Births 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 emigrant must file a copy of his contract with the commissioner in order that he may be looked after in his new home, for the Indian government always sends an agent to protect the interests of its coolies to every country where they have gone in any considerable numbers.  Every intending emigrant must submit to a medical examination also, for the navigation laws prohibit vessels from taking aboard any native who does not show a certificate from an official that he is in full possession of his health and faculties and physically fit to earn his living in a strange country.  Vessels carrying emigrants are subject to inspection, and are obliged to take out licenses, which require them to observe certain rules regarding space occupied, ventilation, sanitation and the supply of food and water.  Most of the emigrants leaving India go out under contract and the terms must be approved by the agent of the government.