s, and
40 jute-mills, with 400,000 spindles. She exports annually to China, to
the Dutch Indies, and to Africa, nearly eight million pounds' worth of
the same white cotton-cloth, said to be England's specialty. And while
English workmen are often unemployed and in great want, Indian women
weave cotton by machinery, for the Far East at wages of six-pence a day.
In short, the intelligent manufacturers are fully aware that the day is
not far off when they will not know what to do with the "factory hands"
who formerly wove cotton-cloth for export from England. Besides which it
is becoming more and more evident that India will no import a single ton
of iron from England. The initial difficulties in using the coal and the
iron-ore obtained in India have been overcome; and foundries, rivalling
those in England, have been built on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

Colonies competing with the mother-land in its production of
manufactured goods, such is the factor which will regulate economy in
the twentieth century.

And why should India not manufacture? What should be the hindrance?
Capital?--But capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough to be
exploited. Knowledge? But knowledge recognizes no national barriers.
Technical skill of the worker?--No. Are, then, Hindoo workmen inferior
to the hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, not eighteen years old,
at present working in the English textile factories?

II

After having glanced at national industries it would be very interesting
to turn to some special branches.

Let us take silk, for example, an eminently French produce in the first
half of the nineteenth century. We all know how Lyons became the
emporium of the silk trade. At first raw silk was gathered in southern
France, till little by little they ordered it from Italy, from Spain,
from Austria, from the Caucasus, and from Japan, for the manufacture of
their silk fabrics. In 1875, out of five million kilos of raw silk
converted into stuffs in the vicinity of Lyons, there were only four
hundred thousand kilos of French silk. But if Lyons manufactured
imported silk, why should not Switzerland, Germany, Russia, do as much?
Consequently, silk-weaving began to develop in the villages round
Zurich. Bale became a great centre of the silk trade. The Caucasian
Administration engaged women from Marseilles and workmen from Lyons to
teach Georgians the perfected rearing of silk-worms, and the art of
converting silk into