FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[192]According to some historians, this race-mixture occurred almost at once. The theory is that the Aryan conquerors, who outside the north-western region had very few of their own women with them, took Dravidian women as wives or concubines, and legitimatized their half-breed children, the offspring of the conquerors, both pure-bloods and mixed-bloods, coalescing into a closed caste. Further infiltration of Dravidian blood was thus prevented, but Aryan race-purity had been destroyed.[193]Sir Bampfylde Fuller,Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, p. 40 (London, 1910). For other discussions of caste and its effects, see W. Archer,India and the Future(London, 1918); Sir V. Chirol,Indian Unrest(London, 1910); Rev. J. Morrison,New Ideas in India: A Study of Social, Political and Religious Developments(Edinburgh, 1906); Sir H. Risley,The People of India(London, 1908); also writings of the "Namasudra" leader, Dr. Nair, previously quoted, and S. Nihal Singh, "India's Untouchables,"Contemporary Review, March, 1913.[194]For the nationalist movement, see Archer, Chirol, and Morrison,supra. Also Sir H. J. S. Cotton,India in Transition(London, 1904); J. N. Farquhar,Modern Religious Movements in India(New York, 1915); Sir W. W. Hunter,The India of the Queen and Other Essays(London, 1903); W. S. Lilly,India and Its Problems(London, 1902); Sir V. Lovett,A History of the Indian Nationalist Movement(London, 1920); J. Ramsay Macdonald,The Government of India(London, 1920); Sir T. Morison,Imperial Rule in India(London, 1899); J. D. Rees,The Real India(London, 1908); Sir J. Strachey,India: Its Administration and Progress(Fourth Edition—London, 1911); K. Vyasa Rao,The Future Government of India(London, 1918).[195]I have already discussed this "Golden Age" tendency in Chapter III. For more or less Extremist Indian view-points, see A. Coomaraswamy,The Dance of Siva(New York, 1918); H. Maitra,Hinduism: The World-Ideal(London, 1916); Bipin Chandra Pal, "The Forces Behind the Unrest in India,"Contemporary Review, February, 1910; also various writings of Lajpat Rai, especiallyThe Arya Samaj(London, 1915) andYoung India(New York, 1916).[196]For Indian Mohammedan points of view, mostly anti-Hindu, see H. H. The Aga Khan,India in Transition(London, 1918); S. Khuda Bukhsh,Essays: Indian and Islamic(London, 1912); Sir Syed Ahmed,The Present State of Indian Politics(Allahabad, 1888); Syed Sirdar Ali Khan,The Unrest in India(Bombay, 1907); also hisIndia of To-day(Bombay, 1908).[197]This attitude of the "Depressed Classes," especially as revealed in the "Namasudra Association," has already been discussed in Chapter III, and will be further touched upon later in this present chapter.[198]Regarding the Indian native princes, see Archer and Chirol,supra. Also J. Pollen, "Native States and Indian Home Rule,"Asiatic Review, January 1, 1917; The Maharajah of Bobbili,Advice to the Indian Aristocracy(Madras, 1905); articles by Sir D. Barr and Sir F. Younghusband inThe Empire and the Century(London, 1905).[199]A good symposium of extremist comment is contained in Chirol,supra. Also see J. D. Rees,The Real India(London, 1908); series of extremist articles inThe Open Court, March, 1917. A good sample of extremist literature is the fairly well-known pamphletIndia's "Loyalty" to England(1915).[200]Discussed in the preceding chapter.[201]Quoted in Chapter IV.[202]Lord Sydenham, "India,"Contemporary Review, November, 1918. For similar criticisms of the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals, see G. M. Chesney,India under Experiment(London, 1918); "The First Stage towards Indian Anarchy,"Spectator, December 20, 1919.[203]Lionel Curtis,Letters to the People of India on Responsible Government, already quoted at the end of Chapter IV.[204]Sir V. Chirol, "India in Travail,"Edinburgh Review, July, 1918.[205]I. e., self-government, in the extremist sense—practically independence.

[192]According to some historians, this race-mixture occurred almost at once. The theory is that the Aryan conquerors, who outside the north-western region had very few of their own women with them, took Dravidian women as wives or concubines, and legitimatized their half-breed children, the offspring of the conquerors, both pure-bloods and mixed-bloods, coalescing into a closed caste. Further infiltration of Dravidian blood was thus prevented, but Aryan race-purity had been destroyed.

[193]Sir Bampfylde Fuller,Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment, p. 40 (London, 1910). For other discussions of caste and its effects, see W. Archer,India and the Future(London, 1918); Sir V. Chirol,Indian Unrest(London, 1910); Rev. J. Morrison,New Ideas in India: A Study of Social, Political and Religious Developments(Edinburgh, 1906); Sir H. Risley,The People of India(London, 1908); also writings of the "Namasudra" leader, Dr. Nair, previously quoted, and S. Nihal Singh, "India's Untouchables,"Contemporary Review, March, 1913.

