SWADESHI.

of the Nationalist p&rty, has been to compete with
Europe in cheapness. But the idea of learning just
enough of Western science or Western manufacturing
methods to be able to undersell the imports at any given
moment is as delusive as it is mean. Some more construe*
tive aims and methods are needed if Indian manufactures
are to recover their lost status, and if India is to avoid
even some of the horrors associated with modern industrial
production in the West.

Do not then let us compete with Western nations by
evolving for ourselves a factory system and a capitalist
ownership of the means of production corresponding to
theirs. Do not let us toil through all the wearisome stages
of the industial revolution—destruction of the guilds,
elimination of small workshops, the factory system, lodssess
faire, physical degeneration, hideousness, trusts, the un-
employed and unemployable, and whatever may be to
follow. We may perhaps not think on these things now,
we may be too much concerned with the political problems
of to-day. But if we are wise, we, who want India
to be free, must bethink ourselves that, when that freedom
comes, these problems will be with us still; the possibility
of their solution depends on foresight and wisdom now.
The history of the industrial revolution in Europe has
been a long a,nd sad one, and only now, and slowly, axe
some of its worst results being recognized, and their remedy
devised. That this industrial revolution was in a sense
inevitable may be granted, and it may also be that
at least the outlines of it must be imposed upon the
development of the social organism in the East - as well
as in the West; and indeed, not only in Japan,
but also in India, we see the process already at work,
But it is probably possible for Eastern nations to