THE PAGODA TREE.
What has become of the Pagoda tree? Is it a myth? Did it ever exist?
These are questions which you must have heard over and over again.
Have you ever tried to answer them? No!
Well! let me do so.
The Pagoda tree is _no myth_. It exists, but in a deplorably
dilapidated condition, and bears but little fruit. Your car of
Jugernāth has crushed its roots; your wheels have excoriated its
bark; you have torn down its branches to cremate your victims.
You have denied it water and manure. Its vitality has been sadly
lowered, but it is not _quite_ dead.
Only smash your detestable car of Jugernāth; send your false
prophets adrift; and devote a little attention to the cultivation
of the Pagoda tree; and it will flourish and bear more fruit than
it has ever borne before.
Let us drop metaphor a little.
India has every requisite for the production of unbounded
wealth--for the employment of untold capital. How is it then that,
with all the advantages it possesses, its industries languish and
struggle for bare existence, and in many cases die out altogether?
How is it that, with all its material advantages, it does not
enjoy unbounded prosperity? I have no doubt that you will point
to the increased exports and imports of India, and claim this as
an instance of unbounded prosperity due to Free Trade. I contend
that it is wholly due to extension in railways, improvement in
facilities of transport, and that with these improvements its
prosperity ought to have been enormous. If it be prosperous, why
do we have essays on the Poverty of India?[98] Why do Viceroys
dwell on the subject of its poverty?[99] Why do its industries
languish and die out?
India has untold wealth, and wonderful natural resources, whether
agricultural, mineral, or industrial, but they are to a great
extent dormant.
It has coal of an excellent character, and inexhaustible in
quantity; it has fine petroleum, large supplies of timber and
charcoal; it has iron, of a purity that would make an English
iron-master’s mouth water, spread wholesale all over the
country,--in most places to be had by light quarrying or collection
from the surface; it has chrome iron capable of making the
finest Damascus blades; manganiferous ore; splendid hematites in
profusion. It has gold, silver, antimony, tin, copper, plumbago,
lime, kaolin, gypsum, precious stones, asbestos. Soft wheat,
equal to the finest Australian; hard wheat, equal to the finest
kabanka.[100] It has food grains of every description: oilseeds,
tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, spices, lac, dyes, cotton,
jute, hemp, flax, coir, fibres of every description; in fact,
products too numerous to mention. Its inhabitants are frugal,
thrifty, industrious, capable of great physical exertion, docile,
easily taught, skilful in any work requiring delicate manipulation.
Labour is absurdly cheap; the soil for the most part wonderfully
productive, and capable of producing crop after crop without any
symptoms of exhaustion.
The present yield of wheat is about 26,500,000 quarters, or about
9,500,000 quarters in excess of the total imports of wheat into
England; and in the Punjab alone there is cultivable waste land
sufficient to produce 12,000,000 quarters, besides enormous parts
in Burmah and other parts of India, only requiring irrigation or
population to bring them under the plough.[101]
England imports annually commodities to the value of about
£148,500,000 under six heads alone,[102] a large portion of which
might be diverted to India by simply adopting a preferential
tariff slightly favorable to her dependencies. Take, for example,
wheat. If England be determined to persist in the endeavour to
ruin its agricultural industry for a political whim, a slight tax
on American and Russian wheat would suffice to turn the whole of
the wheat import trade to India and Australia. Such a tax would,
I believe, tend to lower, rather than raise, the price of wheat,
because India would steadily go in for the production of wheat,
if its calculations were not liable to be disturbed by a slight
fall in the price of wheat in America or Russia, which may throw
back a quantity of wheat on the hands of the Indian producers or
dealers.[103]
Again, India suffers from a tax which prevents the export of rice
except on a tariff which is sometimes as high as 14½ per cent. on
the value of the rice. This not only handicaps India in its exports
when compared with other countries, but it drives the natives to
grow less remunerative crops of oilseeds for export, and the result
of this is that, when famine arises, there is no surplus food which
might be retained from exports, and thus prevent the painful scenes
of starvation and distress that India has witnessed of late years.
To take off the tax would prevent depletion, for no foreign country
could compete with the demand which failure of crops in any part of
India would inevitably cause.
There is about £32,000,000 of English capital invested in Indian
manufacturing industries, of which £18,000,000, or more than
one-half, is invested in indigo, tea, coffee, jute, cotton, sugar,
coal and iron industries, and how are these thriving? Everywhere
throughout Bengal you see the ruins of English Indigo factories.
Coffee and tea are struggling hard for existence. Planters are
ruined, and their estates bought at depreciated rates in times
of depression. This enables the industries to survive with some
show of prosperity in good times. Agricultural industries, such as
coffee or tea, draw off surplus population, and employ them on land
that would otherwise be uncultivated. Coal is doing fairly, but
not nearly so well as it might do if our manufacturing industries
prospered.
Cotton manufacture sprung up under a protective tariff, and
appeared to be prospering; but selfish Manchester called aloud
for the sacrifice of the industry. The tariff was removed, and
the industry is left to struggle for life, or perish, as it may.
Several capitalists who have embarked capital in cotton manufacture
on the faith of this tariff, have lost their money. Everywhere in
India, you may see evidences of native iron manufacture crushed out
by Free Trade, with nothing but slag heaps remaining to testify
to former prosperity. The splendid native iron being superseded
by cheap worthless iron of English manufacture. Many attempts
have been made by English capitalists to revive, or start, fresh
iron industries, but they have one and all been crushed out
for want of a little fostering protection. The latest attempt
nearly succeeded, but the modest request for a little help was
sternly refused:--What!!! Foster your industry? What sacrilege
to advocate the violation of every principle of Jugernāth!!!
and so the helpless babe was thrown under the relentless wheels
of Jugernāth. There was a crunch,--a faint moan from the ruined
shareholders,--and then all was over. Hurrah for Jugernāth!! Pereat
India!!!
FOOTNOTES:
[98] “India is suffering seriously in several ways, and is sinking
in poverty.” (Poverty of India, by Dadabhai Naoreji.)
[99] “India is, on the whole, a very poor country: the mass of the
population enjoy only a scanty subsistence.” (Lord Lawrence, 1864.)
“I admit the comparative poverty of this country as compared with
many other countries of the same magnitude and importance, and I am
convinced of the impolicy and injustice of imposing burdens on this
people which may be called crushing or oppressive.” (Lord Mayo,
March, 1871.)
“It is not too much to say that the very existence of our rule in
India may be gravely imperilled unless the finances of the country
are placed in a more satisfactory position.” (Professor Fawcett,
Feb., 1879.)
“The first thing to do is to point out well that frequent
iteration, which alone impresses political masses, that India is
of no real use at all to us, that we should be _richer_, stronger,
better, happier without it, that we are cramped, distracted, and
_impoverished_ by it.” (Why keep India? by Grant Allen.)
[100] Dr. Watson’s Report.
[101] Government of India Records. Home Agriculture, and Revenue
Department, clx. p. 16.
[102]
Cotton 37,300,000
Silk 2,400,000
Grain 66,800,000
Flax 8,700,000
Sugar 22,400,000
Tea 10,900,000
-----------
148,500,000
[103] “With a more certain market for wheat, it would, in many
districts” (of Australia), “be profitable to bore for or to
store water and open railways or make rivers navigable, and thus
enormously increase the area of profitable wheat production.” (Duke
of Manchester, _Nineteenth Century_, 1881.)