[194]For the nationalist movement, see Archer, Chirol, and Morrison,supra. Also Sir H. J. S. Cotton,India in Transition(London, 1904); J. N. Farquhar,Modern Religious Movements in India(New York, 1915); Sir W. W. Hunter,The India of the Queen and Other Essays(London, 1903); W. S. Lilly,India and Its Problems(London, 1902); Sir V. Lovett,A History of the Indian Nationalist Movement(London, 1920); J. Ramsay Macdonald,The Government of India(London, 1920); Sir T. Morison,Imperial Rule in India(London, 1899); J. D. Rees,The Real India(London, 1908); Sir J. Strachey,India: Its Administration and Progress(Fourth Edition—London, 1911); K. Vyasa Rao,The Future Government of India(London, 1918).

[195]I have already discussed this "Golden Age" tendency in Chapter III. For more or less Extremist Indian view-points, see A. Coomaraswamy,The Dance of Siva(New York, 1918); H. Maitra,Hinduism: The World-Ideal(London, 1916); Bipin Chandra Pal, "The Forces Behind the Unrest in India,"Contemporary Review, February, 1910; also various writings of Lajpat Rai, especiallyThe Arya Samaj(London, 1915) andYoung India(New York, 1916).

[196]For Indian Mohammedan points of view, mostly anti-Hindu, see H. H. The Aga Khan,India in Transition(London, 1918); S. Khuda Bukhsh,Essays: Indian and Islamic(London, 1912); Sir Syed Ahmed,The Present State of Indian Politics(Allahabad, 1888); Syed Sirdar Ali Khan,The Unrest in India(Bombay, 1907); also hisIndia of To-day(Bombay, 1908).

[197]This attitude of the "Depressed Classes," especially as revealed in the "Namasudra Association," has already been discussed in Chapter III, and will be further touched upon later in this present chapter.

[198]Regarding the Indian native princes, see Archer and Chirol,supra. Also J. Pollen, "Native States and Indian Home Rule,"Asiatic Review, January 1, 1917; The Maharajah of Bobbili,Advice to the Indian Aristocracy(Madras, 1905); articles by Sir D. Barr and Sir F. Younghusband inThe Empire and the Century(London, 1905).

[199]A good symposium of extremist comment is contained in Chirol,supra. Also see J. D. Rees,The Real India(London, 1908); series of extremist articles inThe Open Court, March, 1917. A good sample of extremist literature is the fairly well-known pamphletIndia's "Loyalty" to England(1915).

[200]Discussed in the preceding chapter.

[201]Quoted in Chapter IV.

[202]Lord Sydenham, "India,"Contemporary Review, November, 1918. For similar criticisms of the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals, see G. M. Chesney,India under Experiment(London, 1918); "The First Stage towards Indian Anarchy,"Spectator, December 20, 1919.

[203]Lionel Curtis,Letters to the People of India on Responsible Government, already quoted at the end of Chapter IV.

[204]Sir V. Chirol, "India in Travail,"Edinburgh Review, July, 1918.

[205]I. e., self-government, in the extremist sense—practically independence.

ECONOMIC CHANGE

One of the most interesting phenomena of modern world-history is the twofold conquest of the East by the West. The word "conquest" is usually employed in a political sense, and calls up visions of embattled armies subduing foreign lands and lording it over distant peoples. Such political conquests in the Orient did of course occur, and we have already seen how, during the past century, the decrepit states of the Near and Middle East fell an easy prey to the armed might of the European Powers.

But what is not so generally realized is the fact that this political conquest was paralleled by an economic conquest perhaps even more complete and probably destined to produce changes of an even more profound and enduring character.

The root-cause of this economic conquest was the Industrial Revolution. Just as the voyages of Columbus and Da Gama gave Europe the strategic mastery of the ocean and thereby the political mastery of the world, so the technical inventions of the later eighteenth century which inaugurated the Industrial Revolution gave Europe the economic mastery of the world. These inventions in fact heralded a new Age of Discovery, this time into the realms of science. The results were, if possible, more momentous even than those of the age of geographical discovery three centuries before. They gave our race such increased mastery over the resources of nature that the ensuing transformation of economic life swiftly and utterly transformed the face of things.

This transformation was, indeed, unprecedented in the world's history. Hitherto man's material progress had been a gradual evolution. With the exception of gunpowder, he had tapped no new sources of material energy since very ancient times. The horse-drawn mail-coach of our great-grandfathers was merely a logical elaboration of the horse-drawn Egyptian chariot; the wind-driven clipper-ship traced its line unbroken to Ulysses's lateen bark before Troy; while industry still relied on the brawn of man and beast or upon the simple action of wind and waterfall. Suddenly all was changed. Steam, electricity, petrol, the Hertzian wave, harnessed nature's hidden powers, conquered distance, and shrunk the terrestrial globe to the measure of human hands. Man entered a new material world, differing not merely in degree but in kind from that of previous generations.

When I say "Man," I mean, so far as the nineteenth century was concerned, the white man of Europe and its racial settlements overseas. It was the white man's brain which had conceived all this, and it was the white man alone who at first reaped the benefits. The two outstanding features of the new order were the rise of machine-industry with its incalculable acceleration of mass-production, and the correlative development of cheap and rapid transportation. Both these factors favoured a prodigious increase in economic power and wealth in Europe, since Europe became the workshop of the world. In fact, during the nineteenth century, Europe was transformed from a semi-rural continent into a swarming hive of industry, gorged with goods, capital, and men, pouring forth its wares to the remotest corners of the earth, and drawing thence fresh stores of raw material for new fabrication and exchange.

