The Wheel of Fortune Part 3

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.

In eastern Mysore women of all castes except Brahmans bought cotton and wool at weekly markets, spun at home, and sold the thread to weavers.

Men and women thus found a profitable occupation. In Coimbatore, the wives of all the low cla.s.s cultivators were great spinners.

The statistics of weavers show that they also were as numerous as the spinners. In the Patna city and Behar district, the total number of looms employed in the manufacture of chaddars and table cloths was 750, and the value of the annual manufactures was Rs. 5,40,000 leaving a profit of Rs. 81,400, deducting the value of thread. This gave a profit of Rs. 108 for each loom worked by three persons or an income of Rs. 36 a year for each person. But the greater part of the cloth-weavers made coa.r.s.e cloth for country use to the value of Rs. 24,386,621 after deducting the cost of thread. This gave a profit of Rs. 28 for each loom.

In Shahabad weavers worked in cotton only. 7,025 houses of weavers worked in cotton and had 7,950 looms. Each loom made an annual income of Rs. 20-3/4 a year and each loom required the labour of a man and his wife as well as one boy or girl. But as a family could not be supported for less than Rs. 48 a year, Dr. Buchanan suspected that the income of each loom given above was understated.

In the Bhagalpur district some worked in silk alone. A great many near the town made Tasar fabrics of silk and cotton intermixed; 3,275 looms were so employed that the annual profit of each weaver employed in the mixed silk and cotton industry was calculated to be Rs. 46 besides what the woman made.

For the weaving of cotton-cloth, there were 7,279 looms. Each loom yielded a profit of Rs. 20 a year. But by another calculation, Dr.

Buchanan estimated it to be Rs. 32 a year.

In the Gorakhpur district there were 5,434 families of weavers possessing 6,174 looms and each loom brought an income of Rs. 23-1/2.

Dr. Buchanan thought this was too low an estimate and believed that each loom brought an income of Rs. 88 in the year.

In the Dungarpur district "Maldai" cloth was manufactured. It consisted of silk warp and cotton woof. 4,000 looms were employed in this work and it was said that each loom made Rs. 20 worth of cloth in a month, which Dr. Buchanan considered too high an estimate. About 800 looms were employed in making larger pieces in the form of Elachis.

In the Purniya district weavers were numerous.... In Eastern Mysore cotton-weavers made cloth for home-use as silk weavers produced a strong rich fabric. Workmen who made cloth with silk borders earned As. 6 a day and those who made silk cloth earned As. 4.

Thus we see that crores of rupees were earned by these spinners and weavers by following their n.o.ble and honest calling. The decentralisation of the industry--every village, town and district having always at its command as much supply as it needed--automatically facilitated its distribution and saved the consumer from Railway Excise and all sorts of tariffs and middlemen's profits that he is a victim to to-day. If we cannot return to these days--though there is no reason, except our own bias and doubt why we should not--can we not at least so organise our industries as to do away without much delay with the foreign cloth with which our markets are being dumped to-day?

_Y. I.--15th Sep. 1920._

HAND-SPINNING AGAIN

_The Servant of India_ has a fling too at spinning and that is based as I shall presently show on ignorance of the facts. Spinning does protect a woman's virtue, because it enables women, who are to-day working on public roads and are often in danger of having their modesty outraged, to protect themselves, and I know no other occupation that lacs of women can follow save spinning. Let me inform the jesting writer that several women have already returned to the sanct.i.ty of their homes and taken to spinning which they say is the one occupation which means so much _barkat_ (blessing). I claim for it the properties of a musical instrument, for whilst a hungry and a naked woman will refuse to dance to the accompaniment of a piano, I have seen women beaming with joy to see the spinning wheel work, for they know that they can through that rustic instrument both feed and clothe themselves.

Yes, it does solve the problem of India's chronic poverty and is an insurance against famine. The writer of the jests may not know the scandals that I know about irrigation and relief works. These works are largely a fraud. But if my wise counsellors will devote themselves to introducing the wheel in every home, I promise that the wheel will be an almost complete protection against famine. It is idle to cite Austria. I admit the poverty and limitations of my humanity. I can only think of India's _Kamadhenu_, and the spinning wheel is that for India. For India had the spinning wheel in every home before the advent of the East India Company. India being a cotton growing country, it must be considered a crime to import a single yard of yarn from outside. The figures quoted by the writer are irrelevant.

The fact is that in spite of the manufacture of 62.7 crores pounds of yarn in 1917-18 India imported several crore yards of foreign yarn which were woven by the mills as well as the weavers. The writer does not also seem to know that more cloth is to-day woven by our weavers than by mills, but the bulk of it is foreign yarn and therefore our weavers are supporting foreign spinners. I would not mind it much if we were doing something else instead. When spinning was almost compulsorily stopped nothing replaced it save slavery and idleness. Our mills cannot to-day spin enough for our wants, and if they did, they will not keep down prices unless they were compelled. They are frankly money-makers and will not therefore regulate prices according to the needs of the nations. Hand-spinning is therefore designed to put millions of rupees in the hands of poor villagers. Every agricultural country requires a supplementary industry to enable the peasants to utilise the spare hours. Such industry for India has always been spinning. Is it such a visionary ideal--an attempt to revive an ancient occupation whose destruction has brought on slavery, pauperism and disappearance of the inimitable artistic talents which was once all expressed in the wonderful fabric of India and which was the envy of the world?

And now a few figures. One boy could, if he worked say four hours daily, spin 1/4 lb. of yarn. 64,000 students would, therefore, spin 16,000 lbs.

per day, and therefore feed 8,000 weavers if a weaver wove two lbs. of hand-spun yarn. But the students and others are required to spin during this year of purification by way of penance in order to popularise spinning and to add to the manufacture of hand-spun yarn so as to overtake full manufacture during the current year. The nation may be too lazy to do it. But if all put their hands to this work, it is incredibly easy, it involves very little sacrifice and saves an annual drain of sixty crores even if it does nothing else. I have discussed the matter with many mill-owners, several economists, men of business and no one has yet been able to challenge the position herein set forth. I do expect the 'Servant of India' to treat a serious subject with seriousness and accuracy of information.

_Y. I.--16th Feb. 1921._

A PLEA FOR SPINNING

A determined opposition was put up against the conditions regarding Swades.h.i.+ that were laid down in the civil disobedience resolution pa.s.sed by the All-India Congress Committee at Delhi. It was directed against two requirements, namely, that the civil resister offering resistance in terms of that resolution was bound to know hand-spinning and use only hand-spun and hand-woven _khadi_; and that in the event of a district or tahsil offering civil disobedience _en ma.s.se_ the district or the tahsil concerned must manufacture its own yarn and cloth by the hand. The opposition betrayed woeful ignorance of the importance of hand-spinning.