566 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



justification for the hope that a permanent place may be found 

 for him in the industrial future of India. What we have to 

 do is to supply the artisan with all those factors that con- 

 tribute so largely to industrial success in which he is so 

 conspicuously deficient. He lacks capital and organisation, 

 his tools and implements are primitive and imperfect, he has 

 no commercial knowledge and in his dealings with the outside 

 world he is almost always in the hands of money-lenders and 

 petty traders, who make their profit out of his helplessness 

 and strenuously resist any attempts to improve his position 

 that would render him independent of their aid. He is in- 

 dustrious and would be intelligent were it not that his faculties 

 are undeveloped owing to the narrow field in which there is 

 scope for exercising them. His technical knowledge is a 

 negligible quantity and of improved trade processes and 

 methods he has but a slight acquaintance. 



It would however be far from the truth to say that he has 

 remained entirely uninfluenced by the progress made during 

 the last century. A few typical illustrations will serve to 

 indicate one of the directions in which we must look for 

 advance, (i) The ryot, who grows sugar cane, has entirely 

 discarded the old wooden mills in favour of those made of 

 cast iron, with the result that the work is done with less 

 labour and a higher percentage of juice is extracted. (2) In 

 many parts of the South of India the weavers prepare their 

 warps on rotary mills and in some places the advantage of 

 subdivision of labour is so far recognised that the preparation 

 of warps on these mills has become a distinct business. (3) The 

 extraction of oil from seeds is largely done in screw presses 

 worked by hand in place of the old-fashioned rotary wooden 

 mill. (4) The fly-shuttle loom has been substituted for the native 

 hand loom among the weavers of certain districts of Bengal, 

 with the result that their speed in weaving has been doubled. 

 (5) Wood and metal workers almost invariably use some tools 

 of European manufacture. (6) Singer's sewing machines are 

 to be found in almost every tailor's shop in the country and, 

 although these machines are somewhat delicate and complicated 

 pieces of mechanism, the facilities for the repair or renewal 

 of parts have been so widely diffused that the tailors find no 

 difficulty in keeping them in working order. 



It would be easy to multiply illustrations oi this kind, 