Such was the industrially revolutionized West which confronted an East as backward and stagnant in economics as it was in politics and the art of war. In fact, the East was virtually devoid of either industryor business, as we understand these terms to-day. Economically, the East was on an agricultural basis, the economic unit being the self-supporting, semi-isolated village. Oriental "industries" were handicrafts, carried on by relatively small numbers of artisans, usually working by and for themselves. Their products, while often exquisite in quality, were largely luxuries, and were always produced by such slow, antiquated methods that their quantity was limited and their market price relatively high. Despite very low wages, therefore, Asiatic products not only could not compete in the world-market with European and American machine-made, mass-produced articles, but were hard hit in their home-markets as well.

This Oriental inability to compete with Western industry arose not merely from methods of production but also from other factors such as the mentality of the workers and the scarcity of capital. Throughout the Near and Middle East economic life rested on the principle of status. The Western economic principles of contract and competition were virtually unknown. Agriculturalists and artisans followed blindly in the footsteps of their fathers. There was no competition, no stimulus for improvement, no change in customary wages, no desire for a better and more comfortable living. The industries were stereotyped; the apprentice merely imitated his master, and rarely thought of introducing new implements or new methods of manufacture. Instead of working for profit and advancement, men followed an hereditary "calling," usually hallowed by religious sanctions, handed down from father to son through many generations, each calling possessing its own unchanging ideals, its zealously guarded craft-secrets.

The few bolder, more enterprising spirits who might have ventured to break the iron bands of custom and tradition were estopped by lack of capital. Fluid "investment" capital, easily mobilized and ready to pourinto an enterprise of demonstrable utility and profit, simply did not exist. To the Oriental, whether prince or peasant, money was regarded, not as a source of profit or a medium of exchange, but as a store of value, to be hoarded intact against a "rainy day." The East has been known for ages as a "sink of the precious metals." In India alone, the value of the gold, silver, and jewels hidden in strong-boxes, buried in the earth, or hanging about the necks of women must run into billions. Says a recent writer on India: "I had the privilege of being taken through the treasure-vaults of one of the wealthiest Maharajahs. I could have plunged my arm to the shoulder in great silver caskets filled with diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies. The walls were studded with hooks and on each pair of hooks rested gold bars three to four feet long and two inches across. I stood by a great cask of diamonds, and picking up a handful let them drop slowly from between my fingers, sparkling and glistening like drops of water in sunlight. There are some seven hundred native states, and the rulers of every one has his treasure-vaults on a more or less elaborate scale. Besides these, every zamindar and every Indian of high or low degree who can save anything, wants to have it by him in actual metal; he distrusts this new-fangled paper currency that they try to pass off on him. Sometimes he beats his coins into bangles for his wives, and sometimes he hides money behind a loose brick or under a flat stone in the bottom of the oven, or he goes out and digs a little hole and buries it."[206]

Remember that this description is of present-day India, after more than a century of British rule and notwithstanding a permeation of Western ideas which, as we shall presently see, has produced momentous modifications in the native point of view. Remember also that this hoarding propensity is not peculiar to India but is shared by the entire Orient. We can then realizethe utter lack of capital for investment purposes in the East of a hundred years ago, especially when we remember that political insecurity and religious prohibitions of the lending of money at interest stood in the way of such far-sighted individuals as might have been inclined to employ their hoarded wealth for productive purposes. There was, indeed, one outlet for financial activity—usury, and therein virtually all the scant fluid capital of the old Orient was employed. But such capital, lent not for productive enterprise, but for luxury, profligacy, or incompetence, was a destructive rather than a creative force and merely intensified the prejudice against capital of any kind.

Such was the economic life of the Orient a hundred years ago. It is obvious that this archaic order was utterly unable to face the tremendous competition of the industrialized West. Everywhere the flood of cheap Western machine-made, mass-produced goods began invading Eastern lands, driving the native wares before them. The way in which an ancient Oriental handicraft like the Indian textiles was literally annihilated by the destructive competition of Lancashire cottons is only one of many similar instances. To be sure, some Oriental writers contend that this triumph of Western manufactures was due to political rather than economic reasons, and Indian nationalists cite British governmental activity in favour of the Lancashire cottons above mentioned as the sole cause for the destruction of the Indian textile handicrafts. But such arguments appear to be fallacious. British official action may have hastened the triumph of British industry in India, but that triumph was inevitable in the long run. The best proof is the way in which the textile crafts of independent Oriental countries like Turkey and Persia were similarly ruined by Western competition.

