Miscellaneous. 



448 



[November, 1910. 



and useless. Not till Indian capital 

 finances Indian industries will the people 

 gradually be able to acquire that ex- 

 perience which it is necessary that 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 iudustry. 



The cotton and jute industries and 

 mining 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 th6 

 internal resulting in an unhealthy and 

 one-sided development of the country's 

 resources. Roads, railways, telegraphs, 

 the construction of canals, every im- 

 provement in the means of trans- 

 port both by sea and land has con- 

 tributed to the difficulties and, in 

 many cases, to the ultimate dis- 

 comfiture of the Indian artisan. The 

 attention of Government has been almost 

 entirely directed to the opening of the 

 laud, to the provision of irrigation ; 

 assistance has in more than one case 

 been given directly to the efforts 

 of Englisn manufacturers to exploit 

 Indian markets, whilst the industrious 

 artisan has been left severely alone 

 to combat as best he can the grow- 

 ing 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 afford- 

 ing 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 contribute so 

 largely to success in which he is so con- 

 spicuously deficient. He lacks capital 

 and organisation, his tools and imple- 

 ments 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 im- 

 prove his position that would render him 

 independent of their aid. He is indus- 

 trious 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 techni- 

 cal knowledge is a negligible quantity, 

 and of improved trade processes and 

 methods he has but a slight acquain- 

 tance. 



It would, however, be far from the 

 truth to say that he has remained entirely 

 uninfluenced by the progress made dur- 

 ing the last century. A few typical 

 illustrations will serve to indicate one 

 of the directions in which we must look 

 for advance. (1) 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 ad- 

 vantage of subdivision of labour is so far 

 recognised that the preparation of warps 

 on these mills has become a distinct busi- 

 ness. (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 in- 

 variably use some tools of European 

 manufacture. (6) Singer's sewing machi- 

 nes are to 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 keep- 

 ing them in working order. 



It would be easy to multiply illustra- 

 tions of this kind, especially in regard to 

 agriculture and its dependent trades and 

 those industries which have been influ- 

 enced by the workshops and factories to 

 be round in the centres of modern indus- 

 trial activity. We may rest assured 

 that there will be no opposition to the 

 introduction of improved methods of 

 working if it can be clearly shown that 

 they are real improvements. The reputa- 

 tion that Indians are averse from all 

 change and are obstinately wedded to 

 the antiquated ways of their forefathers 

 is not justly deserved. They are conser- 

 vative but they know their own business 

 fairly well and many of the so called 

 improvements which they have rejected 

 were really unsuitable innovations. 



The Development op Small-Scale 

 Industrial Enterprises. 



India offers a great problem to the 

 civilised world. It has abundance of 

 cheap labour which, if properly trained, 

 would be skilled ; it needs to be shown 

 how to apply this labour to the best 

 advantage. The whole trend of modern 

 progress has been to replace the man by 

 the machine, to replace the individual 



