where loans can be got at a merely nominal interest, the cultivators,
with the additional help of occasional cooly work, did not average in
their earnings four rupees a month, some having to keep a family on
three and a half, while if a bullock died, or a plough had to be
procured, it meant positive hunger and increased indebtedness to supply
those needs.

The fact is that in many districts there is not only an increase of
population to be sustained by a constantly narrowing area of cultivated
land, but the land itself is deteriorating through the unendurable
pressure put upon it. As the forests grow more distant through being
used up for timber and fuel, wood becomes dearer. The manure which ought
to go upon the land is therefore by necessity consumed for fuel. The
ground in consequence becomes impoverished. As the struggle for
existence becomes fiercer, the people are unable to let their land
periodically lie fallow, so the crops grow lighter. Again, the ryot is
not only unable properly to feed himself, but his bullocks share a
similar fate. The feeble animals can only draw a plough which merely
scratches the surface of the ground. Furthermore, as the population
increases the land is divided into smaller and smaller holdings. The
struggle against the advancing tide of adversity cannot be maintained.
Inch by inch the tide rolls up, pushing the border-landers closer and
closer upon the black rocks of famine, to escape which they at length
plunge into the sea amongst the submerged millions, who, weary and
bitter and despairing, or with blind submission to the iron hand of
fate, have grown hopelessly and miserably indifferent.

Now, it is notorious that millions live thus on the border-land. Granted
that after the harvest border-landers may for a time get two good meals
a day. Yet as the reserve store dwindles down and long before