ture emergencies,
the board of public works has laid out a scheme of roads and
the department of agriculture a system of irrigation upon which
the unemployed labor can be mobilized at short notice, and funds
have been set apart for the payment of their wages. This is one
of the most comprehensive schemes of charity ever conceived, and
must commend to every mind the wisdom, foresight and benevolence
of the Indian government, which, with the experience with a dozen
famines, has found that its greatest difficulty has been to relieve
the distressed and feed the hungry without making permanent paupers
of them. Every feature of famine relief nowadays involves the
employment of the needy and rejects the free distribution of
food.

3. The government is doing everything possible to encourage the
diversification of labor, to draw people from the farms and employ
them in other industries. This requires a great deal of time,
because it depends upon private enterprise, but during the last
ten years there has been a notable increase in the number of
mechanical industries and the number of people employed by them,
which it is believed will continue because of the profits that
have been realized by investors.

4. The government is also making special efforts to develop the
dormant resources of the empire. There has been a notable increase
in mining, lumbering, fishing, and other outside industries which
have not received the attention they deserved by the people of
India; and, finally,

5. The influence of the government has also been exerted so far
as could be to the encouragement of habits of thrift among the
people by the establishment of postal savings banks and other
inducements for wage-earners to save their money. Ninety per
cent of the population of India lives from hand to mouth and
depends for sustenance upon the crops raised upon little patches
of ground which in America would be too insignificant for
consideration. There is very seldom a surplus. The ordinary Hindu
never gets ahead, and, therefore, when his little crop fails he
is helpless.

[Illustration: A TEAM OF "CRITTERS"]

The munificence of Mr. Henry Phipps of New York has enabled the
government of India to provide one of the preventives of famine
by educating the people in agricultural science. A college, an
experimental farm and research laboratory have been established
on the government estate of Pusa, in southern Bengal, a tract
of 1,280 acres, which ha