A further proof is the undoubted fact that Oriental peoples, taken as a whole, have bought Western-manufactured products in preference to their own hand-madewares. To many Westerners this has been a mystery. Such persons cannot understand how the Orientals could buy the cheap, shoddy products of the West, manufactured especially for the Eastern market, in preference to their native wares of better quality and vastly greater beauty. The answer, however, is that the average Oriental is not an art connoisseur but a poor man living perilously close to the margin of starvation. He not only wants but must buy things cheap, and the wide price-margin is the deciding factor. Of course there is also the element of novelty. Besides goods which merely replace articles he has always used, the West has introduced many new articles whose utility or charm are irresistible. I have already mentioned the way in which the sewing-machine and the kerosene-lamp have swept the Orient from end to end, and there are many other instances of a similar nature. The permeation of Western industry has, in fact, profoundly modified every phase of Oriental economic life. New economic wants have been created; standards of living have been raised; canons of taste have been altered. Says a lifelong American student of the Orient: "The knowledge of modern inventions and of other foods and articles has created new wants. The Chinese peasant is no longer content to burn bean-oil; he wants kerosene. The desire of the Asiatic to possess foreign lamps is equalled only by his passion for foreign clocks. The ambitious Syrian scorns the mud roof of his ancestors, and will be satisfied only with the bright red tiles imported from France. Everywhere articles of foreign manufacture are in demand.... Knowledge increases wants, and the Oriental is acquiring knowledge. He demands a hundred things to-day that his grandfather never heard of."[207]

Everywhere it is the same story. An Indian economic writer, though a bitter enemy of Western industrialism, bemoans the fact that "the artisans are losing their occupations and are turning to agriculture. The cheap kerosene-oil from Baku or New York threatens the oilman's[208]existence. Brass and copper which have been used for vessels from time immemorial are threatened by cheap enamelled ironware imported from Europe.... There is also,pari passu, a transformation of the tastes of the consumers. They abandongurfor crystal sugar. Home-woven cloths are now replaced by manufactured cloths for being too coarse. All local industries are attacked and many have been destroyed. Villages that for centuries followed customary practices are brought into contact with the world's markets all on a sudden. For steamships and railways which have established the connection have been built in so short an interval as hardly to allow breathing-time to the village which slumbered so long under the dominion of custom. Thus the sudden introduction of competition into an economic unit which had from time immemorial followed custom has wrought a mighty change."[209]

This "mighty change" was due not merely to the influx of Western goods but also to an equally momentous influx of Western capital. The opportunities for profitable investment were so numerous that Western capital soon poured in streams into Eastern lands. Virtually devoid of fluid capital of its own, the Orient was bound to have recourse to Western capital for the initiation of all economic activity in the modern sense. Railways, mines, large-scale agriculture of the "plantation" type, and many other undertakings thus came into being. Most notable of all was the founding of numerous manufacturing establishments from North Africa to China and the consequent growth of genuine "factory towns" where the whir of machinery and the smoke oftall chimneys proclaimed that the East was adopting the industrial life of the West.

The momentous social consequences of this industrialization of the Orient will be treated in subsequent chapters. In the present chapter we will confine ourselves to a consideration of its economic side. Furthermore, this book, limited as it is to the Near and Middle East, cannot deal with industrial developments in China and Japan. The reader should, however, always bear in mind Far Eastern developments, which, in the main, run parallel to those which we shall here discuss.

These industrial innovations were at first pure Western transplantings set in Eastern soil. Initiated by Western capital, they were wholly controlled and managed by Western brains. Western capital could not venture to entrust itself to Orientals, with their lack of the modern industrial spirit, their habits of "squeeze" and nepotism, their lust for quick returns, and their incapacity for sustained business team-play. As time passed, however, the success of Western undertakings so impressed Orientals that the more forward-looking among them were ready to risk their money and to acquire the technique necessary for success. At the close of Chapter II, I described the development of modern business types in the Moslem world, and the same is true of the non-Moslem populations of India. In India there were several elements such as the Parsis and the Hindu "banyas," or money-lenders, whose previous activities in commerce or usury predisposed them to financial and industrial activity in the modern sense. From their ranks have chiefly sprung the present-day native business communities of India, exemplified by the jute and textile factories of Calcutta and Bombay, and the great Tata iron-works of Bengal—undertakings financed by native capital and wholly under native control. Of course, beside these successes there have been many lamentable failures. Nevertheless, there seems to be no doubt that Western industrialism is ceasing tobe an exotic and is rooting itself firmly in Eastern soil.[210]

The combined result of Western and Eastern enterprise has been, as already stated, the rise of important industrial centres at various points in the Orient. In Egypt a French writer remarks: "Both banks of the Nile are lined with factories, sugar-refineries and cotton-mills, whose belching chimneys tower above the mud huts of the fellahs."[211]And Sir Theodore Morison says of India: "In the city of Bombay the industrial revolution has already been accomplished. Bombay is a modern manufacturing city, where both the dark and the bright side of modern industrialism strike the eye. Bombay has insanitary slums where overcrowding is as great an evil as in any European city; she has a proletariat which works long hours amid the din and whir of machinery; she also has her millionaires, whose princely charities have adorned her streets with beautiful buildings. Signs of lavish wealth and, let me add, culture and taste in Bombay astonish the visitor from the inland districts. The brown villages and never-ending fields with which he has hitherto been familiar are the India which is passing away; Bombay is the presage of the future."[212]

