ufactures, provided with perfected machinery and applying the best
scientific methods.

We might also mention Hungary's rapid progress in the main industries,
but let us rather take Brazil as an example. Economists sentenced Brazil
to cultivate cotton forever, to export it in its raw state, and to
receive cotton-cloth from Europe in exchange. In fact, forty years ago
Brazil had only nine wretched little cotton factories with 385 spindles.
To-day there are 160 cotton-mills, possessing 1,500,000 spindles and
50,000 looms, which throw 500 million yards of textiles on the market
annually.

Even Mexico is now very successful in manufacturing cotton-cloth,
instead of importing it from Europe. As to the United States they have
quite freed themselves from European tutelage, and have triumphantly
developed their manufacturing powers to an enormous extent.

But it was India which gave the most striking proof against the
specialization of national industry.

We all know the theory: the great European nations need colonies, for
colonies send raw material--cotton fibre, unwashed wool, spices, etc.,
to the mother-land. And the mother-land, under pretense of sending them
manufactured wares, gets rid of her damaged stuffs, her machine
scrap-iron and everything which she no longer has any use for. It costs
her little or nothing, and none the less the articles are sold at
exorbitant prices.

Such was the theory--such was the practice for a long time. In London
and Manchester fortunes were made, while India was being ruined. In the
India Museum in London unheard of riches, collected in Calcutta and
Bombay by English merchants, are to be seen.

But other English merchants and capitalists conceived the very simple
idea that it would be more expedient to exploit the natives of India by
making cotton-cloth in India itself, than to import from twenty to
twenty-four million pounds' worth of goods annually.

At first a series of experiments ended in failure. Indian
weavers--artists and experts in their own craft--could not inure
themselves to factory life; the machinery sent from Liverpool was bad;
the climate had to be taken into account; and merchants had to adapt
themselves to new conditions, now fully mastered, before British India
could become the menacing rival of the Mother-land she is to-day.

She now possesses more than 200 cotton-mills which employ about 230,000
workmen, and contain more than 6,000,000 spindles and 80,000 loom