THE

GOSPEL

AND THE
PLOW

SAM HIGGINBOTTOM

BV 3265 .H53 1921
Higginbottom, Sam, 18/4-
The gospel and the plow

I

THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

OR

THE OLD GOSPEL AND MODERN FARMING

IN ANCIENT INDIA

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO ♦ DALLAS
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MELBOURNK

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TORONTO

THE
GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

OR

THE OLD GOSPEL AND MODERN FARMING
IN ANCIENT INDIA

BY V ^1

SAM HIGGINBOTTOM, M.A

B.Sc. IN AGRICULTURE

il3eto gorb

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921

AU rights reserved

Copyright, 1921.

bt the macmillan company

Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1921

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO

THE ONE WITHOUT WHOSE UNFAILING COUR-
AGE, GOOD-TEMPER, FAITH IN GOD AND IN ME,
THIS BOOK COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRIT-
TEN; TO THE HELP- MEET AND PARTNER IN
ALL THE STRUGGLES REPRESENTED HEREIN

MY WIFE

"And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee
saying, Tliis is the way, walk ye in it, when ye
turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to
the left." Isaiah 30: 21.

"Neither are your ways my ways, saith the
Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways."

Isaiah 55: 8-9.

PEEFACE

This book is written at the request of the publishers
who asked me to put into book form some lectures de-
livered at Princeton Theol'oglcal Seminar}^ There is
more in the book than the lectures. However, I feel
that so little has been accomplished in India of all I set
out to do, that this book is little more than a report of
progress and there is really little justification for such
a volume. There is a growing interest in the non-theo-
logical aspects of Foreign Missions and this production
may serve some purpose in drawing attention to the need
for other than the ordained missionary to help the back-
ward peoples of the far countries. Those who are in-
timately acquainted with my work in India may feel
that I have ignored altogether or slurred over some of the
greatest difficulties to be faced in the establishment of
such an institution as is contemplated at Allahabad.

It is said that I speak only of the high spots, tell only
of the successes, write as though there were no humiliat-
ing failures to record. This is largely true. But any
one familiar with the practical conduct of affairs knows
that there are difficulties and lions in the way, that there
is friction and clash of will, that there are sharp differ-
ences of opinion before any worthwhile program is car-
ried out. So much so has this been my experience that
I have come to see that the only place on earth where
men are gathered together without friction is the ceme-

viii PREFACE

tery. It is n^ot altogether loss to be blind to some of the
* 'insoluable problems. ' ' I have found that some of these
with infinite patience, no bitterness of spirit or of jeal-
ousy, led by His spirit, can be made most useful. We
are told that the mountains shall be a way, the seeming
barriers shall be the paths to progress, so that I do not
despair of seeing not only a new heaven, but also a new
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Therefore in
hope and great expectancy I daily pray and work that
His Kingdom may come here and now.

Sam Higginbottom.

Radnor Road

Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
Dec. 27, 1920.

CONTENTS

CHAPTEB PAOB

I Introduction to Mission Work in India . 3

II India's Poverty and Illiteracy ... 13

III Caste, a Limiting Factor 23

IV Mission Industries . ...... 34

V How THE Farm Started 52

VI The Cattle Problem of India .... 69

VII The British Government in India . . 78

VIII Work in Native States 95

IX The Missionary's Avocation .... 106

X Jesus' Example for Such "Work . . . 124

THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WORK IN INDIA

In the month of February, 1903, while I was still an
undergraduate in Princeton University, I was invited
by an old school friend, Mr. W. W. Fry, then Secretary
of the Trenton Y. M. C. A., to spend Sunday with him.
I accepted his invitation, and accompanied him to the
men^s meeting on Sunday afternoon. When the meet-
ing was over he introduced me to a missionary from
India, the Rev. Henry Forman. On the following morn-
ing in the street car on which I rode back to College,
the only vacant seat was beside the missionary to whom
I had been introduced the day before, and whom I had
never expected to see again. As soon as I had taken
my seat he began to ask all manner of questions.

**What year are you in colleger'

**This is my last,'* I answered.

*'What next?"

**A theological seminary."

**Then what?"

**The foreign mission field, I hope.''

** Where do you want to go?"

3

4 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW:

** Either to China or to South America/'

**What do you think of India?"

**Not much/'

**Why not?"

** Because the missionaries from India whom I have
heard, all speak of the intellectual keenness and the
nimble-mindedness of the Indian. I do not feel able
to cope with that kind."

He then told me of the mass mobement among the
outcastes in which thousands of the lowest classes of
India were turning to Christ. He suggested that, if I
were willing and anxious for work, I should go out
immediately after my course was finished at college to
work among the poor illiterate folk. He also sug-
gested that this would not be the kind of work which
would overtax my mentality. In view of my age he
thought that the Board might be willing to send me
out. I could still take my theological course in India
and be ordained later on. Then he put to me the
direct question.

**If the Presbyterian Board would send you imme-
diately upon graduation from college would you go
out to India to do evangelistic work among the low-
caste people?" I could, at the moment, think of no
good reason against such a proposal, so, hesitatingly,
replied that, although there was little hope of the Board
sending me out as an unordained man for evangelistic
work, yet I was ready to go.

'*A11 right," he said. ^'Before you attend any lec-
tures to-day write to Robert Speer and tell him of our
conversation. I will also write. Good-by, I get off
here." We had reached Lawrenceville which lies about
half way between Trenton and Princeton. I had the

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WORK 5

rest of the journey in which to ride alone and think of
what I had done. I prayed. When I reached my room,
I wrote to Mr. Robert E. Speer. In April I was com-
missioned to go out unordained, to carry on evangelistic
work among the low-caste people of North India. In
New York City I was appointed to Etah, in the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, India. I was graduated
in June and started for India.

On Nov. 10, 1903, I arrived in Calcutta. I went
northwest, five hundred and fourteen miles, to Allahabad,
the nearest station at which the American Presbyterians
were at work. After spending a few happy days as the
guest of the late Dr. and Mrs. Arthur H. Ewing, I ac-
companied them to Ludhiana in the Punjab, where the
Presbyterian synod was to meet. At the same time the
Punjab and North India missions were to hold their
annual meetings. Here I received a most cordial and
hearty welcome from all the missionaries. I sat in the
meetings and saw how the business of the mission was
conducted. I noticed how much trouble was caused by
the refusal of a certain missionary to accept the work
which the missionary body assigned to him. I decided
that I would never be so stubborn. I had little idea how
soon and how keenly my decision would be put to the
test. When the vacancies were considered, there were
not nearly enough missionaries to go round. When
my own turn came they surprised me by saying: —
**We have decided that you are to teach in the college
at Allahabad.^' I objected. ''I had come out,'' I said,
**to do evangelistic work. I did not like the idea of
teaching, I was not fitted for it." It was pointed out
that in the contract signed in New York I had agreed
to abide by the will of a majority of the mission. The

6 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

majority had voted that I was to go to the college
at Allahabad. "All right," I said. **I am not willing
to break my contract. I will do the best I can. I go
under protest, and I do not hold myself responsible for
results. ' '

The more one studies the organization of a mission
and the various ways and means which it employs in
order to make Christ and His Good News known, the
more one will find that it is the spirit and attitude of
the individual missionary which matters rather than
the particular work to which he is assigned. If one
has the right attitude of mind and a broad and liberal
education, then whatever the duty assigned, one will
find a way of using his work to further the great end
in view. For the individual who has once seen the
vision of what the world might be if it had Jesus as
Lord and Master, and who has consecrated himself to
the will of God and to his fellow men in obedience to
Jesus' **Go ye into all the world," it is not possible to
conceive of any position in mission work in India which
will not call out all the energy, power, initiative of
which that individual is possessed. It is the fault of
the missionary if he, or she, does not go tired to bed
every night from a day well spent in the service of the
Master. The mission merely assigns the new arrival to
a station, it cannot give to him either the spirit or the
personality with which to work out his faith. The in-
dividual has invariably to make his own way of present-
ing Christ. Whatever his appoin+ment he has to deter-
mine for himself the best way of carrying his principles
into practice. One of the joys of mission service is
that the individual missionary has such a free hand, and
is so much the master of his own work. During his first

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WORK 7

years he serves an apprenticeship in a very sympathetic
company. The older missionaries are eager that the
newcomer should find that work in which he can work
with the least friction, and the work into which he can
put all his heart and enthusiasm. The field is so great
and the task is so complex and manysided that the mis-
sionary can use his own particular talent to gain other
talents. No one method will meet all cases. Therefore
each missionary, as he keeps in mind his purpose, can
work out his life, according to his aptitudes and fitness,
to hasten the coming of that Kingdom for which we
daily pray.

The scarcity of missionaries was such that the Mis-
sion College at Allahabad was unable to ask what the
teacher was best fitted to teach. It knew where its
greatest need lay and simply told the teacher to fill it
as best he could. The subjects upon which I was best
prepared were already well cared for. I was assigned
to a subject which I had taken at college simply for the
reason that it was required. — They told me that I was
to teach Economics.

The text books were English and American, the stu-
dents were Indian and were forced to do their studying
in a foreign language. Let an American undergraduate
whose mother tongue is English, be required to do all
his college work in a modern language, for example
French, and he will then understand the hard task set
the Indian student. Yet such is the curious situation in
India that English is the language of the educated. It
is the one language t)rat will take one all over India.
There is no one Indian language that will do this, al-
though there are over one hundred different Indian lan-
guages spoken and written in India- tP-day, The English

8 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

language, while having certain obvious disadvantages,
has been a great blessing to India. From the English
classics the Indian student has mastered some great
world ideas that were dimly stated, or not stated at all,
in oriental literature. These ideas are now bearing fruit.
The great fact of the growth of a feeling of nationalism
in India; the idea of democracy, the idea of human lib-
erty, learned from Milton and the other English writers,
are necessary antecedents of the idea of responsible gov-
ernment in India which will be a government in which
the majority elected will be Indians. English has been a
hard schoolmaster, but it has been a thorough one, and
its teachings are now part of the warp and woof of
the thinking of educated India. Nothing else could so
surely and so quickly have made it possible for India
to consider itself one people. When these students found
that they were to be instructed by a teacher who knew
so little about his subject, they were afraid that they
would fail in their Government examinations. Up to
this time the Indian University has been an examining
body, not a teaching university, and no separate college
can examine its own students or grant degrees. It was
difficult to find Indian illustrations that the students
could understand, for the various economic principles
laid down in the text books. Granted the soundness of
the principles, it was essential to obtain illustrations
and concrete examples out of the Indian conditions which
they knew. With this end in view we began to take
advantage of the Indian holiday system, which perhaps
needs a word of explanation. India possesses the larg-
est Mohammedan population of any country in the
world. It is greater than that of Egypt, Turkey, Persia,
and Arabia put together and amounts to over seventy

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WORK 9

millions. When an Indian college admits Mohammedan
students it is compelled to allow them to observe their
own religious holidays and festivals. Again, India is
the only country which has any very considerable Hindu
population. At the last census this population numbered
over two hundred and twenty millions, more in fact
than the total of all the Protestant Christians in the
world to-day. The Hindu students must also be free to
observe their religious holidaj^s. With the different
Christian holidays added, including Sunday of course,
the college term is somewhat broken up, and the Indian
student, being in most things not unlike his fellow
students the world over, takes full advantage of every
holiday. I often recall a remark of President W. 0.
Thompson of Ohio State University, that education is
the one commodity sold in America for which the pur-
chaser is glad to receive less than he has paid for.
The greater the number of holidays, the better the
student likes it.

Realizing the difficulties which I have mentioned, of
studying in a foreign language, and having an inexperi-
enced teacher, the students agreed to give up some of
these numerous holidays, in order that we might take
trips together to study economic conditions in the neigh-
borhood. Together we visited the workshops of the
East India Railway and realized how human labor had
been reduced to minimum through the use of power, how
the inventive genius of man is multiplying his own ca-
pacity and at the same time ridding human labor of
its most forbidding drudgery. When they saw a pair
of locomotive driving wheels on a lathe in a room where
hardly a sound could be heard, they stood amazed at
the exhibition of such tremendous power applied in

10 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

quietness. In the brick kilns we watched production on
a large scale and the specialization of process.

We crossed the Jumna river in order to visit the Naini
Central Jail which has accommodation for three thou-
sand prisoners. For sixteen years the Superintendant
of this jail was the late Colonel E. Hudson, I.M.S., a
British Military Medical officer. Colonel Hudson was a
genius. He tried to manage the jail so that no man who
entered should return to his ordinary life without having
learned something which would be of advantage to him
if he wished to become a decent citizen. The gardens
and the field crops were the best I have ever seen. His
field cabbages, crop after crop, weighed from forty to
sixty pounds each. His cauliflowers, stripped of all
leaves and stalk, till only the beautiful snowy, white
head remained, turned the scale at from fifteen to twenty
pounds. His silage crops of sorghum or millet grew to a
height of from seventeen to eighteen feet, and weighed
twenty-five to thirty tons of green fodder to the acre.
Dean Alfred Vivian of the College of Agriculture, Ohio
State University, Columbus, Ohio, on his journey round
the world, rated the jail silage A No. 1. Colonel Hud-
son invented a coal-burning stove for cooking the thin,
flat, unleavened cakes of India, known as chappatties.
This stove saved the jail twenty thousand rupees a year
in fuel and the daily labor of fifty cooks. In the days
when the kitchens had been dependent upon wood for
fuel, it had been almost impossible to obtain dry wood
in the rainy season with which to cook the food. As a
result of damp wood and improperly cooked food, an
outbreak of cholera and dysentery had accompanied
the annual rainy season. This coal stove alone had been
the means of saving the lives of hundreds of prisoners.

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WORK 11

There were machine shops, carpentering and woodcarv-
ing shops, and a pottery department; there were weav-
ing sheds where the prisoners worked upon the most
up-to-date hand-looms, making their own blankets and
clothing; there was a rug factory, a roofing-tile factory
and modem dairy which provided milk for the sick
prisoners and jail staff. Various experiments had been
carried on with underground silos and I have never seen
cattle in better condition than those at the Naini jail fed
on this silage. Colonel Hudson had learned how to ap-
peal to the criminal mind and also how to get the best
out of it. In every case he tried to send the man out a
better man than when he came in. In his gardens and
on his farm he had learned how best to turn the waste
products from the jail into abundant health-producing
food for man and beast. This was on land that had been
considered sterile and unproductive when turned over
to him. It did not take many visits to convince both the
students and myself that if only Colonel Hudson's
methods for the utilization of wastes could be copied all
over India, more could be done with these than with
any other single factor to rid India of the terrible fam-
ines which attack her periodically. The proper disposal
of the refuse would give the people enough to eat and
would provide a sanitary system which would greatly
improve the general health. The organization of the
jail was so nearly perfect, the efficiency so remarkable
and the cleanliness so evident that the jail was a favorite
visiting place for us and we never came away without
feeling that the visit had been worth while. In Colonel
Hudson we saw the type of public servant, quiet, alert,
diligent, sympathetic, efficient, never looking for reward
other than his regular pay, rejoicing in doing his duty

12 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

well, that has made Britain the most successful of the
colonizing nations of history.

"When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest
horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid
of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee, which brought thee
up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be, when ye are
come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and
speak unto the people. And shall say unto them, Hear, 0 Israel,
ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not
your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble neither be ye
terrified because of them; For the Lord your God is he that
goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save
you. And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying. What
man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedi-
cated it let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the
battle, and another man dedicate it. And what man is he that
hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten of it? let him
also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and
another man eat of it. And what man is there that hath be-
trothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return
unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take
her. And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and
they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and faint-
hearted? let him go and return unto the house, lest his brethren's
heart faint as well as his heart." Deut. 20: 1-8.

CHAPTER II

INDIA'S POVERTY AND ILLITERACY

India is a land of villages, 700,000 of them. Her
population is rural, — over ninety per cent, of the people
living in small villages. We went into some neighboring
villages in order to study the life of the Indian farmer.
In the United Provinces the Indian farmer seldom has
his home on his own farm land. The average holding of
the tenant there is three and one half acres. The aver-
age farm of a land-owner is only four and one half acres.
These small farms are usually scattered and ''frag-
mented" into a number of small plots, very often dis-
tributed within a radius of a mile or so round the village.
Because of these small scattered holdings the farmers
usually live in the villages, securing protection against
wild animals and wandering bands of criminals. The
ordinary house has walls of solid mud, one story high
and no cellar. The roof is a bamboo frame work over
which is laid straw thatch or tiles about the size of a
man's hand. The reason for the small sized tile is that
it is hand molded and baked with cowdung for fuel which
does not give enough heat to bake a large tile. There is
generally not more than one room and one door. A
verandah, six to ten feet wide, serves as shelter for the
bullocks and the cow. Such a house costs from fifteen
to fifty dollars to build. From our conversation with

13

14 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

these villagers we learned that they had little capital,
very little equipment, and entirely insufficient food and
clothing. Their capital generally consisted of:

One pair of work oxen, each $10.00 to $15.00

A wooden plow .65

A sickle for reaping grain .30

A native spade for digging .60

A grass cutting tool .20

A wooden fork .20

A thick heavy club for breaking clods .15

A flat board for leveling ground .50

A few old Standard Oil tins .50

A big leather bag, maintenance per year

A long rope 6.00

A pulley wheel 1.00

$25.10

This list usually represents the number of their agri-
cultural implements. The plow is a wooden one with
a small iron tip or bar, keel shaped like a boat. It does
not turn a furrow, but makes a small V shaped scratch
throwing the dirt on each side. This scratch is so nar-
row that to plow an acre means going over the ground at
least three times ; the distance walked is over fifty miles.
A small, improved plow that turns a furrow will do a
better job and go only sixteen miles to plow the acre.
The ordinary Indian plow has only one handle so the
plowman is near enough to twist the tails of his oxen.
Seeing this plow one understands why Jesus said, " No
man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back
is fit for the Kingdom of God. ' ' If the Indian plowman
looks back the plow will not stay in the furrow, but
rides out, and fails to accomplish the purpose for which
it was made. And that is the point of Jesus' remark.
The man who looks back fails to accomplish what he

INDIA'S POVERTY AND ILLITERACY 15

should. The Indian spade or "pharwa" is shaped like
a large hoe with a short handle. It takes less muscular
effort and accomplishes less work than an American
spade or shovel. But when we see how hard Indian soil
can bake and consider the fact that so few Indian farm-
ers wear shoes, we realize that the Indian type is better
suited to Indian conditions for digging than the Ameri-
can. When it comes to shovelling sand, lime, coal or
dirt it is not nearly so efficient as the American type.
Wherever an American shovel is used in India it is a
two-man job ; one man pushes and steers the shovel, an-
other has a rope attached at the lower end of the handle
and pulls on it.

The grass cutting tool is generally a bit of old buggy
tire sharpened at one end and bent at the other end for
a handle. When grass is to be cut the man takes hold
of a handful of grass in the left hand and pushes the
cutting tool a little under the surface of the ground to
get all he can, root and all, so that a freshly cut hay
field has no stubble in sight, but looks as though it had
been harrowed. The method of cutting grass in India
is an interesting side light on the cheapness of human
life and the expensiveness of grass.

The Standard Oil tin occupies an unique place in the
domestic economy of India. It used to be very cheap,
about five cents a tin. It is now worth thirty. It is
used for storing seed, jewelry, oil, water, in fact any-
thing that needs a water-tight container that can resist
white ants. When worn out the sides are used for roof-
ing houses and temples.

Comparing the Indian farmer's capital invested in his
land with the investment of the average American farmer
the total is very small, and the investment per acre is

16 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW *

almost negligible in India as compared with the im-
proved farm lands in America. The family of the In-
dian tenant farmer usually plans for one meal a day.
During part of the year this meal is often uncooked and
consists of millet soaked in cold water, or a pulse parched
in hot sand and eaten a grain at a time. When pulse is
cooked, it forms pigeon pea-soup, which is seasoned with
spices, red peppers or chilis. Into this soup are dipped
the cakes of unleavened bread which have been cooked
over a small fire of dried cowdung. This unleavened
bread usually is made from the cheaper grains, since
wheat is, as a rule, too expensive for these poor villagers.
The strict upper-caste Hindu is a vegetarian, but the
low-caste man with whom Hinduism is little more than
a thin veneer, will eat any meat, except that of the cow
or ox. Under the influence of caste the outcastes have
organized themselves into castes with all the limitations
thereof. One of these low-castes will eat the flesh of the
cow, provided they have not killed it. Once the animal
is dead they ask no questions as to the manner of its
death, whether from disease or old age, but cook it and
eat it. Sometimes they do not cook it.

I remember a little girl of about fourteen who was
working on the Mission farm clearing out the cowstables,
earning four cents a day. We have no difficulty in get-
ting all the labor we need because we pay more than the
market rates, work is regular, full pay is there on pay
day without fines or deductions.

This girl was married and rejoicing in her first baby
boy. I noticed that after the work oxen had gone out
to plow this little Indian mother would lay her dear
little brown baby son in the manger, just as once another
Little Baby was laid in a manger. She would fill her

INDIA'S POVERTY AND ILLITERACY 17

basket with cowdung, put the basket on her head, carry-
it out to the fields where it was to do its work, then
return for another load, and each time she came back
she loved and fondled her little one. She was a glad,
happy, proud little mother, singing at her work. The
Maharajah of Bikaner, that Indian King who was one
of the Indian representatives at the Peace Confer-
ence in Paris, invited me to draw up a scheme for
agricultural development m his country. It involved
travel over the state and took me about three weeks.
When I returned to Allahabad the little mother was
walking round sad and disconsolate. I said ''Hello
Nanki, what is the matter?" ''0 Sahib, he died," she
replied. **Why did you not take him to the Mem-Sahib.
You know my wife would have given you medicine for
him?" She answered, ''It was not medicine he needed
but food. I could not nurse him. With four cents a
day, could I buy milk for him and food for myself?
Why Sahib, if I could not nurse him he had to die."
Many Indian mothers have Nanki 's experience.

Investigators like Sir William Hunter or Lord Cur-
zon, or those Indian gentlemen who have spoken of the
poverty of their country in the Indian National Congress,
whether pro- or anti-British, are all agreed that the aver-
age per capita income for India ranges between seven
and twenty-five dollars per year. This works out at less
than three to six cents per day per person for the whole
population. When we remember that India has a large
and wealthy class of lawyers, merchants, money-lenders
and landlords, it is obvious that many of the village folk
have less than three cents a day upon which to live.
About one third of the people of India are living at a

18 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

rate of about two cents per day or less, are permanently
underfed and ill-nourished, are so short of food that
they do not get proper growth and are generally too
weak to do a fair day 's work.

Now a cent does not buy more of the necessities of life
in India than it does in America, for the price for grain
is fixed by world conditions ; wheat is in a world market.
Cotton cloth made in Lancashire from American cotton,
competes with cloth made from cotton grown, spun and
woven in India.

It simply means that Indians, in number approximat-
ing the population of the United States, about one hun-
dred million, have not yet come to regard as possible
luxuries many things which America's poorest regard as
absolute necessities. No one may understand India who
ignores this degrading, debasing poverty which is one
inseparable link in the vicious circle of ignorance, super-
stition, oppression, ill-health, infant mortality, lack of
sanitation and the continued persistence of such epidemic
diseases as cholera, dysentery, plague, enteric, malaria,
hook-worm, small-pox and other preventable ills. It is
a poverty which robs manhood, womanhood, and child-
hood of all that is best and most worthwhile in them.
India 's poverty is a menace to the rest of the world. A
prosperous India producing more of the things she can
most easily produce could exchange them for the manu-
factured articles she needs but cannot produce. Self-
interest, as well as sympathy, demand that a remedy be
found for India's poverty.

