Abstract

In recent times much has been said and written on this world epidemic of low prices, trade depression and economic suffering. Among those who got the worst of it, undoubtedly the agriculturists rank the first. The State and the corporate association of farmers in various countries have been making strenuous attempts to tide over the catastrophe but with only partial success so far. The sufferings of the mirasdars and the cultivators of the Tanjore delta. have come into prominence more than any others in South India. The situation has been equally worse in other districts also, though this year on atcount of fair prices of cotton it has not been so acute in some of the cotton growing tracts. The cultivating class as a whole have been hard hit and this period of depression has dawned upon them at a time when they are already cowed down by heavy indebtedness. It is not enough if we know that the agricultural class is suffering. To get at the magnitude of their distress and to form a clear conception of the conditions under which they labour and to formulate possible and practical schemes of amelioration, it will be necessary to examine in detail the economics of the average and typical cultivator working under different conditions. I mean the consideration of the actual income and expenditure, both in kind and money, of certain culti- vators elected in representative tracts. The economics of five culti- vators have been worked out in this paper, representing the garden and dry tracts of the Coimbatore district, as types of three important classes of cultivators; viz., (1) Proprietor-cultivator

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