The juxtaposition of vast natural resources and a limitless supply of cheap labour has encouraged the most ambitious hopes in Oriental minds. Some Orientals look to a combination of Western money and Eastern man-power, expressed by an Indian economic writer in the formula: "English money and Indian labour are the two cheapest things in the world."[213]Others more ambitiously dream of industrializing the East entirelyby native effort, to the exclusion and even to the detriment of the West. This view was well set forth some years ago by a Hindu, who wrote in a leading Indian periodical:[214]"In one sense the Orient is really menacing the West, and so earnest and open-minded is Asia that no pretence or apology whatever is made about it. The Easterner has thrown down the industrial gauntlet, and from now on Asia is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the Occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the East, and the Oriental endeavouring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he has been an easy victor.... In competing with the Occidental commercialists, the Oriental has awakened to a dynamic realization of the futility of pitting unimproved machinery and methods against modern methods and appliances. Casting aside his former sense of self-complacency, he is studying the sciences and arts that have given the West its material prosperity. He is putting the results of his investigations to practical use, as a rule, recasting the Occidental methods to suit his peculiar needs, and in some instances improving upon them."

This statement of the spirit of the Orient's industrial awakening is confirmed by many white observers. At the very moment when the above article was penned, an American economic writer was making a study tour of the Orient, of which he reported: "The real cause of Asia's poverty lies in just two things: the failure of Asiatic governments to educate their people, and the failure of the people to increase their productive capacity by the use of machinery. Ignorance and lack of machinery are responsible for Asia's poverty; knowledge and modern tools are responsible for America's prosperity." But, continues this writer, we must watch out. Asia now realizes these facts and is doing much to remedy the situation. Hence, "we must face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples whoare strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial readjustment."[215]Another American observer of Asiatic economic conditions reports: "All Asia is being permeated with modern industry and present-day mechanical progress."[216]And Sir Theodore Morison concludes regarding India's economic future: "India's industrial transformation is near at hand; the obstacles which have hitherto prevented the adoption of modern methods of manufacture have been removed; means of transport have been spread over the face of the whole country, capital for the purchase of machinery and erection of factories may now be borrowed on easy terms; mechanics, engineers, and business managers may be hired from Europe to train the future captains of Indian industry; in English a common language has been found in which to transact business with all the provinces of India and with a great part of the Western world; security from foreign invasion and internal commotion justifies the inception of large enterprises. All the conditions are favourable for a great reorganization of industry which, when successfully accomplished, will bring about an increase hitherto undreamed of in India's annual output of wealth."[217]

The factor usually relied upon to overcome the Orient's handicaps of inexperience and inexpertness in industrialism is its cheap labour. To Western observers the low wages and long hours of Eastern industry are literally astounding. Take Egypt and India as examples of industrial conditions in the Near and Middle East. Writing of Egypt in 1908, the English economist H. N. Brailsford says: "There was then no Factory Actin Egypt. There are all over the country ginning-mills, which employ casual labour to prepare raw cotton for export during four or five months of the year. The wages were low, from 7½d.to 10d.(15 to 20 cents) a day for an adult, and 6d.(12 cents) for a child. Children and adults alike worked sometimes for twelve, usually for fifteen, and on occasion even for sixteen or eighteen hours a day. In the height of the season even the children were put on night shifts of twelve hours."[218]

In India conditions are about the same. The first thorough investigation of Indian industry was made in 1907 by a factory labour commission, and the following are some of the data published in its report: In the cotton-mills of Bombay the hours regularly worked ran from thirteen to fourteen hours. In the jute-mills of Calcutta the operatives usually worked fifteen hours. Cotton-ginning factories required their employees to work seventeen and eighteen hours a day, rice and flour mills twenty to twenty-two hours, and an extreme case was found in a printing works where the men had to work twenty-two hours a day for seven consecutive days. As to wages, an adult male operative, working from thirteen to fifteen hours a day, received from 15 to 20 rupees a month ($5 to $6.35). Child labour was very prevalent, children six and seven years old working "half-time"—in many cases eight hours a day. As a result of this report legislation was passed by the Indian Government bettering working conditions somewhat, especially for women and children. But in 1914 the French economist Albert Métin, after a careful study, reported factory conditions not greatly changed, the Factory Acts systematically evaded, hours very long, and wages extremely low. In Bombay men were earning from 10 cents to 20 cents per day, the highest wages being 30 cents. For women and children the maximum was 10 cents per day.[219]