In many villages with from one hundred to three hun-
dred inhabitants, one could not find one person, man or
woman, who could read or write. Sir Michael E. Sadler,
K.C.S.I., in reviewing ''Village Education in India,'*

INDIA'S POVERTY AND ILLITERACY 19

shows that half a million of villages in British India are
unsupplied by a primary school. (International Review
of Missions — October 1920.) The last census taken ten
years ago gives the degree of literacy as five and six
tenths per cent, where the test was the ability to write
a letter of four to five simple sentences in any one of the
languages of India, and to read the reply to it. This
shows that about ten per cent, of the men and boys are
literate, and about one per cent, of the women and girls
over ten years of age. Now when any people is so
largely illiterate it is an easy prey for oppression and
extortion. Wild rumors find ready credence. A lie
once started is not easily caught up and corrected. In-
dia suffers in full measure the penalty for so great a
degree of ignorance. Illiteracy immensely increases the
troubles of government, especially when the government
is a foreign one. A demagogue determined to make
trouble can go among an illiterate people and stir them
up into a state of frenzy by telling either deliberate false-
hoods, or by so twisting the truth as to misrepresent it. It
is very difficult for the Government to correct this, since
the harm is done before the Government is aware of it.
At the root of hatred, is fear, and at the root of fear, is
ignorance. Once the hatred and suspicion have been
aroused, it requires months of hard work to put out the
fiame, and to establish peace. Any one who is familiar
with modem India and who is watching with deepest
sympathy and good will the progress of the greatest ad-
venture in democratic government which the world has
ever seen, cannot but wonder at its chances of success
when ninety four and four-tenths per cent, of the popula-
tion is illiterate. The educated Indian is the peer of any
educated man anywhere, and as fit for self-government.

20 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

Six millions have been enfranchised in India. The
leadership rests on about a quarter of a million who have
the necessary education. It is the uneducated Indians
that constitute the problem. I am anxious to see the
day when India shall take her proper place as one of the
great self-governing peoples of the world. The British
officials and the European commercial community have
put on record their desire actively to assist in making the
Montague Chelmsford Reforms a success, but many more
schools will have to be built and filled with Indian boys
and girls before India will be able to accept her fair
share of the responsibilities of the world, and carry her
part of the burden of modern civilization.

Bad and crippling as this lack of education is among
the men of India, in order to see the most far-reaching
and cumulative evil effects of illiteracy it is necessary
to realize the meaning of illiteracy among the women
and girls of India. When we consider the inferior so-
cial status of women in India ; the purdah system which
shuts them off by themselves, keeps them prisoners for
life, often in insanitary, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated quar-
ters; the fact that women are by nature more conserva-
tive than men; and that in the early and most impres-
sionable days of life the children are under the care of
mothers, only one out of a hundred of whom can write
her own name ; we ask what chance has the Indian boy or
girl compared with the American boy or girl? The il-
literate Indian mother has her mind filled with supersti-
tion, myth, suspicion, and the consequent dread and
terror and darkness that cramp and dwarf life. The
mother can convey to her child only what she herself has
in her own mind. The woman of India has had it im-
pressed upon her that she is inferior to the man. She

INDIA'S POVERTY AND ILLITERACY 21

is often a chattel, degraded, debased. This treatment
causes her to lose her self-respect. A survey of the field
of Indian life shows no more devitalizing handicap
clamped upon a great people than the illiteracy of the
nation's motherhood. There is most urgent need that
the Christian women of the world help their illiterate
sisters in India to receive the same generous heritage
which they themselves take as a matter of course, seldom
realizing that they owe their position of equality with
men, and freedom to decide their own life's partner and
work, to Jesus, who is the world's first Gentleman. It is
only as Christian men obey Him that woman has a
chance as an individual with a soul, and a right to choose
her own life, to control her own person, and to say who
shall be the father of her children.

The causes for India's poverty are many, but the chief
of them are such as can only be removed by the Indians
themselves for they are related to the religion of the
Hindus. I believe the causes for India's poverty to be:
1. Caste; 2. Too many cattle that are an economic loss
to the country; 3. The great army of able-bodied men,
over five millions of them, who toil not neither do they
spin, the religious mendicants or '*faqirs." But the
greatest of these is Caste.

"And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto
my commandments which I command you this day, to love the
Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with
all your soul, That I will give you the rain of your land in his
due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest
gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil. And I will send
grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be
full. Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived,
and ye turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. And
then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up
the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her

22 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which
the Lord giveth you." I>eu. 11: 13-17.

"Neither ia there salvation in any other : for there is none other
name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved.'' ^cts 4'- 12-

CHAPTER III

CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR

Observation shows that the ''Caste System,'^ that bed-
rock of the Hindu religion, is the fundamental cause for
India's poverty, in that it is the greatest factor in limit-
ing production. It does this in a number of ways. For
instance — I employed a sweeper whose work kept him
occupied for less than two hours a day. His wages were U/
two dollars a month. Indian servants feed themselves.
He had a wife and six children. When I paid him his
wages he held it in his hand and looked at it. He said,
** Sahib, it is very hard to feed eight people on such a
small sum.'' I answered that I did not see how he did
it. I said, **I would like to pay you more money if you
earned it. The gardener has asked for help to dig in the
garden. If you will go and help him I will gladly pay
you." He replied that he would go and dig in the
garden. He started in to work. In a few minutes the
gardener came to me and asked for his pay. I said,
**What is the matter? Are you not satisfied with your
work? Do I not treat you fairly?" He replied, ''0
yes. Sahib, you treat me all right and the work is all
right, but I must leave." ''Why? What is the matter
that you cannot work?" "Well, Sahib, you have sent
that sweeper to work in the garden. If he stays I go."
*'But, you asked me for aid and I sent him to help you.
He has a wife and six children and gets two dollars a

23

24 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

month. You have a wife and four children and get two
and a half dollars a month. Yet, you complain of the
difficulty. How much harder then for him. So I
thought if he were willing to work extra, I would pay
him for it, and you would get your digging done and he
would have more food for his family.'' "Yes, Sahib
that is all true, but you see he is not of my caste and so
cannot work in the garden with me. If he stays, I go.
If I stay while he works in the garden my castefellows
will not drink water or smoke the huqqa with me, and
I cannot suffer the disgrace of this just for a sweeper.
So I must leave." I call the sweeper away from the
garden and explain the trouble to him. He understands
perfectly well the reason. We both know that if the
gardener leaves, I cannot get another. They would boy-
cott me if I allowed my gardener to leave for such a
reason. So the sweeper must look otherwhere to sell his
labor, and always with the same result, so with sad, re-
signed air he accepts his fate. Not the oppression of the
Indian by the foreigner, but the oppression of the In-
dian by the system of caste which is the heart and essence
of the religion of the Hindus. Certain castes may not
touch the plow or the digging tool ; others may not apply
manure to their fields. Caste is often behind the preju-
dice against the introduction of labor saving machinery.
Certain castes may grow field crops but may not grow
vegetables, others may grow vegetables but not field
crops. In America it is the custom for nearly every
farmer to have a garden in which is grown, in season,
sufficient fresh vegetables for the family. The discovery
of the importance of the ''vitamines" which exist in
fresh, green vegetables and in milk and fruit and the
part which they play in the growth and development of

CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR 25

human beings, indicates that not a little of the malnutri-
tion of India is due to the absence of fresh vegetables in
the diet of the farmer. This limiting of production is
one of the economic aspects of caste, but the caste system
also has its religious and its social aspects.

In Southern India, as is well known, there exist im-
mense numbers of so-called untouchable classes, to whom,
particularly on the Malabar side, are denied what might
be called the elementary rights of human beings. They
are condemned to live far beyond the outskirts of the
villages; they are forbidden to use many of the public
roads; their very approach within a certain number of
yards is accounted contamination. As a result of this,
these depressed classes live in hovels and seem to delight
in dirt. From a casual appearance it would appear that
the great majority of them have lost whatever innate
love of cleanliness human beings may be expected to
possess. They have no education, because they cannot
afford to take advantage of it even if it is proffered
free. They have no outlook in life ; they are condemned
to the most degrading forms of labor. But the root of
the matter is less economic than social. Until these de-
pressed classes can be put on a level with their fellow-
men, can be treated as equals, and relieved from the
moral degradation into which they have been thrown
by centuries of scorn, it is difficult to do very much with
them. Official orders can be passed in such directions
as insisting that children of the depressed classes should
be admitted into schools, that members of these classes
should have proper houses and free access to the public
water-supply; but in the absence of public opinion it is
quite impossible for Government to enforce these orders
which fly in the face of habits centuries old. In addi-

26 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

tion to the particular problems presented by the un-
touchable class, which are principally characteristic of
Southern India, there is also the All-India problem of
the general condition of the peasantry. Eecent settle-
ment operations in certain parts of Northern India have
revealed that in some places, the average agricultural
laborer is not infrequently compelled in time of stress
to mortgage his personal liberty. In return for a small
sum of money, which he may happen to need at the mo-
ment, he agrees to serve the man from whom he has bor-
rowed. The money is not repaid, nor is it intended to
be repaid ; but the borrower remains the life-long bond
slave of his creditor. For his work he merely receives
an inadequate dole of food, and to all intents and pur-
poses is in the position of a mediaaval serf. (From ** In-
dia in 1919,'' pp. 125-126.)

In its religious aspect caste fixes the status of the in-
dividual by birth, and birth alone. It determines what
a man shall do and the manner of his doing it for the
whole of his existence on this earth. By identifying
conduct with religion many things which are not desira-
ble from the standpoint of sanitation and health are in-
dissolubly linked, through caste with the Hindu religion.
These may not be interfered with by the British Gov-
ernment, which has held the good-will of India in the
past, largely because it has been neutral in religion, and
has made it its policy to interfere in matters religious as
little as possible. It is true that Government interfered
with the custom ''Suttee" whereby the widow was burnt
alive upon the funeral pjrre of her dead husband, but it
did not gain any popular credit for this interference.
The widow was and still is regarded as the actual cause
of her husband's death, and possessed of an evil spirit.

CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR 27

Therefore the widow is a *' kill-joy" in any family, a per-
son who would bring bad luck to any festive gathering.
For this reason it was regarded as better that she with
her evil spirit, should depart with her dead husband
even though that meant burning alive. Again it is very
difficult to-day for a Hindu woman to obtain proper
attention at child-birth. At this time she is considered
ceremonially unclean, and so can be attended only by
low-caste midwives who display an amazing unwilling-
ness to adopt either cleanly habits or modem ideas. Per-
haps it would be fairer to say that their ideas of cleanli-
ness are different from our own, for the newly born babe
is usually treated with a dust bath or mud plaster which
frequently causes lock-jaw, for the soil of India is im-
pregnated with tetanus germs.

From another aspect caste is the direct denial of hu-[
man brotherhood as understood in the New Testament. |
Caste separates men into water-tight compartments,
caste insists that men born of woman differ in kind.
Some at the top of the scale are ''twice born" or ''di-
vine," others at the bottom of the scale are inferior or
in the significant phraseology of their own countrymen
called "untouchable" and considered sub-human. It is
impossible for caste adherents to pray '^Our Father"
and yet these two words applied to God in the Lord's
prayer contain the idea upon which all human brother-
hood, and therefore all human justice, is founded. A low
caste Hindu who had been trained in Western medicine,
a highly educated gentleman, was haled into court at
Calicut for polluting a village tank because he, a low-
caste man, walked within a certain distance of the tank.
He was acquitted, but the case caused much excitement.
(See p. 129, "India in 1919.")

28 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

To return to what is both the social and economic
aspect of caste. There is an unwillingness to have sani-
tary latrines in the villages. The people go out into the
fields to relieve themselves and fail completely to follow
the Mosaic law in this matter (Deut. 23 : 13) of the dis-
posing of refuse. Such an omission is the inevitable
cause of widespread disease, the contamination of the
water supply, and the fouling of all approaches to the
village. Added to objections of this nature, caste re-
stricts marriage within very narrow limits, caste pre-
vents those social amenities which the "Westerner as-
sociates with his meal times and therefore hinders the
consequent interchange of ideas. It supports a joint
family system in which all share alike, where the drones
and the ne'er-do-wells can take the heart out of the work-
ing members of the family by refusing to work, but in-
sist upon being fed. It causes the minute distribution
of all property and thus lies behind the present un-
economic system of land holding where the farm is broken
up into scattered strips and into holdings so small as to
prevent a family from obtaining a decent living from the
produce of such a tiny acreage.

Let it be understood, however, that in this criticism
of the system of caste as it stands to-day, condemnation
is not wholesale. Caste is not all bad. It has its good
side. Surely a system which has succeeded in holding
a great people together for untold centuries must have
in it elements of unusual cohesive strength. The trouble
is that caste has undergone so little change that it has
failed to adapt itself to the changing conditions of hu-
man life. Caste is outgrown. It is an anachronism in
a world in which the railroad, the telegraph, the penny

CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR 29

post, the steam-boat and the printing press have ceased
to be seven day wonders.

There are over fifty millions of outcastes or '* untouch-
ables" in India. Men and women at the bottom of the
social scale, who do the lowest and meanest tasks, some
are scavengers, some will eat carrion, some are filthy and
disgusting in their habits. They have been kept down
by the higher castes. They have been denied the right
to education, to worship in the temples, to own or read
the sacred scriptures of the Hindus. They are said to be
bom at the bottom of a horrible pit and bom to stay
there. They are considered to be in their proper place,
and there is no way out. They are considered to be in
the place assigned them by the Almighty and under
orthodox Hinduism there is no possibility for them to
rise. They are degraded and debased. Kept down by
unmeasured centuries of oppression and tjnranny.

The missionaries of Christ have gone among these
lowly, despised folk and have told them of the One who
came to heal the broken hearted, to deliver the captive,
to set at liberty them that are bruised. This message is
so different from amythmg else that they have ever
heard that it seems almost too good to be true. It is
hard to persuade them that there is a way out of their
unspeakable degradation and bondage and poverty.
But some of them are persuaded and are coming out.
They are turning their faces towards the light and fol-
lowing it. Over fifteen thousand a month are becoming
Christian and it is this Christward tide of humanity that
has been called the * ' Mass Movement in India. ' ' Whole
villages of certain low-castes are being baptized at one
time. If only one or two come out at one time, they are

30 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

so persecuted that missions hesitate to accept them. It
is better to wait till the few have gained more. The
whole village is better able to protect itself in its new
faith than the isolated individual. Many more than
actually are baptized each month want to be baptized,
but because of lack of missionaries and lack of properly
trained Indian preachers and teachers, the Christians of
India are saying to the greatest Godward tide of history
' ' Not quite so fast, you are swamping us, we cannot take
care of you, wait till we get caught up with our schools
and teachers and churches and preachers." The prob-
lems of Christian missions in India to-day are not prob-
lems caused by failure to get converts but are problems
caused by the successes of so great an ingathering that
we have not room to contain so great a harvest. The per-
centage of illiteracy is growing in the Christian church
in India to-day. Only seventeen per cent, of the Christ-
ians can read or write. It is not because the missions are
doing less educational work. They are actually doing
more. The low-caste converts are almost totally illiter-
ate and it is this great illiterate host of believers that
are increasing the percentage of illiteracy.

There was a day when the missionary felt that bap-
tism was the end. To-day he knows it is only the begin-
ning. When these people come they are still poor, still
ignorant, their eyes not yet clear, so that they see men
as trees, walking. They have in them the inheritance of
centuries of oppression and degradation. If we only
baptize them and leave them alone we do them infinite
harm. Baptized they are babes in Christ and need the
milk of the Word that they may grow up to the full
measure of the stature of men in Christ Jesus. How can

CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR 31

we help such a lowly, dependent folk, who have no tradi-
tions of independence or liberty to brace them? If we
dole out charity to them we rob them of the very thing
they need training in most of all. It is not doles of
charity they need but help to help themselves. Teach
them by their own efforts how to earn their own living,
and such a living as will enable them not only to have
enough to eat, and to be decently clothed, but a living
which contemplates education for the children, contribu-
tions to schools and churches, to hospitals and libraries, a
living which enables them to take full responsibility as
citizens.

I believe the best and quickest way to do this is to
train them in agriculture, train the best and brightest in
a good central institution so that the ones so trained can
go out to their own folk in the villages. The ones trained
in modem farming can earn much more than the un-
trained, so much more in fact that they can pay their
own way and take their part as self-supporting members
of the community. Some people who have seen this
mass movement work criticize it. They say these peo-
ple do not understand Christianity, that their motives
are mixed and often unworthy, that they come to Christ
for what they can get out of Him, that they are mer-
cenary Christians, that they come for the loaves and
fishes, that they are rice Christians. Having said so
much they think the work is condemned and the case
closed, but is it ? Grant all they say, it means that these
poor folk see in Christianity more than in their old faith.
While adhering to their old faith material progress was
impossible, under Christianity it is possible. Under
their old faith they were denied common human rights,

32 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

under Christianity they are recognized as brothers,
under their old faith they were denied the spiritual
resources of that faith, under Christianity their only
limit is their capacity to comprehend the length and
breadth and depth and height of the love of God for
the lost. It always seems to me that Jesus must have
had the low-caste in mind when He stated His mission
to be to seek and to save that which was lost. After
all, it is not the motive with which men or women come
to Christ that matters, but the motive with which they
stay with Him, and many can bear witness that God is
raising up to Himself out of these whom man despises,
a body of believers that are the spiritual equals of any
body of believers anywhere on earth. In faithfulness
even to death, in the last great supreme sacrifice for
His dear sake, they are abundant witnesses. The low-
caste converts educated in our mission schools and col-
leges often attain positions of distinction and high re-
sponsibility. They move freely among high-caste peo-
ple, where, had they not been converted and trained,
they never could have gone. As I see the progress of
these masses to Jesus I come to see that the only cure
for caste is Christ. That He effectually takes away any
disability that caste causes. That in this life if any
man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation.

"And Moses said unto the children of Israel, See, the Lord hath
called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the
tribe of Judah; And he hath filled him with the spirit of God,
in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all man-
ner of workmanship; And to devise curious works, to work in
gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in the cutting of stones,
to set them, and in carving of wood, to make any manner of
cunning work. And he hath put in his heart that he may teach.

CASTE, A LIMITING FACTOR 33

both he, and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan.
Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of
work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the
embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen,
and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those
that devise cunning work." Exodus 35 : 30-35.

CHAPTER IV

MISSION INDUSTRIES

As I had gone to India to work among the outcaste
people I was eager to see what the work was like, so
on some of the longer college vacations I went to Etah
where I had originally hoped to go to work among the
outcastes. I also went on tour with Mr. and Mrs. Bandy
and saw the thousands of converts gathered in by this de-
voted, original and energetic couple. I saw the great
poverty of these new converts, I watched them bring in
their gifts of eggs, chickens, grain and potatoes as well
as of cash. I found that most of them were tithing, that
is, were giving one-tenth of all they received of money
or produce in order to support their preachers and
teachers and to build their churches and schools. I also
saw that where the family income, whether measured in
money or in kind, was two dollars a month it was im-
possible for a tenth of so small a sum to do all that was
needed to bring about a self-supporting church. I
looked forward and tried to imagine the day when the
missionary program in India should have been completed.
A self-supporting, self-governing, self -propagating Chris-
tian church seemed the minimum for which to look for-
ward. It was obvious that if the average church mem-
ber was living at a rate of from one to three cents per
person per day something would have to be done to
increase the earning capacity and the income of the

34

MISSION INDUSTRIES 35

church membership. "What looked like a purely ecclesias-
tical problem had an economic aspect that could not
be ignored. ^

I noticed that most of the large mission stations had
some kind of industrial work. Iron-working, carpentry,
shoe-making and tailoriifg were the favorite occupa-
tions. The great famines had left thousands of orphan
children to be cared for. America was keeping many of
these thousands alive by subscribing at the rate of fifteen
dollars per orphan per year to feed, clothe and train
these boys and girls. But fifteen dollars was not enough
to do this properly for a year. Although so little was
spent upon the children, the Missions expected a return
in the improvement of the children similar to what an
American child in the public school system would show.
Great dissatisfaction was expressed that the children
developed so slowly and when turned out of the or-
phanage were able to earn so little. How much could
American children have done under the same kind of
treatment? Investigation shows that education is an
investment which in general pays the largest cumulative
dividend on the largest investment. Not enough was in-
vested in the low-caste convert or in the famine orphan
to earn a satisfactory dividend. Some of the mission-
aries were actually afraid of doing humanitarian work
or of being interested in social service. The division
was made between **real mission work'' and educa-
tional and industrial work done by missionaries. The
immortal soul, they said, was bound for eternity and
must therefore receive the chief emphasis. The saving
of the soul was the chief end of the missionary effort,
and the less the missionary had to do with the body and
the material things which the body demanded in order

36 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

to be strong, healthy and efficient, the better for him.
They used to talk of the great danger of the "rice con-
verts," of those who followed for the loaves and fishes
and of those who sought material gain. The Bible says,
''What? know ye not that your body is the temple
of the Holy Ghost . . . therefore glorify God in your
body. ' ' Cor. 6 : 19-20. The body surely has its rightful
demand for care and protection.

Investigation shows that most mission industrial en-
terprises in orphanages and for low-caste converts are
failures, that generally, just as soon as a mission could
close down its industrial work it did so, and only opened
again when famine provided large numbers of children
to be cared for. The causes of failure are :

First: The lack of properly and technically trained
missionaries. Seldom did a mission have a member, man
or woman, with the necessary technical training to make
industrial work a success. Most missionaries have
special training for evangelistic work, that does not
imply the training necessary for a good blacksmith, or
carpenter or shoe-maker. It would be much wiser for
Foreign Mission Boards to take a leaf out of business
experience and to appoint missionaries who have had
special training for the particular piece of work to be
done. An evangelist for evangelistic work: a black-
smith for iron work : a carpenter for working in wood :
a farmer for farming. All should be controlled by that
One Spirit without which no mission work can succeed.
"There are diversities of operations, but it is the same
God which worketh all in all."

Granted that a certain ordained evangelist who had
been brought up on a farm, and remembers the labors of
his youth makes a success of managing an orphanage,

MISSION INDUSTRIES 37

making up in enthusiasm what he lacks in technical skill,
the hoys under such a missionary may he passahly
trained in their particular trade, so that, if the mission-
ary does the business managing and the marketing, they
are able to earn anywhere from three to ten dollars per
month.

Perhaps this successful missionary goes on furlough
or dies. The mission has to make provision for his
work. Often the most awkward, three-cornered person,
who cannot fit in anywhere else, and who ought to be
sent home, is put in charge of the industrial work be-
cause it is argued that he will do less harm to **real
mission work'* there than anywhere else. Some of the
mission industries are big enough and involve sums of
money large enough to demand real business manage-
ment. The mission usually makes no provision for the
continuity of the industrial work ; when one man drops
out there is no specially trained man to step in. If
missions are going to engage in industry at all, it would
be well to see that properly trained men and sufficient
capital are obtained in order to carry it on with some
measure of success. I take it that in a country like
India, with famine ever threatening and poverty ever
present, missions will be compelled to continue in in-
dustrial work for some time to come.

