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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 56

§ 4.—Cost of Living and Wages in India

page 7

§ 4.—Cost of Living and Wages in India.

Widely different, again, from all this is the condition of labour in British India. From official reports published in connection with the recent famine, regarding the daily life and circumstances of cultivators, and from a return of the average annual prices of food, grains, and salt, with the wages of skilled and unskilled labour, published in Calcutta, it appears that the average wages of an able-bodied agricultural labourer in India may be taken at six rupees per month, and the average wages of a common mason, carpenter, or blacksmith at fifteen rupees per month. At is. 6d. per rupee, such wages give little more than £6 and £13 per annum respectively.5 Small, however, as page 8 is the income, it meets the expenditure of a labourer in India, which is equally small. For the ordinary food of a family consists of a certain quantity of great millet, or jowar, or rice, salt, and some ghi, the product of milk, with a little curry as a luxury, and the clothing consists mainly of cotton-cloth, sometimes supplemented by a blanket of wool, and leather shoes 6. The contrast between India and the Australian or Canadian colonies is very great. In Australia or Canada the wages are high and the cost of living is low. In India the wages are as low as the cost of living. The wages of labour are so far regulated by the cost of living that the minimum of wages cannot long remain below the cost of living, for when they are actually lower the workmen, or at least the most intelligent among them, will abandon the work, and thereby produce lesser competition among labourers and increase wages. But there is no limit to the increase of wages where the demand for labour is great and the profits of industry are abundant. Where high prices proceed from scarcity of produce, as in the event of a deficient harvest or as the result of protective duties, national wealth being diminished, wages are either immediately or eventually lower, not higher. Where high prices are experienced in conjunction with abounding wealth and prosperity, wages may be higher also. Where prices are low and labourers few wages are high; where prices are high and labourers numerous wages are low.