Part 3 (1/2)
The mills may suffer destruction. The spinning wheel is a national necessity. I would ask sceptics to go to the many poor homes where the spinning wheel is again supplementing their slender resources and ask the inmates whether the spinning wheel has not brought joy to their homes.
Thank G.o.d, the reward issued by Mr. Rewashanker Jagjiwan bids fair to bear fruit. In a short time India will possess a renovated spinning wheel--a wonderful invention of a patient Deccan artisan. It is made out of simple materials. There is no great complication about it. It will be cheap and capable of being easily mended. It will give more yarn than the ordinary wheel and is capable of being worked by a five years old boy or girl. But whether the new machine proves what it claims to be or it does not, I feel convinced that the revival of hand-spinning and hand-weaving will make the largest contribution to the economic and the moral regeneration of India. The millions must have a simple industry to supplement agriculture. Spinning was the cottage industry years ago and if the millions are to be saved from starvation, they must be enabled to reintroduce spinning in their homes, and every village must repossess its own weaver.
_Y. I.--21st July 1920._
”HANDLOOMS OR POWERMILLS?”
Whenever an attempt has been made, as it is being made to-day, to encourage the use and production of hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, many have looked askance whether it is intended in this age of mechanical industrialism to supplant the latter by medieval handlooms. The issue is placed between the hand power and the power mill. A correspondent of the _Janmabhumi_ falls into this common error. Apparently agitated at the idea of reviving the home industries, he exclaims, ”The real question for consideration with us or with any people to-day is not whether the handloom will or will not be able to hold its own against the power loom, or whether it cannot feed millions of families or clothe millions more in home-made dress; but which will contribute to the economic and political power of a nation or country, whether it is the handloom or the power-mill? Handicrafts or machine industries--that is the real issue.”
It is not quite clear from the above what the notions of the correspondent are about the economic and political power of this country. We cannot imagine him to seriously believe--though his argument runs as if he does--that that power can be achieved without feeding and clothing the millions of our half-starving and half-naked men, women and children. The political and economic power of a nation depends even in this ”age of mechanical industrialism,” not on its powerful machines but on its powerful men. Germany was equipped with the best and most powerful and modern machinery, but it failed because at the last moment the power of its nation failed. We want to organise our national power.
This can be done not by adopting the best methods of production only but by the best method of _both_ the production and the distribution.
Production that is the manufacture of cloth in this particular instance can be brought about in two ways; (1) by establis.h.i.+ng new mills and increasing the output or producing capacity of each mill and (2) by increasing the number of hand-looms and improving them. All these activities can go together. The notion of a compet.i.tion between the hand-loom and the power mill has been shown by such an eminent economist as Prof. Radha Kamal Mukerjea to be ”altogether wrong.” Says Mr. Mukerjea in his _Foundations of Indian Economics_:
”The hand-loom does not compete with the mill, it supplements it in the following way:
(1) It produces special kinds of goods which cannot be woven in the mills.
(2) It utilizes yarn below and above certain counts which cannot at present be used on the power-mill.
(3) It will consume the surplus stock of Indian spinning mills which need not then be sent out of the country.
(4) Being mainly a village-industry, it supplies the local demand, at the same time gives employment to small capitalists, weavers and other village workmen and
(5) lastly it will supply the long-felt want of, and honest field of, work and livelihood for educated Indians.”
But even this is not all that can be said in favour of hand-loom industry. Mill industry no doubt can be a powerful aid to the promotion of Swades.h.i.+. But apart from the bitter struggle, strife and demoralisation of the capitalist and the workman (as explained by the eminent scholar, administrator and economist, the late Mr. Romesh Chundra Dutt) it has led to, the question is: Can it solve the problem which pure Swades.h.i.+ is designed and sought to do and which arises only because of its abandonment? Every writer of note on the industries of India, whatever his ideas and conclusions about the future of Indian Industrialism may be, has shown that there was a time and that was even till the Early British Rule in India--where spinning and weaving, only next to agriculture, were the great national industries of India, when all the cotton was spun by hand and every portion of the work was done by the farming population which augmented its resources by spinning and weaving. Mr. Dutt has given extracts from the statistical observations of Dr. Francis Buchanan's economic enquiries in Southern and Northern India, conducted between 1798 and 1814. They show how many hundreds of thousands of our men, women and children worked on this industry--mostly in their leisure time--each day and earned crores of rupees annually.
How our home-industries came to the sad plight they are in to-day is an open secret, admitted by all authorities and need not be repeated here.
Suffice it to say that the problem to-day is not to bring about that political and economic re-organisation of our country, which disturbs the West to-day--an organisation which has led to the breaking up of the society by ceaseless struggles, bitterness and rupture between Capital and Labour. We want to work out the real political and economic regeneration of the country by Swades.h.i.+. And the problem of the Swades.h.i.+ is the problem of 80 per cent. of our population who spend more than six months of the year in enforced idleness, eking, throughout the year, a miserable, half-starving and half-naked existence. We must find out suitable work for them during their idle hours. We must make them a real a.s.set and power to the nation. Pure Swades.h.i.+ alone can do it.
_Y. I.--28th July 1920._
HAND-SPINNING AND HAND-WEAVING
Some people spurn the idea of making in this age of mechanism hand-spinning and hand-weaving a national industry, but they forget there are millions of their countrymen in this age who, for want of suitable occupation, are eking out a most miserable existence, and thousands who die of starvation and underfeeding every year, whereas only a hundred years ago hand-spinning and hand-weaving proved an insurance against a pauper's death. The extent to which relief was provided by this industry is recorded by Mr. Dutt in his ”History of India: Victorian age” from the investigations conducted by Dr. Buchanan for seven years, 1813-1820. Dr. Buchanan travelled throughout of the whole country. And his observations and statistics convinced him that next to agriculture, hand-spinning and hand-weaving were the great national industries. We make no apology for giving some of the facts and figures collected by Dr. Buchanan:
In the districts of Patna and Behar with a population of 3,364,420 souls, the number of spinners was 330,426. ”By far the greater part of these,” observed Dr. Buchanan, ”spin only a few hours in the afternoon, and upon the average estimate the whole value of the thread that each spins in a year is worth Rs. 7-2-8 giving a total annual income of Rs. 23,67,277 and by a similar calculation the raw material at the retail price will amount to Rs. 12,86,272, leaving a profit of Rs. 10,81,005 for the spinners or Rs. 3-4-0 per spinner....”
In the district of Shahbad, spinning was the chief industry. 159,500 women were employed in spinning and spun yarn to the value of Rs. 12,50,000 a year. Deducting the value of cotton each woman had some thing left to her to add to the income of the family to which she belonged.
In the Bhagalpur district (with a population of 2,019,900) where all castes were permitted to spin, 160,000 women spent a part of their time in spinning and each made an annual income of Rs. 4-1/2 after deducting the cost of cotton. This was added to the family income. In the Gorakhpur district (population 1,385,495) 175,600 women found employment in spinning and made an annual income of Rs. 2-1/2 per head. In the Dinj.a.pur district (with a population of 300,000) cotton-spinning which was the princ.i.p.al manufacture occupied the leisure hours 'of all women of higher rank and of the greater part of the farmers' wives.' Three rupees was the annual income each woman made by spinning in her afternoon hours.
In the Purniya district (population 2,904,380) all castes considered spinning honourable and a very large population of women of the district did some spinning in their leisure hours.