It was still more difficult to discover the real condition of the peasants and labourers in the country compared to the workpeople in the towns. In villages near the relief works, the cultivators (ryots) told me they paid sometimes one and sometimes ten rupees a bigha (rather over half an acre) to the zemindar, but their average rent appeared to be about two rupees a bigha (say 5_s._ 6_d._ an acre). Some said they thought they made or saved ten or even twenty rupees a year for marriages, births, funerals, ceremonies, and pilgrimages. But nearly all of them said they saved nothing. They admitted, however, that for a daughter’s marriage a ryot would sometimes spend as much as two hundred rupees, borrowed from the zemindar or banya (money-lender), and when I asked one of them what he borrowed on if he had no savings, he replied that he borrowed on his “respectability,” which is, I suppose, what most people borrow on. At the back of the borrower’s mind, I think, is the continual hope for a “bumper” crop that will start him free again, but as the rate of interest without solid security was anything from 25 to 36 per cent. both here and in the Punjab, the ryot often became little more than a labourer in the employment of the money-lender, who advanced him seed and stock and took the crop. In a village outside Lahore I found the cultivators had agreed among themselves not to spend money on marriages in future, though these village festivals had been their only joy, and now, unless a juggler or reciter came round, they had nothing whatever to break the monotony of toil upon the land—not even a school. Neither were there any schools in the villages I visited near Allahabad, nor in those near Delhi. But though in many cases the ryot had become little better than a labourer in the employment of a landowner or money-lender, there was still a recognized class of landless labourers below him. In the villages near the relief works the labourer (who is always paid in kind) got 2½ lbs. of grain for a day’s work from dawn to dark with two hours off, and he could count on work most of the year if the rains were good. He also received one pair of shoes, one cloth, and ground for his hut, which he built himself. Some of the labourers told me of a further gift of three rupees a year (4_s._) which seemed to be a kind of Christmas-box. If the wife worked she got 1⅛ lb. of grain a day. Turned into money, at the village price of grain, the labourer’s wage would thus be about 2_d._ a day, apart from his wife’s earnings (say 1_d._) and the extras I have mentioned.[59] [Illustration: SWADESHI WEAVERS, BOMBAY MILLS. SWADESHI WEAVERS, MADRAS HAND-LOOMS. [_Face p. 284._ ]