CHAPTER VI.
OCCUPATIONS AND TRADE.
OCCUPATIONS— Agriculture and pasture. ARTS AND INDUSTRIES — Jute-weaving — Cotton-weaving; carpets — Cloths — Made by Dombus in the Agency — On the plains by several castes — Silk-weavers' threads-Indigo — Jaggery — Oils — Tanning — Manganese-mining — Glass bangles — Snuff-boxes — Amulets — Metal-work; gold and silver — Brass and bell-metal — Iron — Ivory-work— Lacquer-work — Mats, etc. Trade — Sea-borne trade — Road- and rail-borne trade — Mechanism of trade. Weights and Measures— Tables of weight — Grain and liquid measures — Lineal measures.
As in every other district in the Presidency, so in Vizagapatam, the proportion of the people who live by tilling the land and pastoral callings enormously outweighs the number of those who subsist by all other occupations put together. In the plain taluks the percentage of these people to the total population (70.5) is about equal to the average for the Presidency as a whole, but the figure in the Agency (84.2) is naturally much larger, and is the highest recorded in any part of Madras.
Agricultural methods have been referred to already in Chapter IV and it remains to consider here the callings which are connected with arts and industries and with trade. The ordinary village handicrafts are much the same as elsewhere and do not require specific mention.
The arts and industries of Vizagapatam are few and insignificant. The handicraft which employs the greatest number of the people is weaving. This consists of the weaving of jute and cotton, for all-silk fabrics are not made in the district, nor is wool ever woven. All the hundreds of blankets used in the Agency are imported.
The local 'jute' is spun and woven into gunny-bags by steam at the mill at Chittivalasa near Bimlipatam referred to on p. 228 below. In three or four villages near Pálkonda and one or two round Anakápalle this same fibre is woven on hand-looms, by people of the Perike caste, into long strips of gunny, which are sold to the Kómati grain-traders and by them cut up and stitched into bags.{{center|122}
