46 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW 



cause they felt that in the mission they might help their 

 own people better than by earning a big salary for them- 

 selves elsewhere. This raises the Indian to the same 

 status as the missionary himself, who serves not for 

 what he can get but for what he can give to others. 

 This opens another possible occupation for Indian Chris- 

 tians and the more of such properly trained men there 

 are, the sooner will the Indian be the real leader of his 

 own people in their long struggle out of economic 

 bondage into economic freedom. 



6. The fact that so few low-caste folk possess land 

 has been used as an argument against mission agricul- 

 tural training. What is the good, our critics ask, of 

 training men in this profession when they have no land 

 of their own or are unable to rent land ? The answer is, 

 that even illiterate low-caste non-Christians, who have 

 worked on the mission farm for two or three years and 

 who have learned how to use iron plows, harrows, rollers, 

 seeding, mowing and threshing machinery and silage 

 cutters, are in great demand at wages two and one-half 

 times as great as the average village wage. We have 

 never had difficulty in getting eager laborers who wdsh 

 to improve their own condition by getting practical 

 training with us which fits them for higher wages else- 

 where. 



7. When I first came into contact with the non-Chris- 

 tian student of an Indian college, I was interested to find 

 out what he was going to do with his education. I dis- 

 covered that a very large majority were looking forward 

 to Government service. In fact for every Government 

 post which fell vacant about a hundred students applied. 

 The ninety and nine who failed to obtain the post fed 

 the ranks of the embittered and made Indian unrest more 