With such extraordinarily low wages and long hours of labour it might at first sight seem as though, given adequate capital and up-to-date machinery, the Orient could not only drive Occidental products from Eastern markets but might invade Western markets as well. This, indeed, has been the fear of many Western writers. Nearly three-quarters of a century ago Gobineau prophesied an industrial invasion of Europe from Asia,[220]and of late years economists like H. N. Brailsford have warned against an emigration of Western capital to the tempting lure of factory conditions in Eastern lands.[221]Nevertheless, so far as the Near and Middle East is concerned, nothing like this has as yet materialized. China, to be sure, may yet have unpleasant surprises in store for the West,[222]but neither the Moslem world nor India have developed factory labour with the skill, stamina, and assiduity sufficient to undercut the industrial workers of Europe and America. In India, for example, despite a swarming and poverty-stricken population, the factories are unable to recruit an adequate or dependable labour-supply. Says M. Métin: "With such long hours and low wages it might be thought that Indian industry would be a formidable competitor of the West. This is not so. The reason is the bad quality of the work. The poorly paid coolies are so badly fed and so weak that it takes at least three of them to do the work of one European. Also, the Indian workers lack not only strength but also skill, attention, and liking for their work.... An Indian of the people will do anything else in preference to becoming a factory operative. The factories thus get only the dregs of the working class. The workers come to the factories and mines as a last resort; they leave as soon as they can return to their prior occupationsor find a more remunerative employment. Thus the factories can never count on a regular labour-supply. Would higher wages remedy this? Many employers say no—as soon as the workers got a little ahead they would quit, either temporarily till their money was spent, or permanently for some more congenial calling."[223]These statements are fully confirmed by an Indian economic writer, who says: "One of the greatest drawbacks to the establishment of large industries in India is the scarcity and inefficiency of labour. Cheap labour, where there is no physical stamina, mental discipline, and skill behind it, tends to be costly in the end. The Indian labourer is mostly uneducated. He is not in touch with his employers or with his work. The labouring population of the towns is a flitting, dilettante population."[224]

Thus Indian industry, despite its very considerable growth, has not come up to early expectations. As the official Year-Book very frankly states: "India, in short, is a country rich in raw materials and in industrial possibilities, but poor in manufacturing accomplishments."[225]In fact, to some observers, India's industrial future seems far from bright. As a competent English student of Indian conditions recently wrote: "Some years ago it seemed possible that India might, by a rapid assimilation of Western knowledge and technical skill, adapt for her own conditions the methods of modern industry, and so reach an approximate economic level. Some even now threaten the Western world with a vision of the vast populations of China and India rising up with skilled organization, vast resources, and comparatively cheap labour to impoverish the West. To the present writer this is a mere bogey. The peril is of a very different kind. Instead of a growing approximation, he sees a growing disparity. For everystep India takes toward mechanical efficiency, the West takes two. When India is beginning to use bicycles and motor-cars (not to make them), the West is perfecting the aeroplane. That is merely symbolic. The war, as we know, has speeded up mechanical invention and produced a population of mechanics; but India has stood comparatively still. It is, up to now, overwhelmingly mediæval, a country of domestic industry and handicrafts. Mechanical power, even of the simplest, has not yet been applied to its chief industry—agriculture. Yet the period of age-long isolation is over, and India can never go back to it; nevertheless, the gap between East and West is widening. What is to be the outcome for her 300 millions? We are in danger in the East of seeing the worst evils of commercialism developed on an enormous scale, with the vast population of India the victims—of seeing the East become a world slum."[226]

Whether or not this pessimistic outlook is justified, certain it is that not merely India but the entire Orient is in a stage of profound transition; and transition periods are always painful times. We have been considering the new industrial proletariat of the towns. But the older social classes are affected in very similar fashion. The old-type handicraftsman and small merchant are obviously menaced by modern industrial and business methods, and the peasant masses are in little better shape. It is not merely a change in technique but a fundamental difference in outlook on life that is involved. The life of the old Orient, while there was much want and hardship, was an easygoing life, with virtually no thought of such matters as time, efficiency, output, and "turnover." The merchant sat cross-legged in his little booth amid his small stock of wares, passively waiting for trade, chaffering interminably with his customers, annoyed rather than pleased if brisk business came his way. The artisan usually workedby and for himself, keeping his own hours and knocking off whenever he chose. The peasant arose with the dawn, but around noon he and his animals lay down for a long nap and slept until, in the cool of afternoon, they awoke, stretched themselves, and, comfortably and casually, went to work again.

To such people the speed, system, and discipline of our economic life are painfully repugnant, and adaptation can at best be effected only very slowly and under the compulsion of the direst necessity. Meanwhile they suffer from the competition of those better equipped in the economic battle. Sir William Ramsay paints a striking picture of the way in which the Turkish population of Asia Minor, from landlords and merchants to simple peasants, have been going down-hill for the last half-century under the economic pressure not merely of Westerners but of the native Christian elements, Armenians and Greeks, who had partially assimilated Western business ideas and methods. Under the old state of things, he says, there was in Asia Minor "no economic progress and no mercantile development; things went on in the old fashion, year after year. Such simple business as was carried on was inconsistent with the highly developed Western business system and Western civilization; but it was not oppressive to the people. There were no large fortunes; there was no opportunity for making a great fortune; it was impossible for one man to force into his service the minds and the work of a large number of people, and so to create a great organization out of which he might make big profits. There was a very large number of small men doing business on a small scale."[227]Sir William Ramsay then goes on to describe the shattering of this archaic economic life by modern business methods, to the consequent impoverishment of all classes of the unadaptable Turkish population.

