The last item is very significant. It shows that nearly 60 per cent of the income taxpayers of India are supported by miscellaneous investments other than securities and joint stock companies. The item includes the names of merchants, individual manufacturers, farmers, mechanics, professional men and tradesmen of every class. The returns of the postal savings banks show the following classes of depositors: Number. Wage earners 352,349 Professional men with fixed incomes 233,108 Professional men with variable incomes 58,130 Domestics, or house servants 151,204 Tradesmen 32,065 Farmers 12,387 Mechanics 27,450 The interest allowed by the savings bank government of India is 3-1/2 per cent. Considering the awful misfortunes and distress which the country has endured during the last ten years, these facts are not only satisfactory but remarkable, and if it can progress so rapidly during times of plague and famine, what could be expected from it during a cycle of seasons of full crops. During the ten years which ended with 1894 the seasons were all favorable, generally speaking, although local failures of harvests occurred here and there in districts of several provinces, but they were not sufficient in area, duration or intensity to affect the material conditions of the people. The ten succeeding years, however, ending with 1904 witnessed a succession of calamities that were unprecedented either in India or anywhere else on earth, with the exception of a famine that occurred in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Those ten years not only saw two of the worst famines, but repeated visitations of widespread and fatal epidemics. It is estimated that during the ten years ending December, 1903, a million and a half of deaths were caused by the bubonic plague alone, and that the mortality from that pestilence was small in comparison with that caused by cholera, fever and famine. The effects of those epidemics had been to hamper trade, to alarm and demoralize the people, to obstruct foreign commerce, prevent investments and the development of material resources. Yet during the years 1902 and 1903 throughout all India there was abundant prosperity. This restoration of prosperity is most noticeable in several of the districts that suffered most severely from famine. To a large measure the agricultural population have been restored to their normal condition.