od woman,
Queen Victoria, assumed the title of empress, more than 5,000,000
of her subjects died from hunger. Yet the population without
immigration is continually increasing from natural causes. The
net increase during the ten years from 1891 to 1901 was 7,046,385.
The, struggle for life is becoming greater every year; wages are
going down instead of up, notwithstanding the rapid increase
of manufacturing industries, the extension of the railway system
and other sources of wealth and employment that are being rapidly
developed.

More than 200,000,000 persons in India are living upon less than
5 cents a day of our money; more than 100,000,000 are living
upon less than 3 cents; more than 50,000,000 upon less than 1
cent and at least two-thirds of the entire population do not
have food enough during any year of their lives to supply the
nourishment demanded by the human system. As I have already shown,
there are only two acres of land under cultivation for each
inhabitant of India. This includes gardens, parks and pastures,
and it is not evenly distributed. In many parts of the country,
millions are compelled to live upon an average of one-fourth
of an acre of land and millions more upon half an acre each,
whereas an average of five acres of agricultural land per capita
of population is believed to be necessary to the prosperity of
a nation.

Few countries have such an enormous birth rate and death rate.
Nowhere else are babies born in such enormous numbers, and nowhere
does death reap such awful harvests. Sometimes a single famine or
plague suddenly sweeps millions into eternity, and their absence
is scarcely noticed. Before the present sanitary regulations and
inspections were introduced the death rate was nearly double
what it is now; indeed, some experts estimate that it must have
been several times as great, but no records were kept in some
of the provinces, and in most of them, they were incomplete and
inaccurate. India is now in a healthier condition than ever before,
and yet the death rate varies from 31.10 per 1,000 in the cold
provinces of Agra and Oudh to 82.7 per 1,000 in the tropical
regions of Behar. In Bombay last year the rate was 70.07 per
1,000; in the central provinces 56.75; in the Punjab, which has
a wide area in northwestern India, it was 47.7 and in Bengal
36.63.

The birth rate is almost as large, the following table being reported
from the principal provinces named:

B