Economics of Jute

The gravity of the fall in the price of jute arises as much from this higher percentage decline in the price of the fibre as from the fact that in normal years the jute crop alone accounts for more than half the total value of marketable crops realised by the agriculturists in Bengal. [...] It is no less a matter of concern to the Government of Bengal regarding the agrarian situation in the Province although their revenue realisations may not suffer any considerable diminution owing to the security of the Permanent Settlement The maladjustments in the trade which constitute the jute problem are thus to be viewed specially from the standpoint of the growers of the fibre although it [...] The question engaged the serious attention of the Government of Bengal in 1900 when as a result of several representations made to them by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce urging that the quality of the fibre was deteriorating the matter was referred by the Local Government to a Sub-Committee of the Board of Scientific Advice for enquiry. [...] In the jute growing tracts cultivators frequently form themselves into association on the principle of mutual co-operation and undertake by turn the cultivation of the field or the prparation of the fibre for the aggregate yield." The above estimate—even though it makes allowance for the payment of the total labour applied to the cultiva-. [...] In other words it is only because by the grant of a protective tariff the Government enabled the industry to sell the manufactured commodity at a certain level of remunerative price that they could demand of the industry to pass on a share of the benefit received by it from the tariff to the growers of cane in the form of a minimum price.