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instance, are its efforts to improve existing preservative 

 methods, and its actual creation of a canning and an oil 

 and guano industry. 



The Government stations are purely experimental 

 and instructional ; money, thought and time are freely 

 expended in experiment, and the results of these 

 experiments, when successful, are promulgated by all 

 possible means. Meanwhile an expert staff is growing 

 up which will supply — as it has begun to supply — men 

 trained in our methods, and will thus gradually get rid 

 of a grave difficulty found in introducing new industries, 

 viz., the absence of skilled artisans. Moreover, a 

 superior staff is being gradually formed which will be 

 available to supervise private operations, and the stations 

 will shortly be centres where instructors, inspectors, 

 experts, foremen, etc., can be thoroughly trained. The 

 stations are not commercial except for several reasons 

 viz., (i) the need to get rid of the products of experiment 

 which are necessarily numerous and costly ; the canning 

 experiments already number nearly 700, and each 

 experiment may involve hundreds of tins, since it is 

 impossible to test or create an industry by petty 

 laboratory methods ; (2) the need to ascertain the public 

 tastes and the true cost of goods by the time they are put 

 into the consumer's hands. A third reason is to advertise 

 successes, so that private enterprise may be induced to 

 enter the field. The last two reasons coupled with the 

 necessity for exhibiting a rapid up-to-date plant for 

 imitation, are the warrant for the new departure at 

 Beypore, which will, it is hoped, be at once a stimulation 

 and a model to private enterprise. It is, in fact, the 

 stimulation and education of private enterprise that are 

 the aim of the department. It may be added that, except 

 for a small European trade in canned goods, usually 

 high-priced, there is no existing trade to injure. 



The second criticism is answered by pointing out 

 for the hundredth time that the department is experi- 

 mental and the plant is experimental and petty but 

 that, as mentioned above, the department is about to 

 make a new advance in view to assist private enterprise ; 

 in working out this new advance the new plant for the 

 packing, etc., of sanitary, solderless tins will put 

 considerable quantities of goods on the market. 

 Meanwhile the cannery has sold during the current year 

 a fair number of tins priced at several thousand rupees. 