Second: The reason for failure often is: — the in-
dustry chosen is not suitable, or located in the wrong
place with respect to markets. The caste system, in its
economic aspect gives to each separate trade or occupa-
tion a far greater power and control over its members
than a trades union claims over its members in America.
If the missionary trains a boy for one of these caste
trades he has to employ the boy whom he has trained.

38 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

If the boy leaves the mission in order to follow his trade
in the open market he immediately comes into conflict
with the caste trades union which will not only not ad-
mit him, but which will boycott anyone who employs
him, until he is compelled to fall back into the ranks
of the casual laborer and thus the missionaries' effort
is largely wasted. The boy also does not get a fair
chance in life.

Then too it is not worth while for a missionary to de-
vote his life to teaching shoe-making, tailoring, carpen-
tering or blacksmithing in India. When a Christian boy
is trained to any of these trades, even if there were not
the difficulty of caste tradesmen to contend, with, the
wages he can earn at present are not such that he can
live decently and bring up a family on them. His pre-
war wages in Northern India would have been about
sixteen cents per day. Wages have risen but so have
prices. It is essential for missions to train their con-
verts in those callings where they are not likely to run
counter to any caste trades union and where they may
be sure of earning a living wage. There are less caste
restrictions in farming than in any other occupation,
and those restrictions that do exist, usually apply to the
higher, rather than to the lower castes.

India is about one million eight hundred thousand
square miles in extent, that is, one-half the size of the
United States and Alaska. Nearly one million square
miles is culturable. About two hundred and fifty
thousand square miles are forest. The rest is called un-
culturable waste. Much of this unculturable waste can
be reclaimed by modern methods of drainage; by pre-
vention of erosion; by washing out harmful salts from
alkali lands; and by use of power plowing machinery.

MISSION INDUSTRIES 39

According to the official report prepared for presenta-
tion in Parliament — ''India in 1919" — India has eighty
million acres in rice, and grows the largest amount of
rice of any country in the world.

India in the season of 1919-1920 had about thirty mil-
lion acres sown to wheat and grew over ten million tons
of that staple. Three million tons more than the year
before.

India had the largest acreage under sugar cane, about
half the world's area under sugar cane is in India, and
until 1918 grew more cane sugar than any other country
on earth. The yield of sugar for 1918 was estimated
at three million seven hundred thousand tons.

India grows and exports more tea than any other
country in the world. Three hundred and eighty
pounds in 1918.

India leads the world in the production of oil seeds;
castor, linseed, mustard, sesamum, cocoa-nut and peanut
oils.

India leads the world in the production of sorghums
and millets; pigeon pea and other edible legumes.
India grows about eighty million tons of food grains
a year.

India has a world monopoly in the growing of jute,
from which all our gunny bags and sacks are made.

India leads the world in the production of shellac
for varnish.

In 1919 India grew six million eight hundred thousand
bales of cotton on over twenty million acres, each bale
weighing four hundred pounds.

India has several million acres under ''Sanai" which
yields a fiber like hemp.

40 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

India has two hundred and sixty million head of
homed cattle and water buffaloes.

India is rich in fruits which include, on the plains,
the mango, the banana, the papita, the custard apple,
the bear jack fruit, the orange and citrous fruits, in
the mountains grow apples, pears, cherries, peaches,
plums, apricots and strawberries. Many of these were
introduced by Dr. Carleton of the American Presbyte-
rian Mission.

The largest silk mill in the world is in Kashmir.

India is rich in spices and condiments of all kinds.

India mined over twenty-one million tons of coal dur-
ing the last year that jfigures were published. Oil has
just been found in India proper.

This list is not exhaustive. It shows the large aggre-
gate production in India of the world's staple crops and
their wide variety. On the investigation of details it is
found that India in general uses to-day the same tools
and implements that she used in the time of Moses, that
the yields of these crops per acre of land, or per man
engaged on the land raising the crop, are the lowest for
any civilized country on earth, this in spite of the fact
that India's soil is naturally fertile, and the growing
season so long.

The British Government started an Agricultural De-
partment nearly thirty years ago. The staff of scien-
tists has been somewhat small but the results amazing.
Mr. and Mrs. Howard, Imperial Economic Botanists,
bred "The Pusa Series" of wheat which was sown on
over half a million acres last year. It is only ten years
since this breed of wheat was in the experimental plot
stage. The net increase due to this good seed is at least
five dollars per acre per year better than the local varie-

MISSION INDUSTRIES 41

ties it displaced, with the present methods and imple-
ments. But this improved seed responds to better
methods in a way the local varieties do not, so that when
the better methods are introduced a net increase is ob-
tained of fifty to one hundred per cent, more than the
local varieties yield. Dr. Barber, Imperial Botanist,
worked on sugar cane for seven years. The local variety
of cane sugar grown in Northern India is a thin, hard
cane chosen because of its power to resist the attacks of
the wild pig, jackal, deer and disease. It responds only
slightly to manuring and better cultivation. It gives
about ten tons of cane per acre and less than a ton of
sugar. The improved variety of cane is giving up to
forty tones of cane per acre with over four tons of
sugar.

Most of India's cotton is short staple, coarse fiber,
low-yielding, ginning percentage 25-33 (the ginning
percentage is the proportion of fiber or lint to seed).
Most of the Indian varieties have a hairy leaf. Most
good long staple cottons have a smooth leaf. The smooth
leaf is readily attacked by insects while the hairy leaf
is not. Mr. Leake, Director of Agriculture of the
United Provinces at Cawnpur, has crossed different varie-
ties of cotton so that he now has a hairy-leafed, long-
staple cotton with a high-ginning percentage of 35-40
per cent. This cotton is worth more per pound than
the short staple. Mr. Roberts, Principal of the Agri-
cultural College at Lyalpur, Punjab, has done much to
increase the yields and quality of American cotton grown
in the Punjab. He has further devised a scheme
for selling this improved cotton which gives a fair
share of the increase to the farmer who grew the
cotton.

42 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

Mr. Clouston, Director of Agriculture for the Central
Provinces, has isolated a high yielding local variety,
*'Eoseum," which gives five dollars an acre net profit
more than the local variety. A breed of rice has been
isolated for Bengal which gives twenty per cent, more
than the local varieties. Plant diseases have been
studied and in some cases remedies found. New varie-
ties have been introduced. Cooperative credit societies
for purchasing and marketing have been organized.
Twenty-nine thousand societies are now active. When
we recall that modem agricultural science is so recent in
America, what India has done compares very favorably
with what other countries have done, after due allowance
has been made for all the unusual difficulties of the situa-
tion. If there is any place for criticism of the Govern-
ment it is in the fact that methods were not devised and
staff not provided for the spreading among the Indian
farmers of the results of laboratory and experimental
research. Efforts to this end are now being put forth
but the area is so vast, it takes so long for a foreigner
trained in agriculture to get acquainted with the Indian
conditions; the ignorance, the suspicion, the illiteracy
and superstition of the Indian farmers so widespread,
that progress is necessarily slow. The illiterate Indian
farmer has for centuries been fair game for anyone to
exploit. It is difficult for him to believe that anyone
is really trying to help him. When any improvement is
being introduced he always imagines that some new trick
is being played upon him. The Government is estab-
lishing rural, middle and high agricultural schools but
is compelled to go slowly because of the dearth of prop-
erly qualified teachers with the right attitude towards
the villager. It is at this particular point that America

MISSION INDUSTRIES 43

can be of the greatest service to India. America in the
South, among the negroes and poor whites, had a prob-
lem similar to, though not so large as, that of India.
In the Southern United States the Rockefeller Founda-
tion went in and studied conditions. It discovered
remedies and published the results in the "General Edu-
cation Board's Report of the Rockefeller Foundation."
The Foundation was kind enough to let me have five
hundred copies of this valuable document. These were
distributed widely to Government officials, prominent
Indians and missionaries. Not a little credit for the
wonderful forward strides taken in the last four years
in India is due to this American literature.

This literature describes the functions of the farm
demonstrator and county adviser. It shows how these
trained men went to the debt-laden, hopeless farmer of
the South and showed him on his own land, with his own
labor, how to grow crops which surprised the farmer him-
self, put him out of debt and brought new hope to him.
If America can give to India a few missionary insti-
tutions like Hampton or Tuskegee, co-educational, prop-
erly staffed with enough adequately trained Americans,
she will do India an inestimable service. In such insti-
tutions some Indians can be trained to farm their own
land for a much larger profit than they now get per
acre, other men can be trained as demonstrators to go
to the debt-laden, hopeless and despondent Indian
farmer, and further, the right kind of teacher can be
trained for the rural schools. The demonstrator proves
to the cultivator that "book farming" is profitable.
As a result the farmer wants his children educated, and,
as a result of his larger crops, he is able to pay for his
children's education. Great Britain does not have the

44 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

conditions which call for such institutions. As I go
about America many say to me: — ''Yes, what you say
about India is interesting, but after all what business
have American Missions in India? India is Great Bri-
tain's job/' Frankly I admit that American Missions
have no ''business" in India and that no legal claim can
be made upon American Christians to send help to India.
It is only in the abundance of America's good-will, of
her resources, of her conspicuous ability to help, and
finally in her obedience to the command of Christ to
go to the uttermost parts of the earth that justify her
in giving this assistance to India. Even in my copy
of the American revised version it does not say to Ameri-
can Christians "Go ye into all the world except the
British Empire." India's need, America's ability to
meet that need in relation to the command of Christ, is
America's reason for sending of her sons and daugh-
ters to help this great and ancient people to gain the
fullest measure of human freedom, and to learn the
peace of God which passeth understanding. The reason
I advise that so many properly qualified Americans be
sent out is not that India's own sons and daughters afe
not capable, but they have not had the chance for train-
ing in India which they need and which America has.
Other things being equal, the greater the number of
American helpers as a temporary measure, the quicker
India will be able to manage her own affairs.

After I had made a study of the problem of mission
industries and saw they must be an essential part of
the missionary method, I decided to choose agriculture
in preference to anything else for the following reasons :

1. Agriculture is to-day the main occupation in India.
It is the basic industry of the world.

MISSION INDUSTRIES 45

2. A^culture is likely to remain the main occupa-
tion of India, because of its climate and the long grow-
ing season.

3. Improved agriculture is the line of least resistance
in a society bound by caste and may be the line of
greatest wisdom. It is the simplest and most direct way
to give India enough to eat and to prevent famine.

4. Improved agriculture, taught to the low-caste con-
vert will give him enough to eat and will provide him
with a surplus with which he can purchase clothing,
pay the doctor, educate his children and contribute
reasonably to the support of his religion. He learns
by his own efforts how to support himself and his family.

5. Improved agriculture provides an occupation for
sons of Christians who are not fitted to be mission
teachers or preachers. Hitherto the main efforts of
mission training have been directed toward the keep-
ing up of the supply of evangelists and teachers. Not
all good Christians are called of God to these forms of
service. Since mission service is a form of life insur-
ance for the time server, many have entered into this
form of Christian work who were not suited either by
their aptitude or their consecration to teaching or
preaching. Because there was no other form of train-
ing provided by the mission a class of professional re-
ligionists has been fostered who are not always a credit
to their mission or to Christianity. The boy who is
trained in agriculture has no difficulty in obtaining a
good job apart from the mission, often at a salary much
higher than the mission could afford to pay. We have
had men, trained on the farm at Allahabad, who delib-
erately chose mission service at a lower rate of pay,
rather than other employment at a higher salary be-

46 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

cause they felt that in the mission they might help their
own people better than by earning a big salary for them-
selves elsewhere. This raises the Indian to the same
status as the missionary himself, who serves not for
what he can get but for what he can give to others.
This opens another possible occupation for Indian Chris-
tians and the more of such properly trained men there
are, the sooner will the Indian be the real leader of his
own people in their long struggle out of economic
bondage into economic freedom.

6. The fact that so few low-caste folk possess land
has been used as an argument against mission agricul-
tural training. What is the good, our critics ask, of
training men in this profession when they have no land
of their own or are unable to rent land ? The answer is,
that even illiterate low-caste non-Christians, who have
worked on the mission farm for two or three years and
who have learned how to use iron plows, harrows, rollers,
seeding, mowing and threshing machinery and silage
cutters, are in great demand at wages two and one-half
times as great as the average village wage. We have
never had difficulty in getting eager laborers who wdsh
to improve their own condition by getting practical
training with us which fits them for higher wages else-
where.

7. When I first came into contact with the non-Chris-
tian student of an Indian college, I was interested to find
out what he was going to do with his education. I dis-
covered that a very large majority were looking forward
to Government service. In fact for every Government
post which fell vacant about a hundred students applied.
The ninety and nine who failed to obtain the post fed
the ranks of the embittered and made Indian unrest more

MISSION INDUSTRIES 41

widespread. They asked, ''Why did the Government
accept our fees for educating us and then not give us
jobs?''

Failing Government services, the law is their second
choice, and India, though possessed of some good, great,
constructive and clever lawyers, has far more men in
this profession than the country needs. If they fail in
law, things have come to a bad pass, and there is nothing
left but teaching in a Government school, or failing this,
in a mission school, or a clerkship on the railroad or in
a mercantile house. But in any one of these occupa-
tions life can never have the glory and honor it would
have had in Government service.

Only a small minority go out into life looking for re-
sponsibility or for public service or to see how much
good they can do.

There are a few who do not feel like accepting any
post under Government since in such a position they
would be prevented from criticizing its policy or ques-
tioning its action in any way. They prefer their inde-
pendence and poverty to a post in a Government ''ma-
chine" where there is the assurance of a fair salary,
leading to a comfortable old age with a good pension.
The number of occupations open to educated Indians
which allow them to preserve their independence are
very few.

In choosing agriculture I felt that a training in it
would give the educated non-Christian Indian opportu-
nity to earn a decent livelihood, and to keep his own in-
dependence and self-respect. If a large body of such
men could be created in India to-day they would be of
great assistance both to the Government and the people.
As ft class they would not be so bitter as the present dis-

48 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

appointed candidates for Government service, nor so
pliant and servile as some of the successful so often are.
They could be of great service in providing an educated
Indian public opinion free from prejudice.

8. There is a great call to-day for more technical and
industrial education in India. Some urge the Govern-
ment to press on with this to the exclusion of all else.
The patriotic Indian does not like to see India so de-
pendent upon other countries for the very simplest
manufactured necessities such as matches, lamps and
tools. He wants the Government to subsidize in some
way all Indian manufacturers. One great reason
against this, is that India to-day has so small a propor-
tion of her population that can use tools and manage
machines, the lack of trained machinists could not be
overcome for years. I would be the first to agree that
India needs a greater proportion of her people engaged
in manufacture and industry and fewer in agriculture.
I feel that this can best be brought about by the devel-
opment of those industries related to and subsidiary to
agriculture such as :

The making and repairing of modem farm imple-
ments and machinery.

Modern dairying.

The canning, and preserving, and drying of fruits
and vegetables.

Sugar making.

Oil pressing.

Tanning.

Rope making.
To illustrate how improved agriculture helps the in-
dustries I speak of, on the land of the mission farm

MISSION INDUSTRIES 49

where, before we took it, one blacksmith and one car-
penter were occupied for less than half their time, after
the mission took it and introduced labor-saving machin-
ery, two blacksmiths and two carpenters have steady
work all the time, keeping our machines in working or-
der, and setting up new machinery for purchasers.

The limiting factor to-day to the introduction of mod-
ern, efficient, labor-saving farm machinery into India is
not money, but lack of men trained to use modern farm
tools and to keep them in repair. India has several
million wells in areas where there never can be flow
irrigation. At present the water is raised by bullocks, a
slow and expensive method. The engineer who can
overcome all the difficulties and give to India a cheap,
durable, efficient and simple well-pumping outfit will do
a great thing for India. We therefore wish to establish
a strong agricultural engineering department to remedy
this obvious lack.

9. The present system of rural and primary educa-
tion is not popular in India largely because it is not
vocational or ''dollar" education, it is too literal, too
detached and unrelated to the life of the people, but
even more so because the boy who succeeds in it is lost
to his village and to his own people. If he succeeds he
is drawn away to the cities. India is a land of peculiar
rural type. Over ninety per cent, of the population live
in small villages and less than ten per cent, in cities and
towns. The large cities of India, for a country with
such a teeming population are very few.

Calcutta 1,200,000 inhabitants approximate

Bombay 1,100,000 inhabitants approximate

Madras 500,000 inhabitants approximate

50 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

Lahore

Delhi 1

. from

Agra

Lucknow

Allahabad

Poona

200,000 to 400,000

Benares

Including these cities there are only seventy-five towns
and cities with over fifty thousand population each.
Men trained as farmers will do their work and earn
their living among their own people in the villages.
Each properly trained farmer will be as a light on a
hill to all the ordinary village farmers. He will use and
introduce the better seed, methods and implements.
When his neighbors see the better yields his practices
will be noted and copied by them. This will raise the
yield of the crops and the standard of living for all. I
believe this is the quickest way to reach the whole of
India helpfully, naturally and economically.

10. India needs roads, railroads, canals, schools, col-
leges, libraries, and hospitals. Sixty-two per cent, of
the people of India are beyond the reach of any medical
aid whatsoever. India is so poor that she cannot in her
present condition provide the capital for a large part,
much less, for all of these things. Such blessings are not
going to be given to her as an act of charity by any other
people. If she ever gets them it will be by her own ef-
forts. The only possible place that I can see that she
can get them is from the first foot of her own soil, prop-
erly tilled. By the present old fashioned and inefficient
methods, India out of one of the richest soils on the earth
has the smallest yield per acre or per man of any civil-
ized country. So the rapid introduction of better farm-
ing is the most natural and easy method of giving to

MISSION INDUSTRIES 51

India the things of which she stands so sorely in need.
This is the one sure way to rid India of the ever present
nightmare, as well as the reality, of famine, and from
the missionary standpoint the one sure way to get the
self-supporting, self-propagating, self-governing church.
Better farming for India means the introduction of
modern machinery adapted to Indian conditions. The
Indian farmer has gone about as far as any one can go
with implements made of bamboo tied together with weak
string; to get bigger crops he must have better tools.
The present tools and implements do not call out from
the user any large degree of intelligence. It is for this
reason that mission farms using Indian tools and meth-
ods have not made any substantial progress. But the
Indian boy who learns to care for a tractor, or a thresh-
ing machine, or a silage cutter, knows he has learned
something that calls for more brains and effort. Modem
machinery challenges the Indian farmer boy just as it
has the American farmer boy.

" Give ye ear, and hear my voice ; hearken, and hear my speech.
Doth he that ploweth to sow plow continually? doth he con-
tinually open and harrow his ground? When he hath levelled the
face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the
cummin, and put in the wheat in rows, and the barley in the
appointed place, and the spelt in the border thereof? For his
God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him. For the
fitches are not threshed with a sharp threshing instrument,
neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the
fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
Bread grain is ground; for he will not be always threshing it:
and though the wheel of his cart and his horses scatter it, he
doth not grind it. This also cometli forth from Jehovah of hosts,
who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in wisdom."

Isaiah 28:23-29. Am. R. V.

CHAPTER V

HOW THE FARM STARTED

In going into these mud villages one not only learned
that India was poor beyond compare, "cabined, cribbed,
confined" by caste, and illiterate to an appalling ex-
tent ; but also that India was a land where one occupa-
tion overshadowed all others. That occupation was
farming. The census figures give sixty-five per cent,
engaged in agriculture proper, and fifteen per cent, in
looking after cattle, working in forests or in working as
casual landless laborers on the farms of India. Thus
eighty per cent, of the population of India gets its living
from the soil. India will remain predominately agri-
cultural largely because of the climate.

For the four months from November to March North-
em India where Allahabad is located has a delightful
climate, sunny days, starlit nights, little or no rain, the
thermometer occasionally registering frost at night and
rarely rising beyond 90° F. at noon. This is the season
when there is a riot of flowers ; roses, violets, heliotrope,
chrysanthemums, pansies, oleanders, poinsettias and
many others add color and odor that enrapture the lover
of a good garden. The best American vegetable seeds
give results of a kind that is rarely attained in America.
March is a month of transition. In April the weather

52

HOW THE FARM STARTED 53

begins to warm up, May and June are called the "hot
weather" months and have a shade temperature from
105° to 118° F., sun temperatures from 160° to 180° F.
There is a hot wind from the west known as the ' ' Loo. ' '
It is dangerous to be out of doors in the '*Loo.'' The
Indian is afraid of it, many die from its effects. About
July first the "monsoon bursts" or "the rains break"
and Allahabad is due to receive forty inches of rain in
the following three months. The rain seldom comes in
gentle well-timed showers, but often in a series of cloud
bursts. On August 9th, 1919, fourteen inches fell in
eight hours at Sutna which is about a hundred miles
south of Allahabad. On August 13th, 1919, an area of
over forty thousand square miles in extent received over
four inches in twenty-four hours. On July 9th, 1920,
Allahabad had eight and twenty-four hundredths inches
of rain. I have measured on our farm a fall of four and
a half inches in forty-five minutes. All roads, bridges,
culverts, railway enbankments have to be built with such
abnormal rainfall in mind. Between these heavy down-
pours we are apt to have "breaks" in the rains. Sev-
eral days perhaps, sometimes several weeks, as in 1918,
may pass without a drop of rain falling. The air is
often saturated to such an extent that linen after ab-
sorbing moisture from the air can be wrung out as
though it had been dipped in water. Humidity at Al-
lahabad :

1920
July 9th 10th 11th

96 93 98

Saturation 100

54

THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

COLD WEATHER CHART. I

The Weather

Meteorological Obsebvationb

Recorded at Allahabad

Week Ending
Jan. 28, 1920

Barometer re-
duced to 32°F.

Temperature o f
the air

Humidity (satu-
ration = 100)

Wind direction. .

Maximum temper-
ature in shade

Minimum temper-
ature in shade

Mean tempera-
ture of the day

Normal tempera-
ture of the day

Rain

Total rain from
1st January . .

Normal total up
to date

N. B. — The normal temperature and rainfall of each day are derived
from the observations of 28 years, 1870-98.

Quoted from the Pioneer Mail, January 30, 1920.

22nd

23rd

24th

25th

26th

27th

29.863

29.807

29.824

29.788

29.780

29.806

51.5

51.5

51.4

54.5

55.7

55.3

72
Calm

83
Calm

83
Calm

83
Calm

67
W.

53
WSW,

75.2

76.5

76.5

80.2

81.0

79.2

43.4

44.5

47.6

48.5

49.9

47.4

59.3

60.5

62.0

64.3

65.4

63.3

60.7
0

60.8
0

60.8
0

60.6
0

60.9
0

60.7
0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0.48

0.52

0.57

0.62

0.66

0.68

28th

29.645

51.2

55
W.

74.2

42.9

58.5

60.7
0

0

0.70

TYPICAL HOT WEATHER CHART. II

The Weather

Meteorological Observations

Recorded at Allahabad

Week Ending
June 9, 1920

Barometer re-
duced to 32''F.

Temperature o f
the air

Humidity (satu-
ration = 100)

Wind direction, .

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

29.329

29.331

29.302

29.257

29.237

29.244

9i.O

96.7

93.7

90.3

95.5

94.0

86
WSW.

32
W.

37

Calm

39
W.

35
Calm

48
E.N.E.

9th
29.232
93.4

51

E.