How the agricultural classes, peasants and landlords alike, are suffering from changing economic conditions is well exemplified by the recent history of India. Says the French writer Chailley, an authoritative student of Indian problems: "For the last half-century large fractions of the agricultural classes are being entirely despoiled of their lands or reduced to onerous tenancies. On the other hand, new classes are rising and taking their place.... Both ryots and zamindars[228]are involved. The old-type nobility has not advanced with the times. It remains idle and prodigal, while the peasant proprietors, burdened by the traditions of many centuries, are likewise improvident and ignorant. On the other hand, the economic conditions of British India are producing capitalists who seek employment for their wealth. A conflict between them and the old landholders was predestined, and the result was inevitable. Wealth goes to the cleverest, and the land must pass into the hands of new masters, to the great indignation of the agricultural classes, a portion of whom will be reduced to the position of farm-labourers."[229]

The Hindu economist Mukerjee thus depicts the disintegration and decay of the Indian village: "New economic ideas have now begun to influence the minds of the villagers. Some are compelled to leave their occupations on account of foreign competition, but more are leaving their hereditary occupations of their own accord. The Brahmins go to the cities to seek government posts or professional careers. The middle classes also leave their villages and get scattered all over the country to earn a living. The peasants also leave their ancestral acres and form a class of landless agricultural labourers. The villages, drained of their best blood, stagnate and decay. The movement from the village to the city is in fact not only working a complete revolution in the habits and ideals of our people, but its economic consequences are far more serious than are ordinarily supposed. It has made our middle classes helplessly subservient to employment and service, and has also killed the independence of our peasant proprietors. It has jeopardized our food-supply, and is fraught with the gravest peril not only to our handicrafts but also to our national industry—agriculture."[230]

Happily there are signs that, in Indian agriculture at least, the transition period is working itself out and that conditions may soon be on the mend. Both the British Government and the native princes have vied with one another in spreading Western agricultural ideas and methods, and since the Indian peasant has proved much more receptive than has the Indian artisan, a more intelligent type of farmer is developing, better able to keep step with the times. A good instance is the growth of rural co-operative credit societies. First introduced by the British Government in 1904, there were in 1915 more than 17,000 such associations, with a total of 825,000 members and a working capital of nearly $30,000,000. These agricultural societies make loans for the purchase of stock, fodder, seed, manure, sinking of wells, purchase of Western agricultural machinery, and, in emergencies, personal maintenance. In the districts where they have established themselves they have greatly diminished the plague of usury practised by the "banyas," or village money-lenders, lowering the rate of interest from its former crushing range of 20 to 75 per cent. to a range averaging from 9 to 18 per cent. Of course such phenomena are as yet merely exceptions to a very dreary rule. Nevertheless, they all point toward a brighter morrow.[231]

But this brighter agricultural morrow is obviously far off, and in industry it seems to be farther still. Meanwhile the changing Orient is full of suffering and discontent. What wonder that many Orientals ascribe their troubles, not to the process of economic transition, but to the political control of European governments and the economic exploitation of Western capital. The result is agitation for emancipation from Western economic as well as Western political control. At the end of Chapter II we examined the movement among the Mohammedan peoples known as "Economic Pan-Islamism." A similar movement has arisen among the Hindus of India—the so-called "Swadeshi" movement. The Swadeshists declare that India's economic ills are almost entirely due to the "drain" of India's wealth to England and other Western lands. They therefore advocate a boycott of English goods until Britain grants India self-government, whereupon they propose to erect protective tariffs for Indian products, curb the activities of British capital, replace high-salaried English officials by natives, and thereby keep India's wealth at home.[232]

An analysis of these Swadeshist arguments, however, reveals them as inadequate to account for India's ills, which are due far more to the general economic trend of the times than to any specific defects of the British connection. British governance and British capital do cost money, but their undoubted efficiency in producingpeace, order, security, and development must be considered as offsets to the higher costs which native rule and native capital would impose. As Sir Theodore Morison well says: "The advantages which the British Navy and British credit confer on India are a liberal offset to her expenditure on pensions and gratuities to her English servants.... India derives a pecuniary advantage from her connection with the British Empire. The answer, then, which I give to the question 'What economic equivalent does India get for foreign payments?' is this: India gets the equipment of modern industry, and she gets an administration favourable to economic evolution cheaper than she could provide it herself."[233]A comparison with Japan's much more costly defence budgets, inferior credit, and higher interest charges on both public and private loans is enlightening on this point.

In fact, some Indians themselves admit the fallacy of Swadeshist arguments. As one of them remarks: "The so-called economic 'drain' is nonsense. Most of the misery of late years is due to the rising cost of living—a world-wide phenomenon." And in proof of this he cites conditions in other Oriental countries, especially Japan.[234]As warm a friend of the Indian people as the British labour leader, Ramsay Macdonald, states: "One thing is quite evident, a tariff will not re-establish the old hand-industry of India nor help to revive village handicrafts. Factory and machine production, native to India itself, will throttle them as effectively as that of Lancashire and Birmingham has done in the past."[235]

