THE INDIAN INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 565 



to meet the requirements of existing industries. So long as 

 the great organised industries in the country are mainly con- 

 trolled by Europeans, so long will the technical assistants be 

 obtained from Europe, and Indians must go there for training 

 and to acquire experience if they want to take a part in such 

 work. This is tacitly admitted by the increasing numbers who 

 year by year leave India to seek such instruction in countries 

 more favourably situated for supplying it. The unfortunate 

 feature in this movement is that the majority of the students 

 who go abroad are inadequately prepared in the way of pre- 

 liminary education to avail themselves of the facilities which 

 they find placed at their disposal and they are in almost every 

 case quite unable to supplement the purely college courses of 

 technology by practical experience in workshops and manu- 

 factories, without which their whole training is imperfect and 

 useless. Not till Indian capital finances Indian industries will 

 the people gradually be able to acquire that experience which 

 it is necessary they should possess if they are ever to manage 

 their own enterprises successfully. The fact that this has to 

 a large extent been accomplished in the cotton trade in some 

 degree accounts for the remarkable progress of that industry. 



The cotton and jute industries and mining for coal in Bengal 

 and gold in Mysore have developed because of certain natural 

 facilities or because of the existence of easy markets in which 

 the products were in demand, but the bulk of the industrial 

 work of India is languishing in face of the competition with 

 imports. The external trade of the country has grown at the 

 expense of the internal, resulting in an unhealthy and one-sided 

 development of the country's resources. Roads, railways, 

 telegraphs, the construction of the Suez Canal, every improve- 

 ment in the means of transport both by sea and land has 

 contributed to the difficulties and, in many cases, to the 

 ultimate discomfiture of the Indian artisan. The attention of 

 Government has been almost entirely directed to the opening 

 up of the land, to the provision of irrigation ; assistance has 

 in more than one case been given directly to the efforts of 

 English manufacturers to exploit Indian markets, whilst the 

 industrious artisan has been left severely alone to combat 

 as best he can the growing difficulties of his position. That 

 he has survived so long may be taken as evidence of the 

 possession of certain elements of vitality and as affording 