HOW THE FARM STARTED

55

Maximum temper-
ature in shade

Minimum temper-
ature in shade

Mean tempera-
ture of the day

Normal tempera-
ture of the day

Rain

Total rain from
1st January . .

Normal total up
to date

108.4

108.0

109.9

112.3

107.6

113.5

81.2

81.5

83.5

86.9

83.5

86.2

94.8

94.7

96.7

99.6

99.5

99.8

94.3
0

94.5
0

94.1
0

93.6
0

93.5
0

94.0
0

1.33

1.33

1.33

1.38

1.33

1.33

2.08

2.12

2.18

2.24

2.36

2.66

113.7

87.2

100.4

93.8
0

1.33

2.44

N. B. — The normal temperature and rainfall of each day are derived from
the observations of 28 years, 1870-98.

This shows 1.33 inches of rain in six months.

The maximum sun temperature would be leO'-lSO*.

Quoted from the Pioneer MaU, June 11, 1920.

RAINS

The Weather. Chabt III

Meteorological Observations
Recorded at Allahabad

Week Ending
July 14, 1920

Barometer re-
duced to 32»F.

Temperature o f
the air

Humidity (satu-
ration = 100)

Wind direction .

Maximum temper-
ature In shade

Minimum temper-
ature in shade

Mean tempera-
ture of the day

Normal tempera-
ture of the day

Rain

Total rain from
1st January . .

Normal total up
to date

8th

9th

10th

11th

12th

13tb

29.212

29.196

29.204

29.170

29.148

29.199

83.6

80.7

80.4

79.0

82.0

80.3

81
ENE.

96
Calm

93
WSW.

98

NNW,

93

ENE.

95
WSW.

94.9

94.0

89.0

83.2

83.4

87.6

80.0

78.3

80.0

78.4

78.6

78.8

87.4

86.1

84.5

80.8

81.0

83.2

85.3
0

85.2
8.24

85.2
0.11

85.3
1.54

85.3
1.87

85.4
0.33

2.98

11.22

11.33

12.87

14.74

15.07

10.73

11.07

11.39

11.68

11.94

12.16

14th

29.181

80.4

93
W.

86.4

77.9

82.1

85.3
0.26

15.33

12.43

N. B. — The normal temperature and rainfall of each day are derived from
the observations of 28 years, 1870—98.

Quoted from the Pioneer MaU of July 16, 1920.

56 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

A moldy Bible or moldy pair of shoes during this season
is no particular discredit to their owner. The humidity
is very favorable to the growth of molds of every kind.
This also is the season of prickly heat and boils, both
of which need strong counter-irritants in order that the
mind may be diverted from them. During the hot sea-
son and the rainy season the effort to keep alive absorbs
most of one's energies. Under such conditions, which,
with some variations, are common to the ''plains" of
India, mill and factory life with their regular hours,
hard, confining work, have little attraction for the
Indian. Every large non-agricultural industry in India
has great difficulty in obtaining an adequate supply of
labor. Until the general standard of living be raised
an increase in wages may result only in the workman
working fewer days in the month. Increase of money
is not so necessary as a ''divine discontent" with his
present standard. An increase of desire must precede
any rise in the standard of living.

Not only is the climate against mill and factory life
but the fact that in India the growing season for crops
lasts for twelve months as against six months per year in
the northern United States also favors Indian farming.
In late October and early November wheat, barley, peas,
mustard, linseed, potatoes and vegetables are sown.
These crops are reaped normally before April 10th.
Sugar cane is sown from January to March, reaped and
crushed from December to March, cotton sown from
March to July is picked from August to December. The
fodder crops, which include sorghums, millets, maize,
and pigeon peas and the seeds of the castor oil plant and
the plant family which includes watermelons, cucum-
bers, and squash are sown with the coming of the rains

HOW THE FARM STARTED 57

and the produce is gathered or reaped from October to
May. So wherever there is irrigation there can be a
very fair distribution of agricultural labor over the
whole year. In spite of the great variety of staple
crops the yields per acre and per man in India are lower
than in any other civilized country. Rothampstead in
England is the mother of agricultural experiment sta-
tions. On one plot for over seventy years without
manure wheat has been grown continually year after
year. The average yield per acre of wheat for the whole
of India is less than the famous unmanured plot, wheat
after wheat, at Rothampstead. On comparing the large
and profitable yields of crops in the jail with the piti-
fully small yields of the villagers' plots, I approached
certain government officials and missionary bodies and
said: ''In view of the present condition in India and
the great need for more food and education, surely, if
Government and missions are justified in carrying on
any kind of education, they are justified in establishing
that kind of education which most directly meets the
needs of the great majority of the people of India."
For a time no one would pay any attention, but I still
continued to gather facts and figures and to present
them to my friends. Every kind of objection was urged
in favor of the status quo ; the fact that Indian civiliza-
tion was already old when our own ancestors were still
barbaric savages ; the fact that every possible or conceiv-
able contingency in the Indian agricultural year was
treated of in a beautiful rhyming Sanskrit couplet did
not impress me, when I compared the poor Indian
villager who seldom had enough to eat and the people of
my own country, who, lacking the ancient civilization
and the Sanskrit couplets, still had enough and to spare.

58 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

Finally the Mission authorities said: ''Well, if you
think we ought to be teaching scientific, modem farm-
ing, as a missionary method, why do you not return to
America and study the subject and see if the folk in
America will back your faith with their money?" In
March, 1909, 1 left Allahabad and went to the Ohio State
University to study agriculture. For the next two
years, in addition to studying in the University, I made
on the average of thirty missionary addresses each
month, in churches, schools, colleges, theological semi-
naries, clubs. Sometimes the response was touching.
After the Laymen's Missionary meeting in the great
auditorium of Chicago, a scene shifter, all grimy and in
his shirt sleeves, pressed a soiled ten dollar bill in my
hand, saying, ''Take this and use it for me over there.''
Some of the boys at one of the reformatories gave all
their savings. A little two dollar and a half gold piece
was given me by an aged lady in Staunton, Virginia, the
birthplace of President Wilson. It had been presented
to her by her lover who was killed in the Civil War, and
was all she had left to remind her of him. Another
woman from the Pacific Coast sent me a five dollar gold
piece, the first earnings of her son who had recently died
of tuberculosis. Some large gifts came also, but most
were in sums under ten dollars.

There was also a response in the dedication of life.
I have shaken hands in India with five women mission-
aries who had attended my first mission study class on
India at the Lake Geneva Student Conference in 1909.
It was a great privilege to cooperate with the Student
Volunteer Movement in recruiting for the foreign field.
Many nights each month were spent on sleeping cars,
and by overnight journeys from Columbus I spoke in

HOW THE FARM STARTED 59

such centers as Washington, New York, Chicago, Roches-
ter, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Cincinnati. It was
hard, exhausting work, especially as for nine months I
suffered with severe attacks of malaria brought with me
from India. But, the thought of the need of. the India
that I loved, to which God had called me, gave me a
strength beyond my own.

I was graduated B. Sc. in Agriculture in June, 1911,
and returned to India in October, 1911, with thirty thou-
sand dollars of real money given by friends who believed
in this form of evangel. With the thirty thousand dol-
lars given by friends in America, two hundred and
seventy-five acres of land in one solid block were pur-
chased for about eleven thousand dollars. In order to
secure this land for an agricultural college it was neces-
sary to appeal to the government to put the Land Ac-
quisition Act into force. This it was kind enough to
do to secure the land, but the Mission paid for it. The
old Jumna Mission compound, which has been in posses-
sion of the Mission since before the mutiny, contains the
Ewing Christian College and the boys' high school. It
occupies a beautiful site on the north bank of the Jumna
river, having about one-third of a mile of river frontage.
The Jumna river at Allahabad varies in width from a
half mile during the cold season to about a mile during
the rains. The college campus goes right up to the two
story bridge which carries the main line of the East In-
dian Railway on the upper story with a cart track
underneath the railway. Across the bridge and imme-
diately opposite the college campus is the Mission farm.
This gives a most desirable and beautiful location for a
college campus and agricultural institution. The land
selected for the farm was rough, and very badly eroded

60 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

and cut up into gullies. There were a great many small,
irregular shaped fields. The land, having been deposited
by the river in flood time, consists of nearly every kind
of soil found in Northern and Central India, ranging
from nearly pure sand through the loams to the clays
and some patches of the characteristic "black cotton"
soil of Central India. A good deal of this land had not
been plowed within the memory of man. It was very
badly infested with two grasses both of which have un-
derground stems. When this land was plowed with the
little Indian plow it cut across these underground stems
and every place the plow broke the underground stems
a new clump of grass came up so quickly that no seed
that the Indian farmer could sow could get a sufficient
start to keep ahead of these grasses. The grass would
choke out anything planted in it. The Indian cultivator
cannot plow this land except under the most favorable
conditions. During the dry season of the year the
ground is so hard that his little plow will not get in
to break it so he has to wait until the rains have suffi-
ciently softened it to enable his little plow to scratch the
surface. In 1912 when I was down with typhoid fever
my colleagues tried to rent some of this land to the farm-
ers, but they would not give eight cents an acre for
some of it. I knew that this land was very poor and
difficult to cultivate. That was one of the reasons that
I chose it. If I had chosen a good piece of rich, level
land, irrigated from the canal, the Indian farmer would
have said that anybody could farm and get a living on
good land like that. I chose this poor land, eroded and
full of pest plants difficult to eradicate, in order to show
that the millions of acres of such land in Northern India
could be redeemed and made profitable. Another reason

HOW THE FARM STARTED 61

for choosing this land was its location, so near the college
and the city. Allahabad is the capital of the United
Provinces which have a population of about fifty mil-
lions. At some time or other the leaders of these Prov-
inces come to the capital city. The farm being on the
river bank, overlooked by the railway, and having two
of the main roads into Allahabad pass by it, is in a
commanding position for a demonstration farm. Being
so near the city provided a market for the dairy products
and surplus vegetables. Furthermore, during the Hindu
month, Magh, from the middle of our January to the
middle of February, Allahabad is the greatest pilgrim
center on earth. On some of the big days of the Mela,
crowds of from two to four million pilgrims gather to
bathe in the sacred waters of the two rivers which are
seen, the Ganges and the Jumna, and the river Saraswati,
the river that can only be seen by the eye of faith, that
is said to flow underground for hundreds of miles and
joins the sacred Ganges at this hallowed spot. Where
these three sacred waters unite great benefit is supposed
to accrue to the one bathing under the right auspices
during this month, Magh. Hundreds of thousands of
these pilgrims each year walk past the Mission^farm.
Many stop to see our improved tools and implements,
our sleek, well-fed cattle, our silos and sanitary bams.
They carry the tidings to the most remote parts of the
Indian Empire. We get many inquiries about the pur-
chase of machinery from far away places where these
pilgrims have told of what they have seen.

I have said that this land was badly infested with
weeds, thorns and grasses. The Indian tools and imple-
ments could not eradicate them, but we, with our Ameri-
can Titan tractor with three American plows behind it.

62 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

or a Spaulding deep-tilling tool, drawn by six pairs of
oxen, could go into these fields when they were hard and
dry and thoroughly open them up, destroy the hard pan,
the impervious layer, just below where the Indian plow
could reach. When the land was thus plowed, the hot,
scorching sun dried out all the stems and roots of the
grasses which had been turned up and these when dead
improved the soil. Being possessed of implements which
could master it we succeeded in cleaning the land by
this deep hot-weather plowing. We are raising large
fodder crops, and grain and oil seeds on land which eight
years ago would not rent for eight cents per acre. The
farmers that refused eight cents eight years ago offered
last year, 1919, seven dollars per acre rent for the same
land, because they said we had so cleaned it and increased
its fertility that it would produce crops enough to pay
the big rental. Improved implements are a necessity
if the yield of crops in India is to be increased.

My colleague, Mr. Bembower, has laid out vegetable
gardens and orchards of mango, orange and guava.

After purchasing the land the rest of the thirty thou-
sand dollars was spent in building one six-room bunga-
low; building a cattle shed two hundred and forty feet
long by twenty-four feet wide; in putting in under-
ground silos, building a store room and shed for tools,
implements and grains, in purchasing dairy cattle and
work oxen, a flock of sheep and goats, buying wire fenc-
ing, putting in roads and paths, improving our wells so
that we were sure of an abundant supply of water for the
cattle and the people. A number of implement makers
in America gave us tools. In most cases these have led
to business from Indians who have seen the things work-
ing on the Mission farm. The thirty thousand dollars,

HOW THE FARM STARTED 63

however, was all spent before we had any dormitory,
class-room or laboratory accommodations. We urgently
need a laboratory and houses for our teachers. The
first students who came to us were poor Christian boys.
My wife gave the back verandah of the six-room bunga-
low and part of the dining-room for a dairy. I filled the
guest-chamber with our good seed and used the front
verandah as our recitation room. The students slept out
when the weather permitted, and when it did not, they
went in under the cattle shed or the machinery store
room. I was very glad indeed to receive from Mrs.
McCormick, of Chicago, five thousand dollars to build the
first wing of a dormitory. The very day on which Sir
James Meston (now Lord Meston), then Governor of the
Provinces, opened the dormitory a check came from Mrs.
Livingston Taylor for the other wing. Friends of the
late Mr. John H. Converse have provided the dormitory
body to which the wings are attached. Each one of
these buildings had students living in them before they
were finished. We have had to fit up some of these
small dormitory rooms as recitation and laboratory
rooms until we are fortunate enough to secure our lab-
oratory. The local government has promised a grant-
in-aid of one-half the cost of a laboratory as soon as we
raise the other half.

With what equipment we had my colleagues and I
were training Indian boys, both Christian and non-
Christian. Many missionaries thought we were run-'
ning a reformatory and were anxious to send those with
whom they could do nothing. At this time agricultural
education was not popular in India, the government
colleges could not secure enough students, the idea being
that any old fool knew how to farm and that there was

64 THE GOSPEL AND TPIB PLOW

nothing that could be taught to the farmer from books.
Gradually in India, as in America, the idea is taking
hold that the farm, the ultimate source of food, as the
supplier of food for the toilers in the busy cities is
worth the best brains the country can produce. Some
of the students of these early days are now rural sec-
retaries for the Y.M.C.A. ; some have received in addi-
tion to agricultural training, special training in rural
economics and are now organizing rural cooperation so-
cieties among the outcastes; some are managing estates
for large land-owners ; some are members of our faculty ;
some are in charge of mission work in orphanages and
schools; some are farming for themselves; some are
working in Native States ; and although some are neither
a credit to themselves nor to the institution, yet I know
of no other form of mission education in India where so
many of those trained have put to the good of their
fellows the training received and are a credit to the
institution that trained them.

Harry Dutt was the son of an Indian Pastor, a nice
boy but lazy. He felt that the Mission owed him an
education. He had become parasitic in spirit. Owing
to ill health he had not appeared to take his college en-
trance examinations, so could not go to college. I was
urged to admit him to the Agricultural Institute, and fin-
ally, after much misgiving, consented. During the first
year I watched him carefully, and at the end of it I
called him to my office and said, ''Well, Harry, I have
observed you carefully for this year and I have come to
the conclusion that for your own good and the welfare
of the institution, you had better make arrangements to
go somewhere else for next year. I consider you thor-
oughly lazy. Your influence and example on the other

HOW THE FARM STARTED 65

students i^ bad, and we have no room for you here."
Harry seemed pained and surprised that I should so
address him. He pleaded hard for another chance. I
said, **What do you mean by another chance ?'' He re-
plied, ''Let me have a plot of land about as big as a
farm around here, and I will be responsible for it, doing
the work with my own hands, and if I am doing it alone
you can then test my work in comparison with other
students, and if I do not satisfy you, then turn me out. ' '
So I allowed him to return. He was given five acres of
land for which he was charged rent. He was charged
for the use of oxen and tools. Three days a week he
attended lectures and laboratory. Three days he worked
on his plot. He employed as general handy-man, cook
and watchman, a little Christian hunchback. Harry
drew up a plan for his plot, growing general field crops,
and a vegetable plot, so as to grow most of the food he
needed. He was so successful and hard-working that he
soon had more vegetables than he could eat and his serv-
ant was taking the surplus to sell in the nearby village.
Harry soon had money that he had earned by his own
efforts in his pocket, and he held his head higher. He
whistled as he worked ; he had learned that by his own
efforts he was sure of a good living. At the end of the
year the books showed that he had made a net profit of
twenty dollars an acre on land that previously had not
yielded three dollars an acre net profit. This plot was
one of the show places of the farm.

In February of the next year, after the corner-stone
laying of great Hindu University at Benares six of In-
dia's Maharajahs, several of them in their own special
trains stopped off at Allahabad to visit the Mission farm.

As I was showing one of these kings around he stopped

66 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

when he came to Harry Dutt's plot, so well laid out,
clean, thrifty, with wonderful crops. His Highness
said, ''Whose plot is this?'' I replied, "Harry Dutts/
Come here Harry. The Maharajah wants to speak to
you.'' Harry stepped forward and answered a lot of
questions. Then the Maharajah said, "Well, Harry,
come and take charge of my palace gardens and I will
pay you one-hundred and fifty rupees a month with
allowances." Harry looked at me and said, "What
shall I say to His Highness?" I answered, "You must
answer for yourself. You have your own life to live."
He hesitated a moment, then said, "Your Highness, I
thank you for your kind offer, but I think I had better
finish my course before I accept a position." A few
weeks later I received a letter from Mr. Ray Carter, of
Moga, who had started the school for training low-caste
converts to go out as village teachers to their own peo-
ple. Mr. Carter felt that it was necessary for these
teachers to have a knowledge of better farming and so
wanted to add an Agricultural Department to the school.
In his letter Mr. Carter asked if we had any Indian
Christian student well enough trained to take charge.
I called Harry Dutt to my office and read Mr. Carter's
letter to him, and said, ' ' Now, Harry, what do you think
of this for next year?" He replied that he had the
Maharajah's offer to consider. I advised him to think
of both. He took ten days' leave to go to both the
King's palace and the Mission School to look the jobs
over. When he returned he walked into my office and
told me that he had accepted the position in the Mission
School at Moga at seventy-five rupees a month. I asked
him why he had accepted the Mission job on half the
pay the Maharajah would have given.

HOW THE FARM STARTED 67

He said, ''Sir, you remember that day you threatened
to expel me because I was lazy ? I was very angry with
you for speaking to me the way you did, but after think-
ing it over, I felt that you, a foreigner, were trying to
do something to help my people, and I was hindering
you, so I decided I would not be outdone by a foreigner.
I too would give my life to help my own Christian peo-
ple. I have accepted the lower salary in the Mission
School because I feel I can help my own people better
there than by accepting the larger salary and easier work
with Maharajah."

When I was about to return to America, the Institute
was short-handed, and we were looking round for some
one to assist us. My colleagues unanimously agreed that
we ought to invite Harry Dutt back to teach. One of the
last pictures I saw of Harry Dutt was one in which he
was teaching several young princes how to use the Planet
junior wheel hoe.

After we got fairly started, the Crown Prince and his
younger brother and four companions from one of the
oldest and most influential states in India came for
training in farming and since that time we have usually
had some relative of one of the most ancient India royal
houses among our students. We are teaching not only
those from the bottom but those from the top. I con-
sider that if these young nobles, many of whom will oc-
cupy positions of great power, understand the
fundamental relation of larger crops to the better-
ment of India a great forward step will have been
taken.

In the Allahabad district there are sixty-two village
schools, generally in charge of a middle-aged or elderly
gentleman who has never done a day's manual work in

68 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

his life. His salary ranges from three to six dollars a
month. When the British official in charge of the dis-
trict, the Honorable Mr. S. H. Freemantle, C.I.E., read
of what had been done in the southern states of America
by the Rockefeller Foundation, and in the Philippine Is-
lands by the United States, he arranged that every
school should have a fenced-in school garden. We had a
special summer school for these village teachers and
while not much agriculture could be taught in ten days
to these men, it was wonderful to see how their whole at-
titude of mind toward the importance of agriculture was
changed, and with what enthusiasm they went back to
their village schools. We have had two or more of these
Government teachers each year taking a special two
years' course in practical agriculture suitable for school
garden work. The most important part of the work the
Mission Agricultural School has done in India, is not
the very few small things which it has done of itself, but
the fact that it has aroused interest and called attention
to the fact of India's need of better farming and has
caused other people to do very much more than we our-
selves could have done. Being a mission institution
every student, Christian or non- Christian, attends a daily
Bible class because the institution believes that it is not
better plowing or larger crops that is going to save India,
important as they are, but a faith which comes from
knowledge of Jesus, the world's Saviour. It is not that
we want men to change their religion just for the sake
of changing it, but because we believe that in Jesus there
is the complete and adequate satisfaction for every
hunger of man whether spiritual or material, whether
for time or eternity.

CHAPTER VI

THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA

"For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a
thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the
wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would
not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will
I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Oflfer unto
God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows until the most High: And
call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou
Shalt glorify me." Ps. 50: 10-15.

There are over 260,000,000 domestic horned cattle, in-
cluding water-buffaloes in India. This works out to
sixty-five head of cattle to every hundred of the popula-
tion. Hence in the densely populated areas there is a
very keen economic competition between the human be-
ings and the cattle for the produce of the soil. My ob-
servation leads me to believe that over ninety per cent,
of these cattle are an economic loss to the country, that
is, the cow does not pay her board in the milk and off-
spring which she gives, and the ox is of so little value
that it does not pay to raise him. Over ninety per cent,
of the cows of India give less than six hundred pounds of
milk a year. In most parts of India a three year old
ox can be bought for twenty dollars. The milk and food
he ate in his first year was worth more than this. I
estimate that the loss per animal per year for 225,000,-
000 head is ten dollars each, or a total aggregate loss per
year of $2,250,000,000.

69

70 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

The cow is the most sacred of all the gods of India.
It is worshipped by the Hindu. Hence the remedy for
the excess of cattle in the western world can not be ap-
plied in India. In the west this excess of cattle would
be sent to the packing houses, but in India, except for
the small number of cattle eaten by the Mohammedans
and Europeans most of the cattle die of old age or
disease. The solution of the cattle problem of India
by the Hindu himself is one of the most important and
necessary reforms of India. It is evident that being a
Hindu religious question it is not for a non-Hindu to
decide it, but as a student of economics it is left to one
to point out that the enormous number of cattle which
do not pay their way are avery serious economic drain
to a country as poor as India. It is not more cattle but
better cattle that India needs.

It is obvious how the cow and the sacred bull rose to
their place of preeminence in India. The ox is the
source of India's power whether it be pulling the plow,
drawing the water from the well, treading out the grain
or taking the produce to market. He is well nigh in-
dispensable, and has no substitute. The ox can work in
an average mean temperature of eight to ten degrees
hotter than the horse can stand. With the very small
holdings which obtain in the densely populated parts of
India, power machinery is beyond the reach of the
farmer and if he could afford it, his holding is too small
to make its use profitable. Therefore the ox seems des-
tined to remain the source of India's power. There are
many more breeds of cattle in India than there are in
Europe or America. Some of these breeds are unsur-
passed for draft and speed. Some are of excellent beef
type. There is no real first class dairy breed. The best

THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA 71

Indian animals give between five and seven thousand
pounds per year as against the best dairy breeds of
America giving between twenty and thirty thousand
pounds of milk a year.

