a great advantage in this industry, and is not improbably the cause of its existence here.
The art of house-building is much studied in the district. In every large town there are professional architects. Those of Rajahmundry and Dowlaishweram are well known and are employed in all the low-country taluks.
There are five printing-presses at Cocanada and the same number at Rajahmundry. Except two of those at Cocanada, namely the Sujana Ranjani press and Messrs. Hall, Wilson & Co.'s press, both of which employ about 25 men, these are very small affairs. In the former of the two, vernacular books and two Telugu periodicals, one weekly and one monthly, are printed; and the latter carries on a general business. Another monthly Telugu newspaper is printed at another press at Cocanada, and two more at Rajahmundry. At the latter town a weekly and a fortnightly paper are printed in English.
Several large rice-husking mills are at work in the district. The most important is that owned by the Coringa Rice Mills Company at Georgepet near Coringa, which employs a hundred men. There are also three more in Cocanada and four in Rajahmundry, two of which are not now working Another at Amalápuram has also stopped work for the present. The mills buy the paddy outright and export the husked rice, and do not husk paddy for payment, as is sometimes done.
There are several indigo factories in the Amalápuram taluk, of which seven employ 30 men or more in the season. Those at Vélanakapalli and Ayinavalli employ 75 and 150 hands respectively.
At one time a large ship-building industry was carried on in Tállarévu on the Coringa river. Some two generations ago, it is said, about a hundred big ships used to be built, and four times that number repaired, every year; and boats came for repairs even from Negapatam and Chittagong. What with the increasing use of steam, and the silting up of the Corirga river, the industry is now almost dead. As recently as 25 years ago, it is said, ten or fifteen sea-going boats were built every year and some fifty repaired, but in 1903 only five were built, in 1904 only one, and in 1905 none at all, while only two ships were repaired in 1903 and in 1904. The boats built and repaired were native brigs of a hundred tons or so.
Of the enterprises managed by European capital, the most important are the Public Works workshops at Dowlaishweram, which comprise a foundry, and carpenters', fitters' and smiths' shops. They employ a daily average of 145 men, and
