Page:Indian Journal of Economics Volume 2.djvu/437

 RELaTINg; TO INDIA 419 tion of the populations of our cities be undertaken. The author believes that there is a great future for the cottage and workshop industries. In this we agree wimh him. In the early sages of the' industrial development it is natural that there should not be many Indians capable of industrial management on a large scale; but there are many young men who ctn quite successfully manage small establish- ments, and having gained experience and capital through past suoeessful 'work on a small scale, many of them will gra- dually increase the size of their establishments until they, or their sons, own large mills and factories. In many towns throughout India there has been a very striking growth of small flour mills and oil mills, etc., driven .by electricity or oil engines. Starting often with  single 'stone-mill, another tw.o or three are added as the business expands. We think the author has done well to call attention to the big field lying open in this direction; and we think that technical education should be mainly directed to development of small-scale power-driven industries. The book as  whole suffers from being largely oompil- ed from the author's previous writings such as his thesis for the Promehsnd Eoyehsnd Research Studentship and articles published in many morthly reviews and mags.ines. The volume is divided into four books, the first dealing with "Socfsl Environment" in which  great deal of useful material is mixed with obvious platitudes. The second book is purely descriptive, the successive chapters dealing with different cottage and village industries--mainly, however,  they occur in Bengal and parts of the neig!boring Provinces. This descriptive portion of the book occupies 00 pages and is full of very useful information partly compiled from otfieial documents, but to  very great extent the result of the author's own enquiries in the rural districts of Bengal. The photographs of different village industries are very interesting and useful, and are well taken and reproduced. The third book is brief and is devoted to "Credit and Trade Systems ". Here the chapters on "The Organization of Rural Credit" and "The Organisation of Rural Trade and Transport" contain much useful information. The fourth book deals with "The Eoon. ernie Progress of India", and contains the only unsatisfactory part of the volume. We ould find here On almost