reation of new towns and cities, which shall
furnish convenient centres and markets for the surrounding villages. It
is not a part of General Booth's scheme to abolish cities, but rather to
dispose suitably of their superfluous population. And no doubt in course
of time the world will be covered not only with suburban farms and
industrial villages, but with cities which for commercial importance and
in other respects will rival any that now exist.

I am the more encouraged to believe that this will be particularly
practicable in India for the following reasons.

1. We have an enormous population close at hand. If at a distance of
12,000 to 14,000 miles, England can build its Melbournes, Sydneys and
Adelaides, surely it does not require a very great stretch of
imagination to suppose that here in our very midst with millions upon
millions of people at disposal we shall be able to repeat what has
already been elsewhere accomplished under circumstances so specially
disadvantageous.

2. Again let it be remembered that in this case we should have the
special advantage of carrying out the work on a carefully organised plan
and in connection with a scheme possessing immense ramifications all
over India and the world.

3. Once more, India supplies labor at the cheapest conceivable rate, so
that the cost would be infinitesimal as compared with the other
countries just mentioned.

4. Another important fact is that the laborers are accustomed to be
paid in kind, and to carry on a system of exchange of goods which will
further minimise the cost of the undertaking.

5. A still more encouraging element in the solving of our Indian problem
is the fact that nearly every native is a skilled artizan and you can
hardly meet with one who has not from childhood been taught some
handicrafts. Indeed the majority both of men and women are acquainted
with two or three different trades, besides being accustomed from
childhood to draw their own water, wash their clothes and do their
cooking. Hence it is impossible to find a more self-helpful race in the
world.

6. Again this very thing has been already done in India itself,
especially by its great Mahommedan rulers, hundreds of years ago, and
that under circumstances, which made the undertaking infinitely more
difficult than would now be the case. What was possible to them then, is
equally possible to us now.

7. Finally in the midst of some of the very waste tracts of which we
have spo