I account for the rise of the Brahamini bull to power
in the following way. In the case of the failure of the
rains it is the cattle that suffer the most severely. Owing
to the failure of the rains in 1918 in the Ahmadnagar
district eighty per cent, of the cattle died because there
was no fodder. The Bombay Times of the fifteenth of
August, 1919, reported that in the preceding year from
fifty to sixty per cent, of the cattle had died in Scinde
because of lack of fodder and lack of roads. These
famines are so severe that unless special provision were
made it would be quite possible over a very large ter-
ritory, for every single animal to die. Thus special
provision must be taken and many animals are kept by
the temples and share in the offerings made to the
priests.

In connection with many of the temples one of the
acts of worship is for the worshiper to take hold of the
brush at the end of the cow's tail, under instructions of
the priest. These cattle around the temples have a
chance to live even though all the other cattle round
about die.

In the densely populated parts of India the farm is
so small that it is impossible to keep many cattle. The
farmer usually keeps only one cow in order to raise the
work oxen to do his plowing and to provide a little milk.
Under these circumstances the one farmer can not afford
to keep a bull or if he did keep one, the other farmers
would not be willing to pay for the use of the bull.
Therefore the custom has arisen, usually in celebration

72 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

of some domestic event, that as a thank offering, one of
the villagers takes a bull calf to the priest and has the
sacred brand stamped upon it and henceforth it is
sacred. It is then turned loose. No one may tie it up
and it goes into the fields or into the village eating at its
own sweet will and is usually in very good condition.
The trouble with this method of breeding cattle is that
there is no control. I have investigated a good many
cases where cows of a fair dairy breed were brought into
a district. The daughters of these cows sired by a local
sacred bull give from one-half to one-fourth of the milk
that the mother gave, proving that these sacred bulls are
often very inferior dairy-breeding animals. Often-
times the bull calf thus sacrificed is deformed or very
small in size or unsuitable for some other reason for
making into a work ox, thus with inferior sires the
breeding of the cattle seems to be progressively worse.
In certain parts of India there are certain castes whose
business it is to breed cattle and they are very careful
not to allow a sacred bull into their herds and also to
choose good sires. They keep up the standard of their
own particular breed.

The cattle of India are in general much more docile
and easily handled than western cattle. This may be
from the fact that they are often regarded as members
of the family from birth, in and out of the house at
will. The placid, contemplative cow is the type that
appeals very strongly to the Hindu religious mystic
whose idea is to spend his time out in the forest away
from man, contemplating, as the cow appears to be do-
ing as she placidly chews her cud.

In Europe the man who formerly wished to perpetuate
his name built a cathedral ; in modern America he builds

THE CATTLE PKOBLEM OF INDIA 73

a University ; in modern India he builds and maintains
a ''Gowshala" where the aged, deformed, sick and de-
crepit cows can be sure of being well cared for, until they
die a natural death. Much more is being done in India
by the Hindus to preserve the cattle than to preserve the
sick, decrepit and ill-nourished men and women.

There are a number of breeds of water-buffaloes in
India ; some of which are no better than those found in
the Philippine Islands or China. Some breeds are ex-
cellent dairy animals. The Delhi buffaloes weighing
anywhere from fifteen hundred pounds to a ton, with
short, intensely curled horns, often give six to seven
thousand pounds of milk a year having seven and a half
to nine per cent, of butter fat. In the Government Mili-
tary Dairies where some attention is now being paid to
the improvement of the dairy cattle of India a number
of buffaloes have given over ten thousand pounds of
milk a year of about eight per cent, butter fat. The
buffalo is much more nervous than the cow and must be
handled more gently. Their habit is to feed at night
and in the day time lie in water with only the eyes and
nose showing. There is one breed of buffaloes that has
four perfectly formed quarters and only two teats. There
are no rudimentaries or anything to suggest that two
teats have been lost. They are a very fair milking breed
and are worth investigation. I believe that the water
buffalo of India has a future in the southern states of
America, notably in Florida where there is an abundance
of water with lots of roughage.

The cattle of India are usually hardy and resistant to
disease. Most of the cattle of India are only slightly
affected by foot and mouth disease and are immune to
tick fever. Tuberculosis is very rare among them. For

74 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

this reason they have proved themselves of use in Texas
and other southern states, being crossed with our west-
ern breeds.

The Bikanir camels are said to be the finest in the
world. The great help that the Bikanir Camel Corps
gave in defending the Suez Canal and in pursuing the
retreating Turks is a glorious chapter in the history of
the Great War. The Bikanir sheep is one of the finest-
wooled sheep known and is worth studying and develop-
ing. India is a land that has millions of goats. Some
of these give as high as eight pounds of milk a day.
Some of them give actually more milk than many of the
cows.

The cattle problem of India cannot be solved until
there is an adequate veterinary force with power to stamp
out disease as was done in the Philippines. We must
not forget however and disregard the fact that in the
Philippines it was infinitely easier because there were a
number of islands and segregation was easy, while India
is a great continent and thus almost impossible to isolate
and segregate. The bigness of the problem however is
no reason why it should not be tackled. The longer the
delay the greater the progressive economic loss to India.

It was seeing the importance of the cattle as the power
of India that led me to make my first serious agricultural
study the means to safe-guard this power. I came to
the conclusion that the silo was the best single means.
During the normal rains in India enormous quantities of
fodder grasses grow, both cultivated and wild. If at
this time earthen silo pits could be dug and filled with
these grasses it would keep for years. These pits would
be a fodder bank. If when the time of scarcity came this
fodder bank could be drawn upon, millions of cattle that
are now lost could be saved. Here again ignorance and

THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA 75

illiteracy have stood in the way of such a simple and
obvious reform as this. Furthermore in these silo pits
a great deal of vegetation which the cattle will not eat
normally can be turned into succulent fodder. The
students of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute
counted and named twenty-two weeds which the cattle
would not eat green which were put into the farm silo
pit, and at the end of two months were fed to the cattle
and the dairy herd increased in milk production.

In the Old Testament a truly delectable land is de-
scribed as ''A land flowing with milk and honey."
Modern India has the same conception of physical and
material blessedness. Yet as one gets to know India and
sees its multitudes of cattle, one is struck by the great
difficulty of getting reasonably pure milk. Dr. H. H.
Mann of Poona, Mr. Carruth of Madras, Dr. Joshi of
Bombay, Major Matson of Calcutta have all investigated
city milk supplies in India and each speak of the very
few samples of milk taken from the milk sellers that
were pure, most of them adulterated from twenty to
seventy-five per cent, with water. Now if the water with
which the milk was adulterated were only pure water not
so much harm would result, but often the water used to
adulterate the milk is unclean. It is likely to be con-
taminated with sewage and is very dangerous to health.
Many serious attacks of dysentery, cholera and typhoid
have been traced to milk adulterated with dirty water.
Because of the difficulty of obtaining pure milk in India
the military authorities put in their own dairies to
supply the troops with safe milk and of better quality.
The milk is supplied to the troops in bottles, sealed with
the standard cap and seal made in Chicago. It is the
only bottle fastener I have ever seen that the Indian

76 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

milkman could not tamper with. If the cost to the
military for milk and butter be considered apart from
anything else, the cost is rather high, but when the
medical figures are considered along with the cost, the
absence among the troops of enteric disease since the
installation of the military dairies, it is then seen that
many lives are saved annually by these military dairies.
In addition to providing good milk and butter for the
troops the military dairies, in an indirect way, are doing
much to better the dairy industry in India. They set
standards of cleanliness and sanitation. They are im-
porting pure bred bulls of the noted dairy breeds, many
of the offspring of which are sold at auction and eagerly
bought by the India Gowala (the caste that looks after
the cows) with the result that the Gowala is growing
less and less satisfied with the poor yields of the Indian
cow. The Gowala now wants better stock.

In our mission dairy farm we have had no trouble in
disposing of all our milk, much of it goes to educated
Indians of caste who appreciate it for their children. A
Missionary's daughter at seven months old was one
pound lighter than the day she was bom. The doctor
said it was due to bad milk. The mother said the
Gowala brought the cow and milked it in front of her and
she did not see how the milk could not be pure. The
doctor said he could not see either, but the baby's lack
of growth was because of bad milk causing dysentery.
The mother brought the baby to live near our mission
dairy and drove night and morning to get our fresh
pure milk. At eleven months the baby was normal in
weight and the last time I saw her she was a beautiful,
well-grown child. We feel that we owe the life of at
least one of our own children to the good, pure milk sup-

THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA 77

plied by the mission dairy. The Government is very
anxious for us to have a properly equipped dairy school
where we can train Indians to go out to supply the In-
dian cities with pure milk. The medical authorities feel
that a good supply of pure, clean milk for Indian cities
would do much to reduce the high infant mortality.
So we are anxious to get our dairy equipment as soon as
possible to enable us to meet this urgent demand and
a thoroughly trained dairyman who is not afraid of dif-
ficult problems.

"When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have
sinned against thee; if they pray toward this place, and confess
thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou afflictest them:
Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants,
and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way
wherein they should walk, and give rain upon thy land, which
thou hast given to thy people for an inheritance. If there be in
the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting mildew, locust,
or if there be caterpillar; if their enemy besiege them in the
land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there
be; What prayer and supplication soever be made by any man,
or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the
plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this
house: Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive,
and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart
thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of
all the children of men;)

Blessed be the Lord, that hath given rest unto his people Israel,
according to all that he promised; there hath not failed one
word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of
Moses his servant. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with
our fathers: let him not leave us, nor forsake us: That he may
incline our hearts unto him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep
his commandments, and his statutes, and his judgments, which
he commanded our fathers." I Kings 8: 35-39**56-57-58.

Quoted from "India in 1919" between pages 57 and 58.

CHAPTER VII

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA

I am frequently asked what the British government
has done for India and why it does not do more. I hold
no brief for the government and I can point out serious
mistakes it has made. But others have written power-
fully of these mistakes, while few have spoken of the
positive, constructive side of British administration in
India, so I shall confine myself chiefly to the credit side
of the account. Among the things that the British have
given to India is the system of law courts which rec-
ognizes all men as equals before the law. This, in a
country of many religions and many languages, and
above all of caste, is a very important thing.

India has a postal, money-order and telegraph system
which is very much cheaper and better than the Ameri-
can. In 1914 a twelve word telegram could be sent any-
where in the Indian Empire for twelve cents, no zone
system, one flat rate for the whole country. If the tele-
gram were sent by cable from Aden which is five days'
mail steamer journey from Bombay then across India by
land, again under the Bay of Bengal by cable to Ran-
goon, it would be sent over three thousand miles. The
postcard costs one-half cent, a sealed letter one ^ent.
Five rupees ($1.66) or multiples of five rupees can be
sent by money order for two cents for each five rupees.

78

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 79

The money-order form consists of four parts; one is re-
tained by the office receiving the money, one is kept by
the office distributing the money, one is kept by the man
receiving the money and the fourth is returned to the
remitter with the signature of the receiver and is consid-
ered a legal receipt. Furthermore the postman actually
brings the money to the person who is to receive it. So
there is not the waste of time going to the post office to
get the money. How much greater service is this than
the modern American money-order service. The post-
man also sells stamps and postcards on his rounds.

India has approximately thirty-six thousand miles of
railroad, unfortunately divided between four gauges,
five-foot-six-inch gauge, meter-gauge, two-foot-six-inch,
and two-foot gauge. No narrow gauge railway enters
an India port, though the narrow gauge often serves a
very rich and large district. There is therefore a very
great economic loss in the trans-shipment of goods from
the various gauges. Most of these railways were built
with capital borrowed at a low rate of interest, none of
it above six per cent, and most of it much below. In
order to induce capital to invest in Indian railroads the
British government guaranteed the interest to the in-
vestors which the railway paid or not. With the credit
of the British government the Indian railways were thus
built about as cheaply as any railroads on earth and the
public in India gets the benefit. The mail trains be-
tween Calcutta and Bombay, thirteen hundred miles, be-
tween Calcutta and Lahore, about the same distance, run
at about thirty-three miles an hour for the whole of the
distance. The first class accommodation which equals
if it does not excel the Pullman, costs between three and
four cents a mile, second class about two cents, inter-

80 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

mediate less than one cent and third class three miles
for one cent. Had the railways of India been com-
pelled to depend upon Indian capital for their building
there would have been very great diflficulty and fewer
miles of road, for the Indian inventor or money-lender,
the Bania, is seldom satisfied with less than sixteen per
cent, per annum but prefers from seventy-two to one
hundred per cent, per annum. The history of famines
in India is divided into two clearly marked portions, one
before the coming of the railroads when famine in any
district meant death to great numbers of the people and
to cattle without any hope of relief. It is on record
that Agra was having famine during which more than
half of the people died. At Mainpuri, less than one hun-
dred miles distant from Agra, grain was being sold at
two pounds for a cent. Owing to the absence of roads
or railroads everything had to be transported on pack
oxen which made it a physical impossibility to transport
enough grain, even over such a short distance, to save
the people. (See Sir Theodore Morison **The Industrial
Equipment of an Indian Province.") A hundred miles
in those days under those conditions was at least a
week's journey. To-day when famine occurs special
rates are given on the railroads for the transporting of
grain and fodder into the affected area and very few
people die compared with the pre-railway period.
* ' Famine ' ' in India is not always understood in America.
Seldom is there a time in India when there is not food
enough to go around. In the same year one part of
India may be breaking the record by a bumper crop and
a short distance away there may be a total crop failure.
The beginning of the agricultural year in India is the

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 81

beginning of the ''rains," in Northern India about the
first of July. If the rains fail, there is no work for the
farmer or for the very large number of casual landless
laborers. Without the rain the fodder crops can not
be grown, neither can the fields be prepared for the grain
crops which are grown in the cold season. Therefore the
failure of the rains means the absence of work for twelve
months or until the next rains, and the absence of work
means absence of wages and the absence of wages means
absence of food, therefore starvation. Indian merchants
are like any other merchants. They do not see why, if
they deal in grain and pay their money for it, they
should not sell it at a profit. They cannot see why they
should be compelled to give it away because somebody
else has not bought and stored it and cannot afford to
buy. The grain merchant gets little sympathy when a
bumper harvest compels him to sell at a loss the grain
bought and stored with so much care.

India in general is remarkable for its generosity in
famine times. The poor help one another with gifts of
grain. Recognizing the true cause of famine, the British
government has drawn up a code which prescribes the
course to be followed in case of scarcity. A large re-
serve fund has been accumulated for the purpose of
caring for the people during the famine. Much govern-
ment labor, digging of canals, the building of roads,
railways, bridges, clearing of forests, damming of rivers,
putting in storage reservoirs, is all undertaken as famine
relief work. The policy is to pay wages lower than
market rates, so that as soon as conditions improve in
the country around about, the people will automatically
disappear from the famine relief works. Thus private

82 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

enterprise will not suffer from lack of labor due to gov-
ernment competition. When there is no work in the
villages the people come to the famine relief work. As
soon as private enterprise can pay more than famine
work the private enterprise gets its labor. In addition,
to the land-owner, and to tenants having permanent
rights in the land, advances are made of money.
''Tacavi," long-term loans, usually at three per cent.
This money is to be spent for permanent improvements,
such as digging of wells with permanent masonry cylin-
ders or tile draining of land, the building of store rooms
of permanent material. One of the best ways to prevent
famine is to increase the irrigation facilities, for where
there is an abundant supply of irrigation water people
are indifferent to the amount of rainfall. As a result of
the irrigation system, large tracts that formerly were
desert and very precarious and uncertain are now secure
against any failure of the rains. The irrigation pro-
jects of India are divided into two classes, one protective,
the other productive. In the case of the protective irri-
gation project, the object is not to earn large dividends,
but the protection of the people in a famine year. In
parts of Central India which normally get sufficient rain-
fall, there is every four or five years a partial or total
failure of the rains when suffering and loss is very great.
Large irrigation works with storage reservoirs have been
put in. When there is a normal rainfall there is little
or no demand for the water which has been stored and
the project does not pay directly that year, but when
the rain fails, this water that has been stored, is used
and enables the country to tide over a bad time without
serious loss. The loss of water by surface evaporation is

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 83

not less than eight feet per year. So that to do any
good these irrigation works have to have such large
storage capacity that they are sometimes larger than
seems necessary. One very interesting by-product of
this large storage reservoir system is that there is a seep-
age and ground flow with a lateral movement of the
water in the soil, so that wells five or six miles away
from the storage reservoir that would have gone dry
before the storage was put in, now have an abundance
of water all through the dry season. These works are
well named protective, and fully justify their construc-
tion.

In the case of the productive works there were large
areas of good land in the region of deficient rain-fall
in Northwest India in3luding the Punjab where the slope
was right and the rivers, the Jhelum, the Ravi, the
Chenab, the Beas, the Sutlej and the Indus, bring down
an abundance of snow waters from the Himalaya mount-
ains which can easily be spread over the desert of the
Punjab and cause it to blossom as the rose. Ten mil-
lion acres are now thus irrigated and schemes are pre-
pared for the irrigation of twelve million more acres.
The Bhakra Dam project on the Sutlej will give 300,000
H.P. The height of the dam, 394 ft., will make it the
highest in the world. The area that will be irrigated
will be four times the irrigated area of Egypt.

* ' The value of the crops raised by the aid of the canal
water during 1918 and 1919 was well over fifty-five
crores of rupees (a crore is ten million rupees and the
value of a rupee at that time was about forty-five cents),
so the value of crops was $247,500,000. Had there
been no canals it is safe to say that the area concerned

84 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

would not have produced crops to the value of more
than ten crores. The minimum new wealth created in a
single year, was thus forty-five crores of rupees. The
value of the year's crops amount to two and one-half
times the total capital outlay on the whole canal system
concerned. These productive canals earned in direct
receipts a net return of 7.4 per cent, of which, after de-
fraying interest charges, the net return was 4.96 per
cent. The direct canal charges for water averaged Rs.
5.3 per acre of crop matured out of a gross value of Rs.
64 per acre of the crop grown." Quoted from The
Pioneer Mail of June 18, 1920.

In the same year over nine million acres were irri-
gated and over twenty thousand miles of canals were
operated in the Punjab alone and over fourteen million
acres were irrigated by flow in the whole of India. It is
safe to say that the government has charged to the culti-
vator a much lower water rate than a private concern
would have done. It is hard to over-estimate the value
of an irrigation system to a people. It gives a sense of
security and certainty that nothing else does.

During the war the irrigation department went on
and was very largely increased. It is estimated that
two hundred and twelve million dollars have been in-
vested by the government in irrigation in British India
and it has still larger projects in hand. Not only is
there promise of more water for irrigation but an
abundance of water for hydro-electrical power. No-
table examples are already in operation. The mills,
factories, the street car lines of Bombay are run largely
by water-power that falls down the Western Ghauts
from thirteen to seventeen hundred feet in a sheer fall.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 85

This is of very great importance when we remember that
most of the coal used in Bombay is mined in Bengal and
all during the war had to take an eleven hundred mile
railway haul from the pit to Bombay at a charge of five
dollars a ton freight.

The British have been accused of taxing India so
heavily as to be the cause of India's poverty. Investiga-
tion shows that India is one of the least taxed countries
on earth whether measured on percentages or by actual
figures. The statement was recently made in the United
States that the British took one-half of the produce of
the soil in taxation. This is not the case. Such a
statement arises out of a misunderstanding, a confusion
between land revenue and produce of the soil. The dif-
ferent provinces of India have different systems of land
tenure. A good many of these systems, like Topsy, have
just grown. Bengal for instance has what is known
as the ''Permanent Settlement'' where the landlords
of Bengal and the government came to an agreement by
which the amount of land revenue to be paid by the
land-owner to the government was fixed for all time.
The great omission in this agreement was that the amount
of rent to be paid by the tenant to the land-owner was
not fixed for all time. Whatever else the British have
done or have not done for India, they certainly have
brought peace. They have prevented the intertribal,
internecine warfare. They have guaranteed to every man
safety and protection. With the incoming of roads,
railroads, water transportation, irrigation facilities, with
the opening of Calcutta, so that to-day it is the largest
port in Asia, great demand for the products of Bengal,
its jute, rice, tea, indigo and pulses, have caused the

S& THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

population to increase rapidly. The result is an in-
creased competition to secure land. Therefore while the
land-lords in Bengal have been able to increase their rent
at will to the tenant, the limit being only what the land-
lord could squeeze out of the farmer, the amount he has
paid to the government has remained fixed. The land-
lord is the one who has received the lion's share of the
unearned increment of the land. It has not been fairly
divided. To-day all the other provinces of India are
taxed to provide Bengal with money enough to run its
government. Bengal has a large number of wealthy
land-owners, many of them opulent profiteers, whose
position has been strengthened by time. The injustice
wrought through such an iniquitous contract falls very
heavily upon the many, but the few who profit have
never been willing to give up anything. The British
government made a bad bargain for itself and has stuck
to it, in order to keep its word.

In the United Provinces, which has an area of ap-
proximately one hundred thousand square miles, and a
population of about fifty million people, there is a land-
owner class and a tenant class. When the British en-
tered this part of India, more often by contract than by
conquest, they brought peace. In the old days the chiefs
maintained themselves by strength of arms. The larger
and better trained the fighting force of the chief the
easier he could gobble up the smaller chief, and defend
himself in case of attack. There was then great com-
petition for the services of fighting men who were treated
very generously by the chiefs, and given land on very
favorable terms. When the British came in, ignorant
of the real state of affairs, thinking the conditions were

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 87

similar to the conditions in England where there was
a large land-owning class, a yeoman class and farm-
laborer class, they confirmed the chief as land-owner and
the fighting man was considered the yeoman. With the
coming of peace the yeoman lost his value as a fighting
man which was due to the strong hand of the British
preventing the chiefs fighting among themselves. The
fighting man soon became little better than a serf. For
thirty years legislation has been enacted seeking to re-
store to the tenant farmer the rights which he had be-
fore the coming of the British. To-day there is a large
land-owning class, and two classes of tenant, one class
with permanent, inalienable rights to his land, the other
a tenant-at-will. The first class cannot be dispossessed
for any cause. He is a permanent tenant, a part owner.
This class forms sixty-six per cent, of the tenants. The
second class, the tenant-at-will, has no rights in the land.
He is usually not allowed to remain in possession longer
than one year. If he remains on the same piece of land
for two years, he gains these inalienable rights, hence
the landlord keeps him moving to prevent him acquiring
these rights of permanency. He forms thirty-three per
cent, of the tenantry, and is indescribably poor and im-
provident.

