Large tracts of land in northern India are owned by municipalities and village communities, whose officials receive the rents and pay the taxes.  Other large tracts have been inherited from the invaders and conquerors of the country.  It is customary in India for the landlord to receive his rent in a part of the crop, and the government in turn receives a share of this rent in lieu of taxes.  This is an ancient system which the British government has never interfered with, and any attempt to modify or change it would undoubtedly be resisted.  At the same time the rents are largely regulated by the taxes.  These customs, which have come down from the Mogul empire, have been defined and strengthened by time and experience.  Nearly every province has its own and different laws and customs on the subject, but the variation is due not to legislation, but to public sentiment.  The tenant as well as the landlord insists that the assessments of taxes shall be made before the rent rate is determined, and this occurs in almost every province, although variations in rent and changes of proprietorship and tenantry very seldom occur.  Wherever there has been a change during the present generation it has been in favor of the tenants.  The rates of rent and taxation naturally vary according to the productive power of the land, the advantages of climate and rainfall, the facilities for reaching market and other conditions.  But the average tax represents about two-thirds of a rupee per acre, or 21 cents in American money.

We have been accustomed to consider India a great wheat producing country, and you often hear of apprehension on the part of American political economists lest its cheap labor and enormous area should give our wheat growers serious competition.  But there is not the slightest ground for apprehension.  While the area planted to wheat in India might be doubled, and farm labor earns only a few cents a day, the methods of cultivation are so primitive and the results of that cheap labor are comparatively so small, that they can never count seriously against our wheat farms which are tilled and harvested with machinery and intelligence.  No article in the Indian export trade has been so irregular or has experienced greater vicissitudes than wheat.  The highest figure ever reached in the value of exports was during the years 1891-92, when there was an exceptional crop, and the exports reached $47,500,000.  The average for the preceding ten years was $25,970,000, while the average for the succeeding ten years, ending 1901-02, was only $12,740,000.  This extraordinary decrease was due to the failure of the crop year after year and the influence of the famines of 1897 and 1900.  The bulk of the wheat produced in India is consumed within the districts where it is raised, and the average size of the wheat farms is less than five acres.  More than three-fourths of the India wheat crop is grown on little patches of ground only a few feet square, and sold in the local markets.  The great bulk of the wheat exported comes from the large farms or is turned in to the owners of land rented to tenants for shares of the crops produced.