112 



theory and practice like the Japanese g-raduates from the Fisheries 

 Institute, could be certain of a field for the exercise of their 

 knowledge. Nevertheless, it is still urged that private students who 

 go to Japan for the purpose of this training, should go as the 

 delegates of some person, syndicate, or company, who will give 

 them beforehand a reasonable certainty of employment on their return,* 

 unless in the rare cases where the students are able, by fortune or 

 otherwise, themselves to take up on their return, as a personal venture, 

 such branches of the industry as they may master. In general a 

 student with assured prospects will work far better not merely because 

 of the certainty of employment on his return but because he is 

 working with a definite aim and because of his responsibility to his 

 principals. 



236. Fisheries Society, etc. — Finally, private enterprise may form 

 a Fisheries Society for the awakening of interest in the subject, for the 

 purpose of gathering and spreading trade and technical information, 

 and for small experimental effort. The example of Japan in this 

 matter is eminently one to be followed, and though much of the best 

 intellect of the Presidency is naturally uninterested in the question 

 seeing that it concerns a food distasteful to vegetarians, yet there are 

 a vast number to whom such questions are of grave importance. 

 There are educated and well-to-do men in Madras and elsewhere who 

 are ancestrally connected with the business^ and to whom it is almost a 

 duty at least to push foi'ward a knowledge of the industry even if 

 they no longer care to handle the business personally. 



F. A. Nicholson. 



* It is very regrettable to see students going to Japan not only without any 

 previous training or preparation for a particular industry but without the least certainty 

 of subsequent employment. Far more regrettable, however, is that aimless drifting 

 of students to that country with a vague hope of learning some industi-y {nesciunt 

 quid) or other which may possibly avail them on their return; there were newly, 

 arrived students who told me that they did not know what industry they would take 

 up ; one had actually to be prompted to reply that weaving was his object. Not only 

 so, but the chances of obtaining even manual, low-grade employment in a factory is 

 always problematical j a Japanese employer naturally prefers a sturdy labourer of his 

 own country to a foreigner who can barely understand the simplest orders. As for 

 admitting students \o participation in the higher branches of an industry, it is hardly 

 to be supposed that a shrewd, farseeing race of remarkable secretive capacity, 

 struggling with all their might to attain supremacy in arts and industries which have 

 cost them such time and energy and money and even life will, at all events without 

 very heavy premia, part with their knowledge and trade secrets to foreigners who may 

 besome and who in weaving and spinning matters already are, industrial rivals in the 

 Eastern trade. Equally regrettable is the short-sighted procedure of taking up an 

 industry especially those of a complex and most costly nature, without first ascertain- 

 ing the existence of suitable and accessible supplies of material without which the 

 projected industry could not only not compete with Europe but could not even exist. 