The government maintains a settlement department
where specially trained officers are sent once every thirty
years into a district, going into every field and deter-
mining in the presence of the landlord or his agent
and the tenant the amount which the permanent tenant
is to pay to the landlord. Of this sum paid by the
tenant to the landlord the Imperial government takes
fifty per cent, as land revenue while eight per cent, goes

88 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

in local assessments and taxation. Suppose the settle-
ment officer decides that a given field shall pay annually
$1.00 per acre rent to the landlord, the government gets
fifty per cent, of the dollar, as land revenue. That par-
ticular field may grow a crop of sugar cane, turmeric
or potatoes where the net profit might easily be from
thirty to fifty dollars per acre. This sum fixed by the
settlement officer is the amount of rent which the tenant
with permanent rights must pay to the landlord. It
cannot be enhanced. In the case of assessing the land
of the tenant-at-will the settlement officer makes no
difference. He decides the land revenue as though all
tenants had permanent rights. For all the land held
under cultivation by tenants-at-will, the landlord can
charge as much rent as he can rack out of the tenant,
but he pays the government only fifty per cent, of the
amount determined by the settlement officer. For some
of this land assessed by the settlement officer to pay one
dollar per acre rent, the tenant-at-will pays as high as
ten dollars per acre. The government only gets fifty per
cent, of the assessed rental irrespective of the rent paid
by the tenant or the crop grown. The mistake in the
statement that the government takes fifty per cent, of
the produce of the soil, is made in confusing the amount
of the land-revenue with the total produce of the soil,
which are two entirely different things. The land-reve-
nue seldom equals ten per cent, of the produce of the
soil and of that ten per cent, the government gets fifty
per cent, and the landlord forty-two per cent., eight
per cent, goes into local cesses.

Again the government is criticized for taxing salt, a
necessity. The reason is, of course, that salt is the one

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 89

thing that catches everybody in India. It is necessary
for the government to raise money in order to carry on
a government. If it does not do it in one way it must
do it in another. In 1914 salt could usually be bought
at retail in India in the villages for one cent a pound
or one dollar a hundred pounds. The government tax
works out about forty cents to the hundred pounds of
salt. A man would use about one-half ounce of salt a
day or about one pound a month, twelve pounds a year.
In eight and a half years he would use about one hun-
dred pounds of salt and in eight and a half years the
amount of salt he had used would pay the government
forty cents in tax. For the average life-time in India
the salt tax does not cause the individual to pay much
more than one dollar. The complaint of some of us in
India is not that the government taxes too much, but
that it does not tax enough. We feel that if it had taxed
more it would have had more money to spend on educa-
tion, sanitation, irrigation, roads and other things which
India sadly lacks, and that are in reality investments of
public funds for the benefit of private citizens, and that
are cumulative in their effect on public welfare.

Much is said of the fearful drain of money on India to
support the army. Before the war about eighty-five thou-
sand British and three hundred thousand Indian troops
were maintained in India for protection of the Indian
people. The Indian civil service has about one thousand
British men in it and the other services four or five
thousand. These highly trained men give the best years
of their lives for what may be considered not excessive
pay and are retired on a pension. Large sums of money
also leave India to pay the interest charges on the rail-

90 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

roads and irrigation schemes and other public utilities
where the British lent their credit so that India could
borrow money cheaply for all its public utilities. In
each case it can be shown that whatever interest-money
India pays outside of India, is paid for value received.
Whether one nation is justified in ruling another is
still an open question, and one can fully sympathize with
the desire of the educated Indian to keep his own house.
The British government has itself on record as delib-
erately planning for responsible government in India in
the very immediate future, when every legislative coun-
cil will have a majority of elected Indian members. To
bring this about in the shortest possible time needs the
very heartiest cooperation and good will between the
educated Indian and the British government. It is not
by constantly remembering the mistakes of the past of
either side and brooding over them in a spirit of ven-
geance, but it is in looking to the future with a mutual
trust and good will that promises the speediest ful-
fillment of India's desire for the fullest realization of
her own genius in complete responsible government.
Each has much to learn from the other, each has much
to give to the other. Some may ask, if the Government
of India is so good why is there any need for missionary
effort? The same question may well be asked in the
United States and the answer is the same. The govern-
ment does not claim to cover the whole needs of the
individual or social life. There is a limit to the causes
for which public money may be spent. There is a cer-
tain ' * soullessness " to government which handicaps it
and prevents its laying stress on certain needs of the
people. It stands for the status quo. A government

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 91

represents the people. It can go no faster than they
will let it. The history of reform shows an individual
in advance of a majority of his fellows, in advance of
the government and often such an individual is a thorn
in the side of a government which wants peace. A gov-
ernment is not equipped to experiment, and seldom takes
up successful experiment. In the South it was Arm-
strong, Peabody, Miss Jeanes, The Rockefeller Founda-
tion and others who have advanced and compelled the
United States government to follow. In India Chris-
tian missions stand as the pioneers, the trail blazers.
In most educational affairs the Indian government has
followed the lead of the missionary, for example Carey
and Duff, and in this day when all men everywhere are
longing for the time when men shall beat their swords
into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, in
the day when agriculture and not war shall be supreme,
it seems entirely fitting that the Christian missionary
should maintain his place by demonstrating his fitness
to lead India out of economic bondage into economic
freedom, which is at the very foundation of all other
freedom. Christian missions are spending about five
million dollars on education in India. ''India in 1919,"
page 133, says, "The contributions from missionary
bodies and from charitable endowments is of rather
greater importance than is indicated by its financial
eqtiivalent. Missionary bodies very often succeed in
enlisting the services of devoted men whose ability is
quite out of proportion to the remuneration which they
are content to accept. Indeed Indian education, as a
whole, owes to missionary bodies a debt which it is
very difficult to estimate with justice. '*

92

THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

Thus the government acknowledges its debt to the mis-
sionary and admits he has a place in the full, rounded,
ordered development of India into a self-governing
nation.

General Statement of the Revenue and Expenditure charged to
Revenue, of the Government of India, in India and in England.

Revenue

Accounts,
1917-18

Revised

Estimate,

1918-19

Budget

Estimate,

1919-20

Principal Head of Revenue

Land Revenue

Opium

Salt

Stamps

Excise

Customs

Income Tax

Other Heads

Total Principal Heads ....

Interest

Posts and Telegraphs ....

Mint

Receipts by Civil Departs..

Miscellaneous

Railways : Net Receipts . .

Irrigation

Other Public Works

Military Receipts

Total Revenue

21,607,246
3,078,903
5,499,487

5,727,522
10,161,706
11,036,588

6,308,104

3,885,177

67,304,733

2,170,108

4,616,690

517,401

1,935,364

4,868,356

24,141,708

5,063,879

323,599

1,720,509

20,805,900
3,229,000
4,216,300
5,916,500
11,567,900
12,403,200
1,320,800
4,088,000

69,547,600

3,842,900
5,322,900
1,676,800
2,086,600
5,924,300
25,347,400
5,402,200
321,900
1,713,600

112,662,347 121,186,200 123,404,200

22,686,400

3,056,200

3,914,300

6,097,100

12,153,300

13,352,400

13,544,900

4,568,900

79,383,500

3,637,400
5,716,800
1,356,500
1,957,500
2,557,400
21,372,900
5,511,900
323,000
1,587,300

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA
Expenditure

93

Revised Budget

Accounts, Estimate, Estimate,
1917-18 1918-19 1919-20

Direct Demands on the
Revenues

Interest

Posts and Telegraphs

Mint

Salaries and expenses of
Civil Departs

Miscellaneous Civil Charges

Famine Relief and Insurance

Railways: Interest and Mis-
cellaneous Charges

Irrigation

Other Public Works

Military Services

Total Expenditure, "Im-
perial and Provincial" . .

Add — Provincial Surpluses :
that is, portion of allot-
ments to Provincial Gov-
ernments not spent by
them in the year

Deduct — Provincial Deficits :
that is, portion of Pro-
vincial Expenditures de-
frayed from Provincial
Balances

Total Expenditure charged
to Revenue

Surplus

Total

9,854,695

7,328,169

3,567,730

167,382

20,855,368
5,918,797
1,000,000

14,227,385
3,784,838
5,048,294

30,763,650

102,516,218

2,256,623

197,568

104,575,273

8,087,074

11,669,900

7,866,600

4,116,500

267,000

24,233,500
6,257,400
1,000,000

14,154,000
3,988,300
5,582,100

45,639,600

124,774,900

1,091,000

111,500

125,754,400

112,662,347

4,568,200

11,293,300

7,763,500

4,580,200

284,500

24,549,100
6,139,100
1,789,100

14,468,900
4,071,100
6,932,700

42,782,300

124,653,800

1,918,200

122,735,600

668,600

121,186,200 123,404,200

94 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

"And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom,
and the house that he had built, And the meat of his table, and
the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers,
and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he
went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit
in her. And she said to the king, It was a true report that I
heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. How-
beit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had
seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me."

I Kings 10: 4-7.

CHAPTER VIII

WORK IN NATIVE STATES

About one-third of the area of India but not one-third
of the population enjoys home rule, that is, it is not
directly under the British, but is ruled over by Indian
kings or Rajahs. Within the native kingdoms the policy
of the British is to interfere as little as possible. In
general it is only when negotiations with other states or
foreign governments are being carried on, that the Brit-
ish resident or adviser has anything to do, except in
cases of gross and palpable misrule when the British
government may suspend or dethrone the incompetent
king and put up some other member of the ruling family
who will give better government.

The size of these kingdoms varies. Hyderabad, a Mo-
hammedan state, is 82,000 square miles in extent, slightly
larger than Minnesota, with a population of 13,000,000,
a large majority of whom are little better than serfs.

Jodhpur, famous as having given to the world the
Jodhpur riding breeches which polo players and other
horsemen wear, is 40,000 square miles in extent, about
the size of Ohio, mostly desert. In Jodhpur are the
famous white marble quarries from which the marble
was taken across the desert to build the Taj Mahal at
Agra, and how it was transported still remains a mys-
tery.

Mysore, where the famous Kolar gold mines are, is

95

96 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

38,000 square miles in extent. Mysore is a very pro-
gressive state. Large hydro-electric power is being de-
veloped and used to foster industry. It has a well or-
ganized department of agriculture.

Gwalior is 28,000 square miles in extent, population
3,000,000, a country of marvelous possibility. The ruling
family is Mahratta, one of the most famous warrior
castes of Western India. As most of the state was won
by conquests it is scattered and not in one continuous
tract. It lies in larger or smaller patches roughly be-
tween the Nerbudda and Chambal rivers. It has some
beautiful scenery. Water power and irrigation are be-
ing developed on a large scale, A tiger population of
about four hundred, with leopard, panther, not-
enumerated black bear, black buck and deer and wild
pig in abundance.

Bikanir is 25,000 square miles, one solid block of
desert. About one-third in the northern part will soon
be under irrigation. I have never seen richer land and
water will transform it into a wonderful garden spot.
These are the largest and most important of the native
states. In all, there are about seven hundred, ranging
from larger than Minnesota down to the size of an Ohio
farm.

Colonel Sir James Koberts, Surgeon to Lord Hardinge,
the Viceroy, visited the leper asylum in company with
his old college classmate, Colonel Hudson, the superin-
tendent of the Naini Jail which is right next to the leper
asylum. Sir James was much interested in the garden-
ing which the lepers were doing. In order to give him
more information. Colonel Hudson was kind enough to
invite me to dinner one hot April evening. The dinner
hour is eight. We sat on the lawn and talked until
nearly three in the morning when Sir James said, ' ' When

WORK IN NATIVE STATES 97

Colonel Hudson was telling me about your agricultural
work I thought you were just a missionary who had
learned some new way of spending money, but I believe
that you have got hold of something that can be of
great help to India. If I could make arrangements for
you, would you go to a number of the native states and
give a few lectures in each one, telling of the possibilities
for the improvement of agriculture in India, and how
improved agriculture is at the very foundation of any im-
provement in the material prosperity of India; that it
is out of India's fertile acres, properly cultivated, that
must come the crops that can be sold to provide the
money for food, clothing, schools, libraries, hospitals,
museums, universities and all of the amenities of civiliza-
tion?" I said I would gladly go if I could be of any
service. He arranged the trip. I spoke at Dhar, Dewas-
Senior, Rutlam, Jaora, Indore. The lectures were
usually given in the palace with the Maharajah as pre-
siding officer, with the nobles of the state, and all his
officials as audience. At Indore, the Hon. Mr. Tucker,
Agent to the Governor-general, was the presiding officer.
In each case the Maharajah had called in all his officers
who understood English. I lectured and was much
gratified at the great interest shown in agricultural
things. Since that time a number of these states have
put in their own departments of agriculture, most of
which are doing excellent work. At the invitation of the
late Maharajah, who was a young man? not yet twenty
years old and who had been at an English public school,
I went to Jodhpur, where an audience of five thousand
were gathered. There had been little rain for over a
year and a half. The cattle were dying by the thousand
and the people were at their wits' end. The Mahara-

98 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

jah of Bikanir, one of India's representatives at the
Peace Conference in Paris, a cultured gentleman, a great
orator, a forward looking statesman, asked me to advise
him in agricultural matters. I was invited to lecture in
a number of other states but returned to America on a
money raising campaign in 1914, returning to India in
March, 1915.

When we got to Bombay letters were awaiting me from
Dr. Janvier, the principal of the College, and from the
officers of an Indian state government urging me to go
immediately to the state to confer with the Maharajah.
As soon as I had seen my wife and children safely set-
tled in our bungalow at Allahabad I went over to this
country where I found a very great interest aroused in
agricultural improvement very largely through the con-
versation of Sir James Roberts with His Highness. The
Maharajah sent me to stay in his guest house, an old
palace, fitted up for the entertainment of his guests,
and said to be the most beautiful guest house in India,
certainly the most beautiful I have seen. He summoned
me to the palace, jumped in his motor and took me and
one of my colleagues along to a quiet little summer-house
palace in a garden where he could be uninterrupted.
For several hours he poured out to me his heart's de-
sire for the improvement of the 3,000,000 of his sub-
jects, only two per cent, of whom are literate, most of
them poor and backward. The Maharajah is one of
India's leading princes, and an exceedingly wise coun-
selor. He has helped the British in many ways that
have been made public and in a great many which the
time has not yet come to disclose. He bought a great
ocean liner and transformed it into a beautiful hospital-
ship. Thousands of Indian and British wounded soldiers

WORK IN NATIVE STATES 99

lift up hearts in gratitude to the Maharajah for the gen-
erous service rendered by this ship. He equipped and
maintained a hospital in equatorial Africa. He sent all
kinds of comforts to the troops. His own army, with
equipment, was placed at the disposal of the British and
maintained by him all during the war and was out of In-
dia for a good part of the war. His generosity was gen-
uine and very far reaching. His example did a great
deal to keep India loyal all through the dark days of the
war. When the British government was very short of
gold and silver coins the Maharajah let them have large
amounts from his state treasury which helped to avert
a financial panic. He is said to keep more small change
on hand than any other person on earth.

The Maharajah is not only a generous ruler but ex-
ceedingly wise and sagacious and generally takes the
long view. When he came to the throne his state was
one of the most precarious, agriculturally, in the whole
of India, and, because of the uncertain rainfall, more
subject to famine than almost any other part of India.
He called in the leading irrigation engineer of India
then at the height of his fame. This engineer spent
several years in working out an irrigation program
which would protect the state in years when the rain-
fall was deficient or entirely lacking. This program is
being carried out very successfully by an Indian engi-
neer. This program has involved the building of enor-
mous storage reservoirs and the laying of hundreds of
miles of canals. The whole has cost approximately
eleven million dollars and the end is not yet. The pro-
gram is still going on. When this program is completed
this state will then be the most secure of all the Indian
states, instead of one of the most precarious. The main

100 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

line of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway passes
through this state. In addition there are two hundred
and seventy-five miles of two-foot-gauge feeder rail-
way which has brought prosperity to districts formerly
inaccessible. About six hundred miles of the Grand
Trunk road from Bombay to Delhi is within this state
and is kept in first class condition by the state govern-
ment. This stretch is one of the finest roads I have
ever motored over. In addition there are several hun-
dred miles of excellent macadam feeder roads and His
Highness' program calls for much more. There is
nothing like a good road to bring prosperity to a back-
ward territory. When the Maharajah's program is com-
pleted his state will be well protected and accessible.
With the splendid irrigation and transportation facili-
ties, the next step naturally was the improvement of
agriculture. The Maharajah gave me his ideas and laid
down an outline of his plans. I was to fill in all details,
make a budget and check up and see that the scheme
was workable.

When the scheme was on paper and had been approved
by the Maharajah he asked me who was going to carry
it out. I told him that I considered the possibilities so
great that I thought he ought to go to the British gov-
ernment and get the very best agriculturist they had in
their service. There were seven hundred and fifty
thousand acres of land in his state which would have
been worth in the corn belt of America one hundred and
fifty to three hundred dollars per acre but not yielding
to him five cents per acre land revenue. It was worth
a good man to bring this under cultivation and populate
it with prosperous farmers. His Highness pointed out
that owing to the war, nearly every British officer that

WORK IN NATIVE STATES 101

could be spared had gone to the front and those that re-
mained were carrying double burdens. Under the cir-
cumstances he said that it would not be fair to ask the
British for an officer. Finally he said, * ' You have drawn
up the scheme, why don't you carry it out?" I said
there were serious objections as I was a Christian mis-
sionary and being a director of agriculture was hardly
in line with my work. The Maharajah told me that he
had cabled to our Missionary Board in New York ask-
ing them if they would allow me to act as Director of
Agriculture for him and the answer he had received was,
that if the mission, to which I belonged, and I personally
were willing, the Board had no objection. Facing me
with this he said, ''Now j^our objections are removed, so
resign from the mission and give your whole time to my
state.'' I pointed out that owing to the war our Insti-
tute had also suffered, that we were short handed and
heavily in debt and I had obligations to Allahabad that
I could not possibly throw off on somebody else, so we
finally agreed that one of my colleagues, an Agricultural
Engineer, and I, as Director, were each to give eleven
weeks each year of our time to work in the state. For
this service the Maharajah paid the college over seven
thousand dollars a year, none of which we touched per-
sonally. He then provided us with traveling expenses
in the state and with a budget and equipment to do our
work. In addition to an office staff I was given a motor
and adequate tent equipage to travel over the state.
The Agricultural Engineer was given funds for agricul-
ture machinery, for a work-shop, show-room and an ex-
perimental laboratory for farm machinery. The budget
sanctioned was most carefully drawn up and while not
allowing for any extravagances was adequate to enable a

102 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

most constructive piece of work to be done. The eon-
tract was signed for three years. It was recognized by
both the Maharajah and the Mission that as a temporary
war measure, such divided time was justified but as a
permanency it would not be wise. The work to be done
in the state called for a full time officer. In the three
years I did my best to establish a department and get
together a properly qualified staff, working smoothly.
This was about all one could do with the interruptions
and disappointments caused by the war, that prevented
us getting out American helpers and American agri-
cultural machinery. When I came home on furlough,

Aug^t, 1919, onei of my colleagues took over the
job of officiating Director and another was put in charge
of the second experimental and demonstration farm at
the southern capital of the state.

The scheme finally approved by His Highness, called
for, first, the building of a research laboratory ; the lay-
ing out of an experimental and demonstration plot of
about one hundred acres at the capital city. The equip-
ing of the laboratory was done by one of my colleagues.
Second, the building and equipping of an agricultural
machinery show-room, work-shop, and experimental lab-
oratory for farm machinery and thirdly, the establish-
ment of demonstration villages over the state. The
state is divided into eleven districts or counties each
one having a county headquarters where the government
offices, courts, police and treasuries are located. It
was the Maharajah 's idea that, at, or near, every county
heaquarters a bankrupt village should be taken over by
the Agricultural Department and transformed into a
model demonstration village. Each village was to be in

charge of an Indian who had had special training in

WORK IN NATIVE STATES 103

agriculture and who was to make use of the village labor.
It was to improve the condition of the poor farmers of
the state that His Highness started the department ; not
to allow outsiders to come in to exploit it. Owing to
the fact that there are such large areas of uncultivated
land in the state, over six hundred thousand acres of
excellent land lying idle, the Maharajah thought it best
to get labor-saving machinery. About one million dol-
lars was set aside for this purpose and orders were
placed in America, but owing to the fact that the United
States went into the war most of our orders were can-
celed and we received very little machinery. I recently
heard from a firm of tractor builders in America that
they have shipped this summer fourteen of the tractors
to the Maharajah and I think before long the whole
million dollars' worth of agricultural machinery will
have been sent out. This is good business for the manu-
facturer and of very great value to India. Better farm
tools and implements are at the very foundation of im-
proved agriculture for India. With his present tools
and implements the Indian farmer has gone as far as he
can go. In case of failure of the rains or any other un-
toward circumstance he is compelled to sit in helpless
inactivity. The ground is too hard for him to work.
His little plow can not even scratch the hard ground.
The American plow behind a tractor enables this hard
ground to be properly opened up and broken down so
that when the rain falls instead of most of the water
running off, most of it soaks into the ground and, if
the ground is then harrowed, is stored in the ground
until the crops need it, just as in the case of our ''dry
farming" in the west of America. This deep plowing
which turns under the manure and other organic matter

104 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

that otherwise would be lost and which the soil of India
needs so much, is very important. The agricultural
engineer working in the Maharajah's agricultural ex-
perimental work-shop, devised a little plow made of
steel. It is simple and cheap in construction ; it can be
easily repaired by the Indian blacksmith; it is of suf-
ficiently light draft for the small under-nourished In-
dian oxen to draw it. This plow is one of the most use-
ful inventions for India that has been devised within
the last one hundred years. His idea was to work out
a complete set of improved farm implements that will
be within reach of the poor small farmer.

When the research laboratory and equipment were
ready, through the kind offices of Mr. Bernard Coven-
try, formerly head of all government agricultural work
in India, we were able to secure for the state the very
valuable cooperation and advice of some of the best
British Agricultural officers, notably Mr. and Mrs.
Howard.

Three very busy years were spent in this state and
when I left the program laid down by His Highness was
still a long way from completion but the department was
organized and a going concern. In addition to giving
so much of my time in an official capacity to this state,
I was called upon for advice which 1 was very glad to
give, from other Indian rulers, notably Their Highnesses,
the Maharajahs of Bikanir, Jodhpur, Benares, Alwar,
Jamnagar. I was also advising the great Central Hindu
University at Benares in their agricultural affairs and
I felt in all this work a great opportunity to help India's
poor and needy in a way that they could appreciate, in
a language they could read and understand.

WORK IN NATIVE STATES 105

"And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying,
Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put
forth his hand, and touched him saying, I will; be thou clean.
And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." Math. 8:2-3.

CHAPTER IX

THE missionary's AVOCATION

During the Christmas vacation of 1903 I was sitting in
a Mission prayer meeting in the Mission house at Katra
at Allahabad. The missionaries were planning for and
praying about their work. One of the older mission-
aries turned to me and said, **It is always the custom
for the new man to have charge of the blind asylum and
the leper asylum in addition to his regular work, so,
Higginbottom, there is your job." He smiled and spoke
with a great deal of confidence. If I had answered him
on the spur of the moment it would have been without
the smile, but no less confidence, and a flat contradic-
tion. I did not think that caring for lepers was my job.
I remembered my first Sunday evening in Calcutta, after
having placed my goods in the hotel from the boat, I
went out and stood on the corner of one of Calcutta's
main thoroughfares and while I stood almost entranced
by the wondrous surging tide of oriental life, to me
so new and strange, passing before me, I was interrupted
by hearing a thin, squeaky voice saying, ''Bakhshish,
Bakhshish, Sahib." I turned and close up to my face
were a pair of stumps of hands. Instinctively I knew
it was a leper. I had the idea that the greater the dis-
tance between us in the shortest possible time the better
for me. I had not thought of lepers as belonging to

io6

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 107

our modem world. I had heard of them in the Old
Testament days and in the time of our Lord. I thought
they were something that the world had outgrown. So
to be told that caring for these people was to be part
of my work was somewhat of a shock. As I sat there in
the prayer meeting and thought the thing through, I
had to admit that there were lepers in this modern day,
that leprosy was an awful disease, that being lepers they
were sick, and as sick needed somebody to care for them.
If somebody must care for them why not I be that
somebody? So before the prayer meeting was over I
said, ''All right, if you think I am fit for that job I am
willing to tackle it.''

