164 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

of factory operatives, detached from agricultural and villpge-
life, and depending largely or solely upon industrial employment,,
is beginning to be formed." " This," remarks the writer already
quoted, u is a happy augury of the future physical and material
welfare of operatives."

It is indeed sad, for anyone acquainted with the-
mature developments of industrialism in Europe, the*
* town and country ' problem, the filth and squalor of
manufacturing centres,'* a-nd the now increasing desire to
once more relate the life of the people to the land,-to see
India thus light-heartedly plunging into inevitable stiflfer-
ing of the same character.

" It may be," says Mr. Havell, "that legislation, by imposing
restriction on the hours of labour a-nd improving sanitary condi-
tions, may check the rapacity of mill-owners and shareholders,
and it may be that the latter in their own interests will some day
do as much for their employees as wise and considerate men do for-
their horses and cattle, but even the wisest and most humane can-
not in the pursuit of the ideal of cheapness make the modern
system of labour, in power-loom mills, otherwise than intellectually
and morally degrading. Nor can they remove the even greater
evils which the'system brings with it—the overcrowded, filthy, air-
polluted cities, the depopulation of rural districts and thestruggles^
between capital and labour which in Western countries constantly,
threaten the very foundations of society."

It is indeed astonishing to find in Bengal that polifeU
cians have supported the very • un-Swadeshi system of
power-loom mills. It is true that the boycott of foreign
goods has incidentally brought renewed prosperity to the-
hand-loom weavers ; but it is only too evident that in
uiany cases the principle of Swadeshi has been Conceived
of merely as a political weapon, rather than as the true*

* ** It may well be tbe case, and there is every reason to feax;
it is the case, that there is collected • a population in our great
towns which equals in amount the whole of those who lived in
England and Wales six centuries ago ; but whose condition is more*
destitute, whose homes arc more squalid, whose means are more
uncertain, whose prospects are ntore hopeless than those of the-
poorest serfs of the Middle Ages and the, meanest drudges of the-
medleeval cities." Thorold Rogers : J" &ix Centuries of Work an^i
Wages," p^46. .