Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/701

 the progress of the fell disease. There are certain things -which all must do in all climes. The spinning wheel is the thing which all must turn in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate and the vast majority -must for all time.

It was our love of foreign cloth that ousted the wheel from its position of dignity. Therefore I consider it a sin to wear foreign cloth. I must confess that I do not draw a sharp or any distinction between economics and ethics. Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore sinful. Thus the economics that permit one country to prey upon another are immoral. It is sinful to buy and -use articles made by sweated labour. It is sinful to eat American wheat and let my neighbour, the grain dealer, starve for want of custom. Similarly it is sinful for me to wear the latest finery of Regent Street, when I know ,that if I had but worn the things woven by the neigh- bouring spinners and weavers, that would have clothed me, and fed and clotted them. On the knowledge of my sin bursting upon me, I must consign the foreign garments to the flames and thus purify myself, and thenceforth rest content with the rough ' Khadi " made by my neighbours. On knowing that my neighbours may not, having given up the occupation, take kindly to the spinning wheel, I must take it up myself and thus make it popular.

I venture to suggest to the Poet, that the clothes I ask him to burn must be and are his. If they had to his knowledge belonged to the poor or the ill-clad, he would long ago have restored to the poor what was theirs. In burning my foreign clothes I burn my shame* I must refuse to insult the naked by giving them clothes

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