I went to the blind asylum and saw fifty blind and
helpless cripples that were being cared for at the rate
of one dollar per month each. I looked after them for
four years but could do little for them. The blind
asylum has been turned over to the Mission. India has
a great many blind and no class of people in India is
having less done for them than these poor unfortunates.
There is urgent need that somebody or some organiza-
tion take up their cause.

A few days after the prayer meeting Dr. Arthur H.
Ewing said to me, ''Well, have you got your nerve with
you?" I said, "Yes, I think so, why?" He said,
"Well I think you will need it because we are going
over to the leper asylum." We jumped on our bicycles,
rode out of the college campus, across the Jumna bridge.
About a mile beyond the end of the bridge, upon that
sun-baked Indian plain, he pointed out a lot of ram-
shackle, tumble-down mud huts. He said, "That is the
leper asylum." As I caught my first view of it X
thought of all the unprepossessing institutions I had ever

108 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

seen that was surely the worst. It was only a few min-
utes until we were in the asylum and Dr. Ewing was
showing me around, introducing me to the inmates and
explaining my work to me.

What I saw on this first trip through the Leper Asy-
lum was so awful and overwhelming that I had fully
made up my mind to tell Dr. Ewing that I did not feel
cut out for the job, that I considered the task would be
very much better done if he continued to do it rather
than turn it over to me. When I got back to the gate
I took hold of my bicycle and was taking what I thought
was my farewell look into that unlovely place, when I
happened to catch sight of an old man lying flat on his
back in the dust in the shadow of a tree. He had on
only a very small loin-cloth. You could see every rib.
His breath was coming with very great difficulty. What
were left of his hands and feet were all festered and
unbandaged and the flies were thick-clustered on the
open wounds. He was altogether the most loathsome
and repulsive human being I had ever seen. Yet as I
looked at him, it came over me that, after all, he was my
brother ; in that unlovely, broken body there was a heart
that would respond to love and sympathy as would any
human heart, and more than all that, in that poor old
disease-rotted body there was a soul for which my Lord
had shed His blood, and who was I, that I should leave
him just because his need was so desperate ? So I never
told Dr. Ewing that I would not care for the lepers. I
took hold of the job and found that the asylum was
supported by the Allahabad Charitable Association, an
organization trying to do a great work on entirely in-
sufficient funds. It was responsible for the blind, and
th^ cripples in their asylum, for a number of indigent

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 109

Indian Christian widows, for a number of poor Euro-
pean and Anglo-Indians; altogether too much for its
meagre income. The result was that the lepers were liv-
ing in houses not fit for human habitation with insuf-
ficient food and clothing. Everything the leper got had
to come out of one dollar a month for each leper, food,
clothing, medicines and attendance. The result was that
if any leper had feet enough left to walk on and strength
enough to walk he considered that he could do so much
better begging than he could in the asylum that he went
out to beg in the Bazaar. I decided that, in the condi-
tion it was, the institution had no right to exist. It
should either be mended or ended.

There is an organization that is known as the Mission
to Lepers, founded in 1874 by a missionary to India, Mr.
Wellesley C. Bailey. The operations of this mission
have gradually extended until now it has charge of
asylums in every continent, about eighty in all. The
Mission to Lepers came along and said to the Charitable
Association, ''Turn the asylum over to us and we will
be entirely responsible for it and spend more money
than you are able to. We will also rebuild and give
habitable quarters to the lepers." The transfer was
made and the Mission to Lepers asked the Presbyterian
Mission if I might continue as Superintendent. The
Mission gave its consent. The Mission to Lepers asked
me what my plans were. I went to study the best asy-
lums in India, got a number of ideas from each one and
laid out a scheme for the rebuilding and management of
the asylum. As these asylums are all voluntary it is
essential that the management be such as to make the
asylum more attractive to the leper than begging or
wandering about the country. The leper can not bQ

no THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

treated as a criminal and be put on prison diet. The
lepers so often have said to me, ''Sahib, we are not
criminals, we are only unfortunate." The food for a
leper, who is a sick man, must be better than the food
for the prisoner in the jail. As soon as the Mission to
Lepers took over, we started our building program and
immediately displaced the miserable old mud huts with
brick and mortar structures having good roofs with iron
battens instead of bamboos, and good French pattern
tile instead of the small country tile. The hospital was
built with two wards for men and one for women and
a dispensary properly equipped, a store room, two large
tanks in the asylum for the washermen to wash the
clothing. Heretofore the washermen had taken the
lepers' clothing down to the river to the regular "Dhobi
Ghat" where all the city clothing is washed, much to
the danger of the general public. When the lepers were
comfortably housed and the hospital built and running,
we next secured, about a mile away, a home for the un-
tainted children of the lepers where the children could
be kept apart from their parents, trained, educated and
given their chance in life. An Indian widow gave the
site. After this the next building to be built was the
church and instead of having beautiful, stained-glass
windows we have great big arches with chicken- wire
screens. This is to make certain that the ventilation
is good. My wife and I like to be present for the Sun-
day morning services. With a congregation of from
three to five hundred lepers, unless the ventilation is
good, one is apt to be in distress.

The Mission to Lepers placed at my disposal twenty-
five dollars a year for each adult leper and twenty dol-
lars for each child. Out of that, all food, clothing, medi-

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 111

cines, servants, had to be provided. Even with the en-
larged sum of two dollars per month for each leper, I
had my troubles in keeping the lepers reasonably well
fed, and decently clothed with proper medicine and ser-
vice. So many of the lepers have lost all their fingers,
sometimes the whole hand clear back to the wrist, that
it is obviously impossible for such a man to do his own
cooking, so I get some other leper to do the cooking for
this one and pay the cook about seven cents a month
for his extra work. Each man gets four yards of cot-
ton cloth, forty inches wide, which costs about sixty
cents, a year for clothing. This is his morning suit, his
afternoon suit, if he has any evening engagements, it
is his glad rags, when he goes to bed at night it is his
bed sheet. Among the lepers of India it costs more to
correctly gown a lady than it does to clothe a gentle-
man, for, in northern India, in order to conform to social
custom a woman must have her head covered. So instead
of four yards of cotton cloth it takes six yards for her.
This she winds around, making a skirt of it, then brings
it up over one shoulder and under the opposite armpit,
making a shirtwaist out of it, and then it goes up over
the head making the ''Chaddar" or head covering.
With this one piece of cloth so arranged she is dressed,
ready to go anywhere. With so little clothing it is very
difficult for the men and women to keep clean and I am
therefore deeply grateful to the many friends in Scot-
land, the United States, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand who have at various times sent us bundles of
shirts for the men and middy blouses for the women,
and mufflers and socks for both. These we give out at
Christmas and always feel sorry that we don't have
enough to go round. Several times my wife and I have

112 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

been threatened to be mobbed by the disappointed ones
who failed to receive a garment at the Christmas treat.
A blanket which now costs about two dollars is issued
every second year. Medicines and bandages will aver-
age about thirty cents a month for each leper. The
wages of the doctor, the compounder and hospital as-
sistants, servants, washermen and the sweepers or scav-
engers use up most of the rest of the money. I used to
issue all food to the lepers. I soon learned that I knew
so little about Indian food and what the people liked that
I was in constant trouble. After talking it over with
the lepers, it was decided to give each leper about a
pound of grain a day. Some prefer wheat, some rice,
some millet and some a mixture of barley and peas.
Whatever they preferred, they had. At their request
I built in the asylum a little country store and one of
the lepers was put in charge as storekeeper. In this
store was kept the many different kinds of pulse, spices,
curries and condiments that make Indian food so won-
drously tasteful and so marvelously indigestible. After
having provided clothing, medicines, servants and the
grain ration, it worked out that there was about eight
cents a week left for each leper to spend at the store.
This was given to him on Saturday morning and he
could spend it in any way he liked — ^buying any luxur-
ies that his fancy dictated and that could be bought at
the rate of one cent per day. It was one of the social
events of the day for the leper to go and do his shop-
ping. One cent in North India does not buy any more
than one cent in North America but Indian merchants
are in the habit of selling smaller amounts of commodi-
ties. The anna, value two American cents, breaks up
into twelve **pies" so that with one American cent a

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 113

person could buy six different things. Of course it was
only a half-teaspoonful of sugar, a soup-spoonful of salt,
a head of garlic, a few red peppers or other spices. The
amount of ghee or clarified butter that they could buy
for one-sixth of a cent was so small, I often thought that
if any of them should have been so unfortunate as to lose
it he would have to borrow a magnifying glass to find
it again. Before any money leaves the Asylum to go
out into circulation it is carefully sterilized.

In the early days when I went over to the leper asylum
I would be surrounded by a lot of the lepers, fighting,
wrangling and squabbling, asking me to decide between
them. They would complain that some one had stolen
their food or their clothing or their cooking utensils.
I am sure that if I had as little of these as the lepers had,
I should not have felt very badly at acquiring a little
more, even at the expense of my neighbors. I had a
great deal of sympathy for the thief, but I had a little
more for the man or woman who had lost his dinner,
and what is more, I had to provide him with a new one
which often put me into serious difficulty. As I studied
this quarrelsomeness among the lepers I found that most
of it was due to the fact that there were twenty-four
hours in every day and the leper had nothing to do but
think about himself and his own trouble. He was bound
to be into mischief of one sort or another. The leper is
the greatest traveler in India. He is constantly going
from one shrine or holy place to another, from one
^'Mahatma," a man claiming to be divine, an incarna-
tion of one of the gods, and, if divine, able to heal all
manner of sickness and disease, to another. I have seen
one of these Mahatmas sitting on the banks of the Ganges
clothed in the four directions, that being sufficient cloth-

114 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

ing for a god, having wrapped up in a dirty little towel,
correspondence with women, society leaders, in some of
our American cities whom he had known when lecturing
as a Swami to American audiences. He was telling our
students what fools they were to let missionaries teach
them the Bible, as it was not taught in America any
more. I do not blame the leper for traveling so much,
since his quest is in search of health, but it made my
work among the lepers very difficult. It seemed as if
I were running some sort of a transient hotel wher^ the
lepers could come in for a day or two, pull themselves
together and out again. In those early days at least
ninety-five per cent, of the lepers in the asylum on the
first of January were off again on their travels before
the thirty-first of December. I conceived that the duty
of a superintendent of a leper asylum is two-fold.
First, he is to care for the leper, and obey Jesus' com-
mand to cleanse the leper. Secondly, he is to protect the
public from the menace of the leper at large.

After studying a number of occupations, recognizing
the physical limitations of the leper, realizing that noth-
ing made in the leper asylum could be sold outside, but
must be consumed in the asylum, and having seen the
wonderful results of Colonel Hudson's garden in the
jail I decided that we would have gardening in the leper
asylum. When I announced this to the lepers they said,
''But that is work, is it not, Sahib?" I said, "Yes, it
can be so considered." They said, ''If it is work we
don't want anj^hing to do with it." I had to bribe
them to take to the work. I gave seeds of fruit, vegeta-
bles and flowers to as many as I could persuade to take
them. I offered prizes beginning with five rupees, four,
three, two, one, down to two annas. With nine months

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 115

practically rainless every year it is necessary to provide
some irrigation. The government very kindly bored
deeper the well which gave us an unfailing supply of
water. The well cylinder was ninety feet deep and
boring was continued another seventy-five feet, a four
inch tube sunk, when we struck an underground stream
of water. The usual method of raising water from
wells in India is by means of oxen and a big bucket, a
long rope, and a pulley wheel set on pillars over the
mouth of the well. I followed the custom of the coun-
try and bought my first pair of oxen. I paid fifteen
dollars for them. I felt quite proud of my bargain. To
think of actually buying two live oxen, each one having
a head, tail and four legs, for fifteen dollars seemed a
great bargain. After these oxen had been at work for
some time I made a very interesting discovery. I learned
that this pair of oxen could not draw enough water out
of that well, to irrigate enough ground, to grow enough
food to feed themselves, let alone irrigate enough ground
to grow enough food for the lepers. I solved this prob-
lem by cabling Montgomery-Ward and getting out a
steam boiler and engine, bought a pump, and then the
lepers had an abundant supply of good water; garden-
ing was possible. The first prize that year was won by
a woman. I never saw her stand up. She literally had
nothing to stand on, but crawling out on her hands and
knees with a short length of barrel hoop she played and
worked and loved around her little plot until she had a
beautiful and productive garden. When the lepers
learned that whatever they grew they could have for
themselves, that I did not take it from them, gardening
became more popular. Their fear had been that I was
going to get them to grow the stuff and then take it

116 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

away from them. We planted out a lot of mango, guava,
orange, and lemon trees, papitas and bananas. Imagine
I have given a man or woman a banana shoot about eigh-
teen inches high. He plants it and waters it and in that
rich soil and sunshine it is soon up ten to twelve feet.
The big heart-shaped purple flower appears like the
knob of a shepherd's crook and as each petal falls off,
out shoots a little green finger-like banana. It is not
very long until there is a great big beautiful bunch of
bananas. About the time it is ripening I notice a little
wooden bed at the foot of the banana plant and I say
to the man or woman on it, ** Hello, have you taken to
living the simple life, do you find that sleeping in the
open air improves your complexion?" ''0, no, Sahib,
it is not that but that my friends and neighbors have
become so interested in this bunch of bananas that they
are sampling them and if I want any for myself I must
stay pretty close by." Or imagine a man with a cauli-
flower patch or potatoes just about ready. It does not
matter what a priest or Mahatma a thousand miles away
says about curing leprosy, the man with the garden patch
says, *'I planted it and watered it and before I leave
I am going to taste the fruit thereof." So with the
good hand of our God upon us, gardening has been a
great blessing to the asylum. It has given the leper
something to occupy his time, something more to eat, has
made discipline easy and has been of the greatest service
in keeping the leper in the asylum. Ninety-eight per
cent, of the lepers in the asylum have come to regard it
as their permanent home. They do not wander, they
do not want to be driven out as they have established
themselves in their little houses and are as happy as peo-
ple can be suffering from such a terrible disease.

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 117

When the church was about finished a number of the
lepers came to me and said, "Whose church is this?"
I said, "Well, the ladies in Ireland who sent out the
money to build it, said it was to be for lepers, so as far
as any church can belong to man it is yours." They
said, "Well, if it is our church we would like to have
some part in it." I said, "Well, I don't see what you
can do, you have no money." They said, "But, Sahib,
have we not been praying for this church for years, and
if we were praying don 't you think we were saving up ? "
I said, "Well, you get so little that I don't see what you
could save out of." They said, "Well, we have saved
and we have got money and we would like to have some
part in the church." So they bought the pulpit Bible,
the largest the Bible Society puts out in the Hindu lan-
guage. They also bought a clock and a bell so that they
could be prompt in their attendance at service. They
give regularly to all the Presbyterian causes. They give
to the Bible and Tract Society. During the war they
took up two collections a year for comforts for the
wounded Indian soldiers, giving in some collections over
thirty dollars. I can not go before this leper asylum
congregation and tell them of any worthy cause or needy
individual but what they say, "Can we not help?"
I feel that if there is any person on earth that I could
forgive, and forgive gladly, for being selfish and self-
centered it is the leper. When one thinks of the misery
and the pain of the disease and the mental attitude in-
duced by the suffering, I would not blame the leper for
saying, "I get so little that all I get I want for myself, ' '
and yet I have known leper men and women, when some-
thing appealed to them, to put the whole eight cents into
the collection plate at once, denying themselves the pleas-

118 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

Tire of going to the little country store to do their shop-
ping ; living a whole week on bread made without raising
of any kind, just meal and water mixed together, in
order that their eight cents might go to the spreading
of Christ's gospel. To these lepers Christ seems so real,
His treatment so practical, that there is an intimacy in
the way they speak of Him that shows a depth of faith
seldom found.

Fifteen years ago in the American Mission Famine
Orphanage at Lalitpur was a girl of seventeen, Frances
by name, sweet, attractive, a general favorite, engaged
to be married, one of the most capable girls in the in-
stitution. There came on her hands, round the joints of
her fingers, some sores that refused to heal in spite of the
application of every remedy the lady missionaries pos-
sessed. An English physician was called in who said the
girl was suffering from leprosy and should be removed
at once from the orphanage. The lady superintendent
wrote to me to ask if the girl could be admitted to the
Naini Leper Asylum. I wrote back asking her to send
the girl. A few days later while I was seated at break-
fast, the arrival of callers was announced. It proved to
be Frances and her brother, who had just been graduated
from the Methodist Episcopal Theological Seminary at
Bareilly. I told them to drive on over to the Asylum
and I would catch up with them on my bicycle. After
finishing my breakfast I rode over and caught up with
them just before reaching the Asylum. We walked in
together. It was not into the new asylum with its fine
buildings and well laid out and flourishing gardens, but
into that old unspeakable place. Leprosy so often makes
me think of strong drink. It is bad enough when it gets
control of a man, but infinitely worse when it gets con-

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 119

trol of a woman. What the leper women looked like in
the early days when I first took charge of the asylum is
hard to describe. They were so dirty, so careless of
their personal appearance, their faces so hopeless that
it did not seem right to call them women, and one strove
in vain for a word that adequately described them.
Frances, dressed in her beautiful, white flowing garments
as for some gala occasion, walked with her brother and
me into that awful place. She caught sight of some of
those creatures who sat gossiping under the shade of the
neem trees. Frances took one look, then she threw her
head on her brother 's shoulder and sobbed as though her
heart would break. ''My God," she cried, ''am I going
to become as they are ? Is that what is in store for me ?"
Her brother had to go back to his work and I had to go
back to mine and we must leave her in the Leper Asylum.
Frances was so distressed that I was afraid she might
attempt to destroy herself so I asked several of the old
men to guard the well and see she did not get into it.
A few days later my wife and I were over at the Asylum.
I said to Frances, "I deeply sympathize with you, I know
words are poor things to express what I feel for you in
this awful affliction. Yet in spite of it all, is this not
true? In that orphanage those American women
brought certain things into your life that have made it
richer and fuller and better than the lives of the other
women in the asylum?" She assented. I then con-
tinued, "How would it be for you to try to bring some
of those things out of your richer life and put them
into the lives of these other leper women and children?"
She promised to try. My wife fitted her out with sup-
plies. She started a little school. She taught the
women to sing, the children to read and write. She had

120 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

learned to play the piano in the orphanage. So I got a
friend to buy for her a little folding organ. This was a
great joy to her and helped her in her work. Gradually
there came a transformation over the women's quarters.
The houses were made clean and neat and tidy. The
women also improved in appearance. They washed their
clothes, combed their hair, and tried to make themselves
attractive. When the very hot weather came, my wife
had to take our little baby daughter up to the mountains.
I went to our Women 's Hospital and said to the lady in
charge, ''Dr. Binford, the leper women do so miss the
visits of my wife, if you would go over to the Asylum
some afternoon you would cheer them greatly. They are
very grateful for the visits of an American woman."
She promised to go and a few days later with Miss Alice
Wishart and another lady missionary she drove over.
On their way back they drove through the college campus
where we were playing tennis. After our game I strolled
over to their phaeton. Dr. Binford said, ' ' Mr. Higgin-
bottom, Frances opened her heart to me to-day. She
said that when she first went into the asylum she could
not believe that there was a God, or if there were a
God, she did not see how He could be a God of love and
afflict any one as He had afflicted her, but Frances went
on to say that now she could see it all. God had a work
for her to do, ministering to the other lepers. If she had
not herself become a leper she would never have dis-
covered her work, so she said every day I live now I
thank Him for having sent me here and given me this
work to do. ' '

For fifteen years I have known Frances. I have seen
her work. I know that greater than anything she says
is the witness of her own life. That first heartbreaking

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 121

cry I can never forget. Her face is furrowed with pain
and suffering. The disease has worked its way in her.
The little organ is always carefully dusted and polished,
but it is never open, she plays it no more. So many of
the joints of her fingers have rotted off that she cannot
touch the keys. But her face is always radiant, a smile
plays about that pain-wrought face. No word of com-
plaint, ever a word of cheer for him that is weary. Most
of the women in the asylum are now Christians, after
having confessed their faith in the God and Saviour they
have learned to know through Frances. I know of no
human life into which there has come a heavier cross
than has come into the life of this Indian leper girl, nor
do I know any other human life that has taken its cross
and borne it more bravely or with such unflagging cour-
age. And after associating with such Great Hearts as
some of the leper Christians I too thank God for having
driven me into the Leper Asylum, having forced upon
me a job I did not want and was not looking for, but a
job that has provided me with the richest and deepest
spiritual experiences of my life.

When I said good-by to the lepers (temporarily, I
hope) on the thirteenth day of August, 1919, there were
nearly five hundred lepers in the asylum, although the
accommodations were for about four hundred, the extra
hundred squeezed in on verandahs, under trees, some
sleeping on the floor of the church. In the place of the
ten acres of land there were nearly one hundred and
twenty in a high state of cultivation. There were dairy
cattle, silos, and beautiful gardens and orchards. A lit-
tle over a mile away was one home with nearly forty
girls, children of lepers, but untainted, and another home
for boys with a like number. These children are being

122 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

trained and educated. The older of the girls, my wife is
training as Bible women and nurses; the older of the
boys are being taught modern farming, and all these little
children handi(^pped by such parentage are getting their
chance in life. As I look over all that God has wrought
in this institution, I thank Him for having allowed me
to work among these poor, sorely afflicted people whom
Jesus bade His disciples to cleanse.

In February, 1920, there was a conference of leper
asylum superintendents held in Calcutta. At this Sir
Leonard Rogers, a great authority on tropical disease,
read a paper on the progress made by medical science
in the treating of this awful disease. It looks as though,
in some cases, definite cures had been effected. About
forty-two cases in our Asylum are receiving bis treat-
ment with very great benefit. There is reason for high
hopes that this disease can be stamped out with the help
of segregation and the medical treatment now being fol-
lowed. I am frequently asked how it is that my wife
and I are able to go among these people as much as we
do without contracting it. There is undoubtedly danger.
We take every known precaution. We de not believe it
right to tempt God by carelessness. We do recognize
that if He has given us this work to do it is better for
us to do it, even at the risk of contracting the disease,
than it is in dodging His will. Fortunately the baciUus
of leprosy does not live very long out of its host. Lep-
rosy is nothing like as contagious as small-pox or measles.
If it were, pretty nearly everybody in India would have
it. The government officials of India from the Viceroy
and Lady Chelmsford down, British and Indian, are one
and all helping the Mission to Lepers by giving sites for
asylums, contributions toward new buildings, grants-in-

THE MISSIONARY'S AVOCATION 123

aid toward the maintenance, so that to-day the govern-
ment practically covers every dollar of mission money
with one dollar of government funds. As no money is
spent for the salaries of superintendents (they all give
their services and are supported by their respective mis-
sions) it is easy to see that a great deal can be accom-
plished in caring for the lepers for a small investment of
money. The leper that sat by the roadside and, as Jesus
passed by, said unto Him, ''Lord, if Thou wilt Thou
canst make me clean, ' ' is often in my mind. The record
tells us that Jesus stretched forth His hand and said, ' ' I
will, be thou clean," and immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. The leper had been thrust outside the camp,
was outside the pale of human society, and Jesus by that
touch brought him back into the human family. And I
take it that the work of the Mission to Lepers is con-
ceived in the spirit that Jesus showed, of bringing this
poor unfortunate, that man despises, back into the hu-
man family.

