INDIAN FAMINES - Institute for Social and Economic Change

170 ADltfINISTRATIVE MANAGEMENT
and calculation on which the short statements
in our commissioner's telegrams are founded."
With regard to this, and to th~ portion of the
telegram which I criticise, either (1) there were
5000 men, 5000 women, and 5000 children
(and this idea is favoured by the' Daily News.'
adopting the unit family to consist of father,
mother, and one child), in which case I fail
to see wherein the pains bestowed by the correspondent
on his "average wage carefully
worked out by myself" consist; and moreover,
if such are the correct figures of the relieved
people, what becomes of prolific Bengal with
one child only in each family? How does the
population increase, and what becomes of that
bugbear of famine relief-works, the multitude
of children 1 Or (2) the average wage was not
correctly, however "carefully" it may have
been, worked out - unless, indeed, we have
some still further abnormal distribution of
numbers.
I cannot pass by this telegram without saying
that I consider it sensational. To tell
the public in England that people were on
wages of three - halfpence a - day, without