Page:Indian Home Rule by Mohandas K. Gandhi.djvu/115

Rh : Are the mills, then, to be closed down?


 * That is difficult. It is no easy task to do away with a thing that is established. We, therefore, say that the non-beginning of a thing is, supreme wisdom. We cannot condemn mill-owners, we can but pity them. It would be too much to expect them to give up their mills, but we may implore them not to increase them. If they would be good, they would gradually contract their business. They can establish in thousands of households the ancient and sacred handlooms, and they can buy out the cloth that may be thus woven. Whether the mill-owners do this or not, people can cease to use machine-made goods.


 * You have so far spoken about machine-made cloth, but there are innumerable machine-made things. We have either to import them or to introduce machinery into our country.


 * Indeed, our gods even are made in Germany. What need, then, to speak of matches, pins, and glassware? My answer can be only one. What did India do before these articles were introduced? Precisely the same should be done to-day. As long as we cannot make pins without machinery, so long will we do without them. The tinsel splendour of glassware we will have nothing to do with and we will make wicks, as of old, with home-grown cotton, and use hand-made earthernearthen [sic] saucers for