Page:Gandhi and Saklatvala - Is India different.pdf/14

 reached ? Did you believe this Government to be Satanic because it. brought poverty upon the people, did you then believe that this poverty could never be cured before the Satanic Government was overthrown ? Do you now believe that you can improve the economic condition of the people without removing this Satanic Government or without any reference to politics, or have you suddenly come to the conclusion that the immediate poverty of the people has touched your heart so much that you launch out into that problem of life and have made up your mind to ignore the problem of the existing political slavery of the country ?

Reverting to the economic value of charka, it is the admitted experience of the whole world that out of all handicrafts in competition against machinery, handspinning is of the least economic value; handweaving, embroidery, carpentry, shoe-making or making of any kind of footwear, etc., have a much greater value. If you would look at the Parsee Girls' Industrial Home in Karachi or a still more splendid institution, the Hindu Orphanage at Surat, namely the Hardevram Vakil Hindu Orphanage, you will realise how the earning power of the helpless, poverty-stricken people can be improved by one or two rupees per day.* I clearly see that such crafts cannot be taken up on a large scale by all villagers, whereas hand-spinning can. But why do you persevere in hand-spinning with superstitious adherence, and why not in troduce alongside of it other more profitable handicrafts for a few persons in each village if economic salvation is your present object ?

You are not teaching the people to wear more clothes than before, your own example would rather lead them to wear less. At the same time you are teaching more people to produce clothes, and how can you fail to realise that you are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and while you are improving the economic condition of some you are doing it at the expense of others ? Sensible economists, Socialists and trade union organisers have within a short period increased the economic earning of their followers by more than a 100 per cent. ; they have taught their followers to use more food, more furniture, more clothes ; they have thus created a great demand which


 * A rupee is worth from Is. 6d. to 2s. An anna is one-sixteenth of a rupee.