Until recently, the inhabitants of towns and villages outside the capital lived a life not greatly different from that of their ancestors: one which revolved around the annual cycle of planting, growing, and the harvest, with religious festivals to break the monotony of living. Poverty, as understood in the industrial Occident, was unknown for, while little actual money was seen by the average family during the course of a year, yet a house could be built of bamboo in a day or two; fruit trees bore around the year; clothing was woven at home and shoes were little worn; virtually everyone owned productive land or was at liberty to clear a tract from the forest which covers much of the thinly populated country; taxes were light and could be paid by a few days' labor on some project of public works.
During the decade just passed the Government has initiated a positive program aimed at raising the standards of living of the common people and especially of the peasants who constitute the great majority. Among the means adopted have been the development of such new sources of gain as the raising of tobacco and cotton on a large scale; the construction of great irrigation projects and the development of sources of electric power; the education of the farmer in livestock breeding and scientific agriculture; the establishment of agencies to enable him to obtain a fair market for his produce; the spread of public-health and medical services in far corners of the provinces. The results of this experiment had not yet become clear when the war interfered to hinder its fulfillment.
The political aspect of the program leaned heavily toward economic nationalism, in an endeavor to counteract the excessive proportion of foreign capital in the country and to encourage more active participation by the Thai in the building-up of their own land. If the means to these laudable ends were perverted, by the paid agents of Japanese propaganda and a handful of powerful men within the Thai Government, to serve the cause of "co-prosperity," it must not therefore be assumed that the misfortunes which have recently befallen them are traceable to any activities and desires on the part of the Thai people themselves.