These wages, however, correspond with those received by persons in other lines of employment.  The postmen employed by the government, or letter carriers as we call them, receive a maximum of only 12.41 rupees a month, which is about $3.50, and a minimum of 9.25, which is equivalent to $3.08 in our money.  Able-bodied and skilled mechanics—­masons, carpenters and blacksmiths—­get no more than $2.50 to $3.50 a month, and bookkeepers, clerks and others having indoor occupations, from $4.10 to $5.50 per month.  Taking all of the wage-earners together in India, their compensation per month is just about as much as the same class receive per day in the United States.

The encouragement of manufacturing is one of the methods the government has adopted to prevent or mitigate famines, and its policy is gradually becoming felt by the increase of mechanical industries and the employment of the coolie class in lines other than agriculture.  At the same time, the problem is complicated by the fact that the greater part of the mechanical products of India have always been produced in the households.  Each village has its own weavers, carpenters, brass workers, blacksmiths and potters, who are not able to compete with machine-made goods.  Many of these local craftsmen have attained a high standard of artistic skill in making up silk, wool, linen, cotton, carpets, brass, iron, silver, wood, ivory and other materials.  But their arts must necessarily decay or depreciate if the local markets are flooded with cheap products from factories, and there a question of serious consequence has arisen.

There is very active rivalry in the tea trade of late years.  China formerly supplied the world.  Thirty years ago very little was exported from any other country.  Then Japan came in as an energetic competitor and sent its tea around everywhere, but the consumption increased as rapidly as the cultivation, so that China kept her share of the trade.  About fifteen years ago India came into the market; and then Ceylon.  The Ceylon export trade has been managed very skillfully.  There has been an enormous increase in the acreage planted, and 92 per cent of the product has been sent to the United Kingdom, where it has gradually supplanted that of China and Japan.  Australia has also become a large consumer of India tea, and the loyalty with which the two great colonies of Great Britain have stood together is commendable.  In England alone the consumption of India tea has increased nearly 70 per cent within the last ten years.  This is the result of careful and intelligent effort on the part of the government.  While wild tea is found in Assam and in several of the states adjoining the Himalayas, tea growing is practically a new thing in India compared with China and Japan.  It was not until 1830, when Lord William Benthinck was viceroy, that any considerable amount of tea was produced in India.  He introduced the plant from China and brought men from that country at the expense of the