of 25 inhabitants and 100 cattle, 5 men and 20 cattle remain. In Pangari, which is a rich Bagayat village, out of 2,175 cattle, 625 alone remain. The neighbouring village of Nahanpur has been entirely abandoned by the few people that remained there after the first emigration. The cause of this abandonment is stated to be that a gang of 50 men attacked the village a few days ago, and though the attack was repelled the people have lost their confidence and have flocked into Pangari. Altogether the condition of the taluk, though not so bad as that of Karmali, is wretched enough, and it is quite clear that but for the help afforded by the relief works, it would have been found impossible to hold the people together. Even as it is, the relief works opened by Government in this taluk do not appear to be sufficient to meet the wants of the labouring classes who have been thrown out of employment. On the Barsi and Yedsi road, during the six weeks that the work has been in progress, the number of labourers increased from 600 during the first week to 1,500 during the second week, 3,000 during the fourth week, and 5,500 during the sixth week, and yet there were many more labourers coming to the work willing to labour the whole day on starvation wages. Such is the sad plight to which this rich cotton-growing district has been reduced during the first two months of the famine. No wonder if the wretchedness and misery of the less favoured districts is so complete as to baffle all attempts at amelioration which stops short of a complete change in the existing system of administering the land revenue.

'The Madhi district comes next in the order, lying at it does to the south-east of Barsi. In the village of Kurdi, out of a population of 4,000 inhabitants and 1,450 cattle, there remain about 2,100 inhabitants and 450 cattle, These numbers include Kurdi and its ham

TERRIBLE DISTRESS IN KALADGHI DISTRICT. 293

lets. In the town of Kurdi itself, out of a population of 2,500 inhabitants and 1,088 cattle, only 600 inhabitants and 100 cattle remain. In Angér out of 3,900 inhabitants and 3,700 cattle, 2,000 men and 1,000 cattle remain. Altogether about 50 per cent. of the men and 60 per cent. of the cattle have left the taluk on account of the pressure of the famine. In the neighbouring Pandharpur and Sangolee taluks, about which detailed information has not been received, it appears that nearly 50 per cent. of the 80,000 inhabitants of the Pandharpur taluk and 60,000 inhabitants of the Sangolee taluk have left their homes, and of the cattle about two-thirds have either perished or been removed from the districts. The same observation holds true of another taluk.

'With regard to the Kaladghi district, it appears from the accounts received by the Sabha, that the distress there is terrible. The rainfall in this district has been both absolutely and proportionately the most scanty in the whole of the Presidency, lower even than the Sholapur rainfall. The rise of prices is the highest as compared with the other famine districts. Like Sholapur, the whole district is affected by famine. Though the affected population exceeds that of any other famine district, the amount expended on the famine works shows the smallest total, about 34,000 rs. in all, being only 10 per cent. of the money spent in the Sholapur district. As a matter of fact, the relief work arrangements in this district were not set on a proper footing during the first month or two of the famine, and as a consequence the people have left and are still leaving in large numbers for the Nizam's territory. This unreasonable delay on the part of the local officers to commence relief works accounts for the fact that while the tide of emigration has stopped in all the

central districts, it does not seem to have received a similar check in the Kaladghi district. It is only lately that relief works have been opened in that district on any extensive scale, and already hundreds and thousands of labourers are flocking to be employed, till the crowd is so great that the officers in charge of the works find it impossible to register them all. Starvation and cholera cases are happening daily. Hundreds of people are now leaving.

When reduced to such extremities they flock to the works, and as the labourers are not paid daily or on alternate days, they have often to work ten or twelve days before getting any wages. This state of things urgently calls for the most serious attention of the authorities in these parts. I submit that in a crisis like the present, the distress occasioned by delaying the payment of wages should be removed by the enlistment of a larger number of pay officers.'

Other points were dealt with, and the Sabha then expressed itself on the adequacy or inadequacy of the wage given to labourers on works. 'The new sliding scale of wages,' they said, 'threatens to inflict death upon many hundreds of persons by the slow process of gradual starvation. This change of resolution1 has created an uneasy feeling all over the country, and the small increase of revenue which may be thus realised will engender much bitterness and misery, and will be altogether too dearly purchased with the loss of the moral strength and confidence which timely liberality in this respect cannot fail to secure. I accordingly request that the resolution in question be reconsidered, and that steps be taken to re-affirm the liberal instructions contained in the previous resolution of November 15.'

1 The rate was slightly lowered in December.

THE SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES.

295

The reply to this complaint-a very proper one, and loyally expressed-was dignified and, supposing all was working well, very satisfactory. The Government said: The sliding scale of wages on relief works adopted by Government is based on intelligible principles, and provides that a man so employed shall never receive less than one anna in addition to a sum of money that will purchase 1 lb. of grain. A heavy calamity has fallen on the whole community, and the poor class must bear their share of suffering. Government has no desire to carry on works to the extent that such works are now being prosecuted apart from the question of relief, or to expend the large sums of public money upon them that are now being spent. All that Government can rightly do in the interests of the entire community is to afford people who might otherwise starve an opportunity of earning a bare subsistence in return for such labour as they are able to perform; and the sliding scale of wages, while it secures that a labourer shall receive sufficient to support him in health, adjusts and equalises the rates of wages over the whole affected area, and regulates them in proportion to the prices at which food is procurable. If it were not for the sliding scale, as the price of staple food grains varies greatly in different localities, persons on relief works might in some districts earn more than a subsistence, and an injustice would thus be done to the general tax-paying community; in other districts the labourers would, in the absence of a sliding scale, earn less than a subsistence, and would in consequence be sufferers.'

CHAPTER II.

A GAME AT CROSS PURPOSES IN HIGH QUARTERS.

THE Governor of Bombay was at the Delhi Assemblage during the earlier days of January, whither he went at the latest possible moment, and whence he returned without an hour's delay, as soon as his presence could be dispensed with. The Viceroy gave a banquet in Sir Philip Wodehouse's honour, and, in proposing his health, eulogised his career from the time when he entered her Majesty's service as a writer in the Ceylon Civil Service thirty years previously, to his able administration of the famine in his Presidency. The Viceroy likewise gave a dinner in honour of the Governor of Madras, but did not propose his Grace's health thereat, which caused much surmise and gave occasion to many rumours in the camp. All the high officials, however, who were gathered round the Viceroy's table could not be expected to applaud with much sincerity the high terms of praise employed by Lord Lytton to do honour to his guest from Bombay. Much friction had been excited between the Governor General's Council and the Government of Bombay, and the correspondence, to this date, though the very embodiment of courtesy, was couched in strong official language, and each Council was striving to exhibit the hand of iron under the glove of velvet. Matters were not improved, too, in the Viceroy's camp by his Excellency having thrown in his adherence with the