irths per Births per
1,000 pop. 1,000 pop.
Behar 50.5 Burmah 37.4
Punjab 48.4 Bombay 36.3
Agra 48.9 Assam 35.4
Central provinces 47.3 Madras 31.3
Bengal 42.9

Even with the continual peril from plague and famine, the government
does not encourage emigration, as you think would be considered
a wise policy, but retards it by all sorts of regulations and
restrictions, and it is difficult to drive the Hindus out of
the wretched hovels in which they live and thrive and breed like
rats or rabbits. The more wretched and comfortless a home, the
more attached the natives are to it. The less they have to leave
the more reluctant they are to leave it, but the same rule applies
to every race and every nation in the south of Europe and the
Turkish Empire, in Syria, Egypt, the East India Islands, and
wherever the population is dense and wages are low. It is the
semi-prosperous middle class who emigrate in the hope of bettering
their condition.

There is less emigration from India than from any other country.
During the last twenty years the total number of persons emigrating
from the Indian Empire was only 316,349, less than come to the
United States annually from Italy, and the statistics show that
138,660 of these persons returned to their former homes during
that period, leaving the net emigration since 1882 only 177,689
out of 300,000,000 of population. And most of these settled in
other British colonies. We have a few Hindu merchants and Parsees
in the United States, but no coolies whatever. The coolies are
working classes that have gone to British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica
and other West Indies, Natal, East Africa, Fiji and other British
possessions in the Pacific. There has been a considerable flow
of workmen back and forth between India and Burma and Ceylon,
for in those provinces labor is scarce, wages are high and large
numbers of Hindus are employed in the rice paddies and tea
plantations.

The government prevents irregular emigration. It has a "protectorate
of emigrants" who is intrusted with the enforcement of the laws.
Natives of India are not permitted to leave the country unless
they are certain of obtaining employment at the place where they
desire to go, and even then each intending emigran