Even more trenchant are the criticisms formulated by the Hindu writer Pramatha Nath Bose.[236]The "drain," says Mr. Bose, is ruining India. But would the HomeRule programme, as envisaged by most Swadeshists, cure India's economic ills? Under Home Rule these people would do the following things: (1) Substitute Englishmen for Indians in the Administration; (2) levy protective duties on Indian products; (3) grant State encouragement to Indian industries; (4) disseminate technical education. Now, how would these matters work out? The substitution of Indian for British officials would not lessen the "drain" as much as most Home Rulers think. The high-placed Indian officials who already exist have acquired European standards of living, so the new official corps would cost almost as much as the old. Also, "the influence of the example set by the well-to-do Indian officials would permeate Indian society more largely than at present, and the demand for Western articles would rise in proportion. So commercial exploitation by foreigners would not only continue almost as if they were Europeans, but might even increase." As to a protective tariff, it would attract European capital to India which would exploit labour and skim the profits. India has shown relatively little capacity for indigenous industrial development. Of course, even at low wages, many Indians might benefit, yet such persons would form only a tithe of the millions now starving—besides the fact that this industrialization would bring in many new social evils. As to State encouragement of industries, this would bring in Western capital even more than a protective tariff, with the results already stated. As for technical education, it is a worthy project, but, says Mr. Bose, "I am afraid the movement is too late, now. Within the last thirty years the Westerners and the Japanese have gone so far ahead of us industrially that it has been yearly becoming more and more difficult to compete with them."

In fact, Mr. Bose goes on to criticize the whole system of Western education, as applied to India. Neither higher nor lower education have proven panaceas. "Higher education has led to the material prosperityof a small section of our community, comprising a few thousands of well-to-do lawyers, doctors, and State servants. But their occupations being of a more or less unproductive or parasitic character, their well-being does not solve the problem of the improvement of India as a whole. On the contrary, as their taste for imported articles develops in proportion to their prosperity, they help to swell rather than diminish the economic drain from the country which is one of the chief causes of our impoverishment." Neither has elementary education "on the whole furthered the well-being of the multitude. It has not enabled the cultivators to 'grow two blades where one grew before.' On the contrary, it has distinctly diminished their efficiency by inculcating in the literate proletariat, who constitute the cream of their class, a strong distaste for their hereditary mode of living and their hereditary callings, and an equally strong taste for shoddy superfluities and brummagem fineries, and for occupations of a more or less parasitic character. They have, directly or indirectly, accelerated rather than retarded the decadence of indigenous industries, and have thus helped to aggravate their own economic difficulties and those of the entire community. What they want is more food—and New India vies with the Government in giving them what is called 'education' that does not increase their food-earning capacity, but on the contrary fosters in them tastes and habits which make them despise indigenous products and render them fit subjects for the exploitation of scheming capitalists, mostly foreign. Political and economic causes could not have led to the extinction of indigenous industry if they had not been aided by change of taste fostered by the Western environment of which the so-called 'education' is a powerful factor."

From all this Mr. Bose concludes that none of the reforms advocated by the Home Rulers would cure India's ills. "In fact, the chances are, she would bemore inextricably entangled in the toils of Western civilization, without any adequate compensating advantage, and the grip of the West would close on her to crush her more effectively." Therefore, according to Mr. Bose, the only thing for India to do is to turn her back on everything Western and plunge resolutely into the traditional past. As he expresses it: "India's salvation lies, not in the region of politics, but outside it; not in aspiring to be one of the 'great' nations of the present day, but in retiring to her humble position—a position, to my mind, of solitary grandeur and glory; not in going forward on the path of Western civilization, but in going back from it so far as practicable; not in getting more and more entangled in the silken meshes of its finely knit, widespread net, but in escaping from it as far as possible."

Such are the drastic conclusions of Mr. Bose; conclusions shared to a certain extent by other Indian idealists like Rabindranath Tagore. But surely such projects, however idealistic, are the vainest fantasies. Whole peoples cannot arbitrarily cut themselves off from the rest of the world, like isolated individuals forswearing society and setting up as anchorites in the jungle. The time for "hermit nations" has passed, especially for a vast country like India, set at the cross-roads of the East, open to the sea, and already profoundly penetrated by Western ideas.

Nevertheless, such criticisms, appealing as they do to the strong strain of asceticism latent in the Indian nature, have affected many Indians who, while unable to concur in the conclusions, still try to evolve a "middle term," retaining everything congenial in the old system and grafting on a select set of Western innovations. Accordingly, these persons have elaborated programmes for a "new order" built on a blend of Hindu mysticism, caste, Western industry, and socialism.[237]

Now these schemes are highly ingenious. But they are not convincing. Their authors should remember the old adage that you cannot eat your cake and have it too. When we realize the abysmal antithesis between the economic systems of the old East and the modern West, any attempt to combine the most congenial points of both while eschewing their defects seems an attempt to reconcile irreconcilables and about as profitable as trying to square the circle. As Lowes Dickinson wisely observes: "Civilization is a whole. Its art, its religion, its way of life, all hang together with its economic and technical development. I doubt whether a nation can pick and choose; whether, for instance, the East can say, 'We will take from the West its battleships, its factories, its medical science; we will not take its social confusion, its hurry and fatigue, its ugliness, its over-emphasis on activity.'... So I expect the East to follow us, whether it like it or no, into all these excesses, and to go right through, not round, all that we have been through on its way to a higher phase of civilization."[238]

This seems to be substantially true. Judged by the overwhelming body of evidence, the East, in its contemporary process of transformation, will follow the West—avoiding some of our more patent mistakes, perhaps, but, in the main, proceeding along similar lines. And, as already stated, this transformation is modifying every phase of Eastern life. We have already examined the process at work in the religious, political, and economic phases. To the social phase let us now turn.

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