as soon as the prohibition of exports had been decided; and it is in these further measures that the interest of the experiment mainly lies. To put it shortly, the Indian Government has decided that exports are to continue, though no private exports are allowed. The Government will buy wheat in quantities and at prices to be determined by itself, will ship this wheat to the London market, and will retain for the benefit of the country as a whole any profits that may be derived from these gigantic operations. These measures are obviously calculated to meet the objections that have just been stated. The surplus wheat of India will be carried to the place where it can be of most service to the Empire; internal prices will be lowered, but not to the same extent as if export were entirely stopped; while the sale of Indian wheat in Europe will support the gold standard to exactly the same extent, whether it is conducted on behalf of Government or of private exporters. A minor advantage is that, as the Government purchases will be made through the agency of the exporting firms, that great business-organisation will be maintained in working order.

Superficially, then, the scheme is simple; practically, it requires the administrative machine (consisting in this case of the Commerce and Industry Department, that is, of a Member of the Viceroy's Council and his Secretary, supported by a Wheat Commissioner and one or more Assistant Commissioners), to determine within fairly wide limits the kind and the quantity of food that shall be eaten during the current year by a large proportion of the inhabitants of India. To justify this statement, it is necessary to consider in a little detail the conditions in which wheat is produced and consumed by those inhabitants.

Under present conditions India hopes to produce in favourable years about ten million tons of wheat. The production is not evenly distributed over the country; two-thirds or more of the whole is yielded by the alluvial plains of the Ganges and the Indus, and the balance mainly by the black soils of the central table-lands, which stretch, broadly speaking, southward from the line of the river Jumna as far as the latitude of Bombay. Diverse as are the agricultural characteristics of these extensive areas, a few general statements can be made regarding the conditions of production. In the first place, the producers are peasants; the capitalist farmer, familiar in England and in America, is in these regions too rare to be taken into account. The peasants are practically illiterate, and have no knowledge of the wider markets for their products; such knowledge as they obtain is limited to the conditions prevailing in their immediate neighbourhood. Nor are they as yet in touch with scientific developments, or able to obtain the capital they may need on reasonable terms. Some of them (the proportion varies greatly in different regions) possess sufficient capital to carry on their business on the traditional lines, and, when the harvest is over, can offer their produce in the market, and stand out for the best price obtainable; others are financed by moneylenders who advance capital as required, and at harvest time take over a part or all of the produce at prices determined mainly by themselves, and usually lower than could be obtained in the open market. But the number of individuals who could embark unaided on fresh capital expenditure is a very small proportion of the whole; and it is not inaccurate to say that in India wheat is produced to-day by the methods that have been followed for an indefinite number of centuries. Oxen, as of old, draw the same primitive implements through or over the soil, and later on tread the grain out of the ears collected on the threshing-floor of bare earth; the labourers still gather the crop in handfuls that can be cut by the bit of curved iron dignified with the name of sickle; and, if we leave out of account the irrigation-canals that British rule has led over the country from almost every available river, we may say that there is nothing in the staple farming of

to-day that would surprise an observer of the time of Akbar.

In all material aids to production, the Indian peasant must be accounted poor and backward; in other respects his equipment is much more satisfactory. He has knowledge-knowledge of the climate, the soil and the cropbased on the experience of his ancestors and embodied in the traditional custom of the country. He has skill, acquired by practice under his father's eye from childhood onward; he has fortitude and endurance; and, except when he is hopelessly in the money-lender's hands, he has the incentive to hard work which is given by the knowledge that its reward is secured to him. Thus the production of wheat rests on the surest foundation, the foundation, that is, of the personal qualities of the producers; the problems of the industry are concerned with the ways in which the resources of agricultural science and the accumulated wealth of the country can be placed at the producer's disposal, so that his personal qualities may be utilised more effectively than is the case at present. These problems have not been neglected. During the last decade the organisation of co-operative credit and of the Government agricultural departments has made progress that can only be described as astonishing; but most of the work accomplished has been preliminary, and there has not yet been time for it to modify materially the conditions in which production is carried on. Here and there, a more remunerative grade of wheat may already be seen on the land; ploughs from Ipswich and reapers from Glasgow are beginning to be known; there are places where during the irrigating season the throb of an oil-engine mingles with the creaking of the pulleys at the well-heads; while in not a few villages the co-operative societies handle substantial sums borrowed from the wealthier classes to provide the capital required by their members. Progress in these and other directions may be expected to become more rapid; and possibly the next two decades may witness more change than the last two centuries. But at the present day the production of wheat is, as we have said, carried on very much on traditional lines-by intense human effort supported by inadequate material equipment.

So much may be said regarding the conditions under which the crop is grown: the consumption of the product brings us into a somewhat different atmosphere. India is fundamentally vegetarian; and, if we leave out of account those parts of the country (mainly the East and the South) which consume chiefly rice, it may be safely asserted that almost everyone wants to eat wheat, and that the number who do so and the amount which they eat is determined largely by the price. There are naturally no direct statistics of internal consumption. The figures have to be arrived at by deducting the exports from the estimated produce; the balance, that is the quantity of wheat retained in the country, has during the last decade varied between 6,000,000 and 8,500,000 tons. This balance includes the seed for the next year's crop, an uncertain amount which, however, must exceed 1,000,000 tons in ordinary seasons. Thus we arrive at actual consumption varying according to prices between 5,000,000 and 7,500,000 tons. It is fairly well known that the amount consumed by people who eat chiefly cereals is such that, when allowance is made for children and the aged, for under-feeding, loss in grinding and other incidentals, a ton of wheat harvested will on the average feed five persons for a year; thus the wheat consumed in recent years would feed a population varying between, let us say, 25,000,000 and 40,000,000 souls. Now the potential wheat-eating population, that is the number of people who would eat wheat if they could afford it, is considerably in excess of 100,000,000; in any case, only a minority can realise their wishes, and the number of that minority depends mainly on the prices that prevail.

The price is the direct governing factor in the case of those classes who do not produce wheat or share directly in the produce, that is to say, the upper and middle classes, the lower classes in towns and cities, and those artisans and labourers in the country who are paid in cash and not (as was formerly the usual practice) in kind. Some members of these classes will buy wheat, whatever the price may be, that is to say, the amount of their consumption is not dependent on the price ; others cannot hope to buy wheat-except for a rare treat-however low the price may fall; and between these