"Replenish the earth, and subdue it." Gen. 1 : 28.

"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

John 8 : 32.
"Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost."

John 6:12.

CHAPTER X

JESUS ' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK

I went out to India having specialized in philosophy
and hoping to be an evangelist. I end np by being a
missionary farmer. I have had friends tell me they
could not see why I am interested in the things in which
I am interested. They ask what plows, harrows, tractors,
silos, threshing machines, and better cattle have to do
with the evangelization of India. Bulletins upon the
use of manure and silage are good, but what is their
value as missionary tracts?

I am accused of having lost my first love and of hav-
ing grown cold, of having become a materialist, and of
having lost my aspirations, of being indifferent to spirit-
ual and eternal things, of caring only for the things of
time and sense, the things that shall pass away, that are
not eternal. Now I cannot be indifferent to such criti-
cism from such sources. I do not doubt the honesty and
kindliness of my critics. It behooves me therefore to
see what there is in such criticism. For, if it is true and
justified, my work is a hindrance rather than a help to
the spread of Christ's kingdom in India. I should
deeply deplore such a result.

In speaking of this criticism I do not wish to give the
impression that the whole missionary body is opposed
to this kind of work. In fact there is a very large
majority who heartily approve and wish it God speed.

124

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 125

Again and again when insurmountable obstacles seemed
to block the way these friends, in every way possible,
have helped to overcome the difficulties and encouraged
the Agricultural Institute to persevere. They have said
that if in Christian literate America, with its abundant
wealth and widespread education, there is need for
Hampton, Mount Hermon, Tuskeegee, Berea, Kentucky,
and the Rockefeller Foundation; how much more in
poor, illiterate, non-Christian India. I wish therefore
to express my hearty and grateful thanks to all those,
both in India and America, who are helping to make the
Agricultural Institute an effective instrument for help-
ing India to help itself. The following quotations from
the minutes of the National Missionary Council of India
show how the representatives, both Indian and foreign, of
all the evangelicial missions in India regard such work.

From Proceedings of the Fourth Meeting of the Na-
tional Missionary Council, Coonoor, November 9-13,
1917.

Resolved:

XX-1. The Council endorses the view that Agricul-
tural and Industrial Missions are an integral part of the
presentation of the Gospel to India at this time.

From Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the Na-
tional Missionary Council, Benares, November 14-19,
1918.

Resolved :

XII-1. That in the opinion of the Council missions
should aim at the establishment of central institutions
for the training of teachers in agriculture and allied in-
dustries in the various language or climatic areas.

2. That as far as possible teachers thus trained should
be employed.

126 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

3. That the Council recommends missions in mass
movement areas to definitely plan for adequate instruc-
tion in agriculture and allied industries, such as silk,
poultry, the making and repairing of agricultural tools
and implements.

4. That the Council urges upon the Home Boards the
necessity of providing an adequate supply of trained
men and suitable equipment to carry on agricultural
and allied industrial training, especially in mass move-
ment areas.

I realize that I am living this life only once, that if
I make a mistake with it, there is no chance to come back
again and do the thing right. I understand that the
"Will of God is the supreme thing for my life, the only
thing that really matters. It is not whether I am a mis-
sionary that matters, or not a missionary, but wherever
I live and whatever I do, God's Will is first, the con-
trolling factor that determines the whole of my life.
Further, I am not afraid of His Will. Trying to obey
it has led me to do some things I would not have done on
my own initiative. But I have always found that His
Will has been infinitely larger and better than my own
will for my life. When choosing my own course for
myself I have made so many mistakes, missed the way
so often, that I gladly turn over the guidance of my life
to His Will and trust it fully. Should I for any reason
whatsoever fail to do His Will with my life, I should
consider that the greatest possible tragedy. I am anxious
to do His Will as soon as I see it. There is often great
difficulty to know what His Will is.

I have found His Will for my life most clearly laid

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 127

down in the Bible. I consider the Bible the one up-to-
date book in a world where most books are soon out of
date and behind the times and needs of men. When a
boy on my father's farm in Wales it was reading the u
Bible hours each day by myself for over a year, fighting
it all the time, that caused me to offer Him my life
without condition or reservation. I sought to know His
Will for my life and I was not sure that I knew what it
was. I knew His last command to His disciples was to
go into all the world, to preach the Gospel, to teach all
nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
He had commanded. I was not sure where He wanted
me, or what He wanted me to do. But until He made the
way plain, I considered it was my duty to get ready to
obey His last command and prepare for that which was
farthest off, and if He wanted me anywhere else it would
be easy for Him to stop me at any intermediate place,
if that were where He wanted me to live my life and do
my work.

So when criticisms became severe and I felt uncertain
of myself it was again to this Book that I went. I
wanted to be sure first of all that I knew what the Gospel,
the *'Good News," really was. I studied anew the life
of Our Lord. I noticed that on the threshold of His
public ministry He went into the synagogue where He
had been brought up and, as was His custom, the village
carpenter stood up to read. The scroll was handed to
Him and He unwound it till He found the place where
it is written, ''The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be-
cause He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the
poor, He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to
preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of the

128 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are braised,
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." St. Luke
4:16 et al.

The first thing I notice is that the Spirit was upon
Jesus for service. ''To preach the Gospel to the poor."
That I take to mean the oral, the spoken, presentation of
His truth about salvation. A great many good people
would stop with this oral presentation of the Gospel
because they are afraid of works. It is true that Jesus
placed preaching first, but it is only part of His mes-
sage. He continued, ' ' He hath sent me to heal the broken-
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recov-
ering of sight to the blind,- to set at liberty them that
are bruised." Jesus' Gospel is preaching plus action
which explains and gives content to the preaching. We
can take all of these clauses in their primary literal sense,
and from the literal interpretation find a place for help-
ing India's outcaste, broken-hearted and broken-spirited
by centuries of persecution, degradation and oppression,
we can find warrant for medical missions and all other
forms of humanitarian and social service. We can take
all of these clauses in their spiritual and figurative sense
and some would say, their fuller sense, and find out that
Christ was anointed to help all human life, to make it
better, to rid it of wrong and oppression. In other
words His complete Gospel is more than an oral presen-
tation, more than a matter of words. It calls for doing
as well as being, the act that proves the faith, ''Not every
one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, but he that doeth
my Will"; "He that heareth my words and doeth shall
be likened unto a wise man." "If any man will do
His Will, he shall know of the doctrine."

JESUS ^ EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 129

The object of the Gospel is to save mankind. It is to
help men whenever or wherever they need help, for the
present time as well as for eternity. Instead of despising
this body and this present life God thought so much of
these that He gave His only begotten Son a human body
and He shared our life with all its limitations. And
in this human flesh dwelt very God of very God, the
Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. If
man in his present state be not the object of the Gospel,
what purpose does it have? ''He that believeth hath
(present tense) eternal life," now. When God through
Christ saves a person, eternal life for that person has
already begun. Death makes only a change in place
and state. The individual persists.

This statement from Isaiah which He read in the
synagogue where every one knew Him can be taken as
the program for His own life. ''This day is this scrip-
ture fulfilled in your ears." If we read on to the end
of the chapter we have a very complete demonstration of
how He Himself carried out His own program. "Now
when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick
with divers diseases brought them unto Him ; and He laid
His hands on every one of them and healed them. ' ' To
one who has lived in an oriental country this picture is
a very full one. Disease is so common, so much of it is
incurable, human life slips away so easily ; remedies that
cure are so few. The watchers sitting by the loved one,
who is tossing in fever, writhing in pain, are unable to
help, dreading the night when life goes out all too effort-
less. At the hour of greatest dread and terror He laid
His hand on every one of them, and healed them. There
is no incurable ward in Jesus' hospital, no long, linger-

130 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

ing, tedious convalescence, He healed them all. Another
striking demonstration is recorded in St. Matthew 9 : 35.
And this healing of the body is part of His Gospel.

His first miracle confirms His program for His own
life. There is great significance in this first miracle
of Christ at the wedding at Cana, the turning of water
into wine. The occasion, the place, the fact that it was
His first miracle and that the miracle was what it was,
should be noted. He knew how His every act would be
scrutinized. With Him there was no forgetting the im-
port of what He did, no waste movement, no slip, no
second try, no failure to take into account the vista of
history. His first miracle was so chosen by Him as to
reveal His meaning to the world, it is full of purpose.
By His first miracle He turned water into wine. In
these days there are many who are afraid of this miracle.
They think it would have been better had he turned wine
into water. He actually turned water into wine; He
gave color to that which had no color ; He gave taste to
the tasteless; He gave sweetness to that which lacked
sweetness; He gave brightness and sparkle where it had
not before existed; He satisfied man's taste. He com-
pletely changed the water into wine, something totally
different. He enriched water into wine. Surely He
comes into our dull, drab colorless lives and enriches
them in a way that is beyond the power of any person to
explain. No, the greatest miracle of all is the way He
comes into human life so that it is not what it was before
He came. So great is the change which He makes when
He comes into our lives that we call it a *'new birth";
and it is nothing less.

We have seen what Jesus considered the program for
His own life work. We have noted how He carried out

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 131

His program. In St. Matthew 10 : 7-8 in sending forth
the twelve He lays down a program for His disciples.
''As ye go, preach, saying. The Kingdom of Heaven is at
hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead,
cast out devils, freely ye have received freely give."

Again it is evident that while He puts preaching first it
is not all of His Gospel. A series of coordinate clauses
give the other parts of His Gospel. ' ' Heal the sick, etc. ' '
So many people tell me they are interested in the work
God has given me to do because, like medical missions,
''it is a good wedge for the Gospel." When people say
this, I wonder what their conception of the Gospel is. Is
it sermons only, statements of doctrine, words arranged
in tomes of theology, words of fire to convict of sin,
words of forgiveness to him who repents, words of hope
to cheer the pilgrim on his way, words to comfort the
mourner? All these it surely is and must be, but all
this does not fill out the compass of His Gospel, nor test
its fullest length or depth, breadth or height.

I utterly repudiate the "wedge theory" for the Gos-
pel. The Gospel that I received of the Lord Jesus needs
no wedge. A Gospel that needs a wedge needs careful
examination. It is not the Gospel that Jesus brought
into the world. If the Gospel is not its own wedge then
it is the most colossal and pathetic failure of history.
Medical misions are the Gospel. Cleansing the lepers
is the Gospel, as much as preaching is the Gospel. These
carry out His specific commands as much as preaching
does. Is not the slow progress of the Gospel over the
world to-day partly due to the fact that believers have
often had a one-sided and incomplete Gospel ? Less than
Jesus laid down as the Gospel ? People can often better
understand the oral presentation, if there has been loving

132 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

service to give content to the words, to prove that the
words have Life back of them. The word became flesh.
Jesus' matchless sermons and parables are strengthened
by His deeds. When challenged it was not to His words
but to His works He appealed, ''Many good works have
I shewed you from my Father ; for which of those works
do ye stone me?" St. John 10: 32.

Again when John the Baptist was in prison, doubts
arose in his mind as to whether Jesus was really the
One that should come. He sent two of his disciples to
ask Jesus, ''And in that same hour He cured many of
their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits ; and unto
many that were blind He gave sight. Then Jesus an-
swering said unto them, Go your way and tell John what
things ye have seen and heard, how that the blind see,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached."

This He offers as proof of His Messiahship, and in this
instance He does not mention preaching till the last ; His
healing of the body and caring for its needs come first
into His mind in this hour when He wants to strengthen
the faith of him of whom He says that of those born of
women there is not a greater prophet than John the
Baptist.

There is a very real danger that all desire to guard
against. The danger is in substituting "service" for
' ' salvation, ' ' business for Godliness. We are commanded
to "work out" our own salvation, something we already
possess, not to work in order to gain salvation. The idea
that work, if there is only enough of it, can save a sinner
from his sins is held by some. I was asked to give an
address to a company of students to answer the question

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 133

'*Is not such work as yours capable of being carried on
without the religious, Christian motive?" **Can not a
person who does not believe in Jesus Christ as the
world's only Saviour do such work?" I had to answer
that I was a poor one of whom to ask such a question
for I had never tried to do my work apart from religion.
My work I take to be the expression of the fact that I
believe God. I had always done it believing that it was
God's Will for me and I could do nothing else. I am
satisfied that the religious motive moist be present, that
Jesus is the only one who can supply the continuing
power to carry on through all circumstances and all the
time.

As followers of Him we can do what He has com-
manded us to do giving Him His rightful place in it, as
the Author and Finisher not only of our faith, but of
our work also, which is but the expression of that faith.
Many are afraid of the '* Social Gospel" as they call it,
because it brings them so near the world, because they
fear the complications that are likely to arise, that they
will do more than the Gospel really calls for. There is
a real danger in this, but I think we must risk it. Far
better to go two miles with Him than one. There are
those also who are opposed to the ** Social Gospel" out
of sheer laziness. It would break up the regularity of
their comfortable, ordered lives. To provide material
requisites to feed the hungry would rob them of time
for contemplation.

There are thirty-six miracles recorded in the four
Gospels. Twenty-eight tell of healing disease, raising to
life, giving sight to the blind, feeding the hungry, cast-
ing out demons. Eight do not have this personal in-

134 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

timate relation to some individual or group in need.
The great majority have to do with meeting immediate
human need.

Why did Jesus perform these miracles? Some say to
teach spiritual lessons, to give preachers texts for ser-
mons wherefrom they can draw analogies between the
physical ill and the spiritual ill. I have no objection to
any one getting all the spiritual meaning he can out of
the miracles of Jesus. I think it well, however, to re-
member that the primary object of Jesus in performing
these miracles was to meet the present physical needs of
those He healed or fed as well as to forgive their sins.

I never go into the leper asylum of which I have charge
without thinking of that leper who, as Jesus passed by
said, "Lord, if thou wilt Thou canst make me clean."
Jesus said, ''I will," and put forth His hand and touched
him saying, "I will, be thou clean." And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed. That fair, pure hand of the
Son of God touched that disease-rotted body and it was
clean. This man who had been outside the pale of
ordinary society, by that touch, was brought back into
the human family. Why did Jesus cleanse the leper?
To enable men to draw analogies between leprosy and
sin? Or was it, that seeing the desperate need of the
leper and the leper 's faith. He healed him ? Jesus healed
the leper because he was a leper and it was from leprosy
he needed relief. It was his physical need and Jesus'
ability to meet that need that caused Him to heal the
leper.

The blind man found out that Jesus was passing by.
He had faith to believe Jesus could give him sight and
Jesus spat upon his eyes and the man saw. It was the

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 135

man's blindness that moved the Great Heart with com-
passion and He healed him.

I think of the five thousand far from home, out in the
desert, hungry, tired, night coming down. Jesus com-
manded His disciples to feed the multitude. They
showed how impossible His command was, again He in-
sisted ''Give ye them to eat." They found the boy with
the loaves and fishes, all they had. They brought it all
to Jesus. Jesus took the five loaves and two fishes and
blessed and brake and not only were all fed and had
all they would eat, but there were twelve baskets full
more than were required. These twelve baskets were
not the leavings, the offal, but were there ready to be
distributed to any who needed more. God's measure is
always abundant, no niggardly hand when He is Pro-
vider, He prepares more than we need.

Jesus fed this great multitude because they were
hungry, physically. It was their need that appealed to
Him. He drew no spiritual lesson at this time. The
next day He preached His sermon and emphasized that
He is the Bread of Life. ''I am the Living Bread, if
any man shall eat of this bread he shall live forever."
Nowhere else does He make greater claims for Himself
than in this sermon that came as a result of feeding the
multitude. Before He preached the sermon He fed the
crowd. "Would not the church be wise to copy her Lord
in this wherever necessary? As He looks out over
stricken Armenia; over famine cursed China; over a
large part of Europe where the children to-day are dying
of hunger; over India where from the cradle to the
grave a multitude, over one hundred millions, are chroni-
cally hungry, does he say less to His disciples to-day in

136 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

America than He said that day in Galilee ? I think not.
If we bring to Him all we have and let Him bless it and
break it, we will see the continuing miracle. We our-
selves will have all we need and the hungry everj-where
will be fed. His command still holds to feed the physi-
cal hunger, and after that the spiritual hunger with the
Bread of Life that came down from heaven and giveth
life to the world. He came that they might have life and
have it more abundantly.

I think again of that great picture drawn for us in the
twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. The na-
tions are separated from one another as a shepherd sep-
arates the sheep from the goats. The sheep on His right
hand, the goats on His left. To those on His right hand
He says, ''Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world.'' It is significant that no commendation is here
given to those who have gone to their needy feUows and
helped them where their need was. They say unto Him,
' ' Why, Lord, for what do you caU us blessed ? What have
we ever done ? ' ' And Jesus says, * ' You saw me hungry
and ye gave me to eat." They say, ''Hold on there
Lord, are you not going too fast, making some mistake ?
We never saw you, let alone saw you hungry. " "0, yes
you did," Jesus says. "When you went to that little
famine-cursed Indian village that had been growing ten
bushels of wheat per acre and you taught it to grow
twenty you were helping to feed the hungry." "When
you went to that village that was growing sixty pounds
of poor short -staple cotton per acre and taught them to
grow three hundred pounds per acre of good long-staple
cotton you were helping to clothe the naked." "When

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 137

you went to that village where the well had dried up and
you sent a boring outfit, and bored down until you had
secured an abundant supply of water, enough for man
and beast and some over for irrigation, you were helping
to give drink to the thirsty. ' ' ' * When the doctor opened
his hospital for the poor and lowly who otherwise would
have no medical aid, he was visiting the sick." "When
you go to India's outcastes, to her 'untouchables' whom
man despiseth, who have suffered age-long, untellable
wrongs in the fearful prison of caste, and freed them
from its bondage and caused them to walk as free men,
that was done unto Me." ''Lord, we never thought of
You there or in that degraded state." "0, yes, take
the veil from that little humble Indian village outcaste,
I am there. Inasmuch as ye did it to the lowest and
meanest of India's outcastes ye did it unto Me."

This is the great glory of Christ's Gospel. It is the
one full, complete program, adequate for man's needs
for time and eternity. It comes to man in his neediest
hour and sets his feet upon a rock and puts a new song
in his mouth. The Gospel is the only sufiScient program
for the individual. The nations have tried everything
else but the Gospel and they have failed to learn how
to avoid war and get peace, why not give the Gospel a
chance in national life as well as in individual life? I
believe the golden rule in national life will bring greater
victories than armies and navies. The nations still be-
lieve in armies and navies after the collapse of military
Germany who said, "Given guns enough, what need of
God?" America's Secretary of the Navy wants to make
her navy the greatest in the world. Does history record
that an army or navy ever really saved a nation whose

138 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

sole trust was in the power of heavy artillery or battle-
ship ? It is the Tightness, the justness of the cause that
nerves men 's wills, that teaches them how to fight.

To sum up we see that Christ's program for His own
life, the carrying out of that program in practical demon-
stration in His miracles, His commands to His disciples,
His commendation of those who feed the hungry, clothe
the naked, give drink to the thirsty, all call for more
than preaching. They call for the practical application
of that which gives a meaning and content to the oral
presentation of God's truth. I believe the church would
do well to pay more attention rather than less to this as-
pect of the Gospel. Many who cannot understand or
interpret words, can understand loving deeds. I am not
decrying preaching. We need more of it not less, we
need The Word become flesh. Preaching is one of the
most powerful forces in the world to-day. Knox, Calvin,
Wesley, Spurgeon, Moody, have made history.

The place in the missionary program of the work we
are trying to do at Allahabad falls in with events as
recorded in the sixth chapter of Acts. There had been
a great ingathering ''The number of the disciples was
multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians
against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected
in the daily ministrations." Then the twelve called the
multitude of disciples unto them and said, ''It is not
reason that we should leave The Word of God and serve
tables, wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven
men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, and wis-
dom whom ye may appoint over this business. But we
will give ourselves continually to prayer and the min-
istering of The Word. ' ' In India we have thousands of
low-caste converts, very few foreign or Indian mission-

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 139

aries. It is not reason that these few should leave the
word of God and serve tables. They, as the apostles,
have had a special training for ministering The Word,
but there is this other work that must be done. It must
be done or there will be more than murmuring in the
Indian church. Let the church choose out from among
the non-theologically trained disciples, those having what
was called for in the Acts, men and women of honest re-
port, full of the Holy Ghost, and wisdom, educators, doc-
tors, engineers, farmers, nurses, teachers of domestic
science. These are not to supplant the preacher, they are
to supplement him, to make his work more effective and
far reaching, to conserve that which the preacher began.
We frequently hear it stated that the evangelizing of the
whole world is the task of the whole church. Yet how
little provision the church has made for equipping and
sending forth any but the theologically trained. If we
call on these non-theologically trained we are widening
the scope of those actively engaged in winning the whole
world. And if we really believe that a person is better
off with Christ than without Him, we will do our utmost
to use all the gifts with which He has endowed His fol-
lowers. The Apostle Paul, I. Cor. 12, speaks of the
diversity of gifts of believers, but the same Spirit con-
trolling and directing this diversity, so that, as the re-
sult of the perfect and complete working of the various
members, we get a harmony as complete as a healthy
body where every organ is functioning properly. He
sums up with irrefutable logic, the great mystery of
our faith, * ' Now ye are the body of Christ and members
in particular. And God hath set some in the church,
first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers,
after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, govern-

140 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

ments, diversities of tongues. ' ' How different this teach-
ing of Paul from some of our modem denominational
papers. God hath set in the church, apostles, prophets,
teachers, preachers, evangelists, wonderworkers, mission
hospitals, leper asylums, schools and colleges. These
belong in the church, are part of its God appointed
equipment to carry out the greatest task in the world.

I am frequently asked if I believe the church will
support such a work as I am trying to do in India, if it
will not have to be separated from the church in order
to grow and develop properly? I answer that all I
have done has been done at the express command of duly
constituted church authority, that the church at large
will support such a work for it believes that God hath
set in the church such things as we are trying to do for
His glory.

I am told that the church should be inspirational, not
institutional, that it should inspire its members to go
and do outside the church what its present limitations
make inconvenient to be done inside. I believe the
church should be both inspirational and institutional,
should have to-day as wide a program as Jesus stated
and carried out and as the Apostle Paul laid down.

There are a few fundamental facts that it is well to
keep in mind in a consideration of such matters as have
been treated of in this book.

I. The first command God gave to man regarding the
earth is ''Replenish the earth, and subdue it." It is in
following out this command of God to subdue the earth,
to master it and make it serve mankind that man has
his opportunity to develop intellect, mind and will.
If man did not have this for his task, if he were like
the ravens, what would he be now? It is to him that

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 141

obeys this command of God, to him that overcometh the
secrets of the natural physical world, that is given to
eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the para-
dise of God. As man subdues the earth, finds out about
fire, and water, about soil and what it will do, learns the
chemical, physical, biological, economic and spiritual
laws, which He who laid the foundation of the earth
made to inhere in all matter, man not only develops
himself but with every new conquest of the laws of na-
ture and their adaptation and appreciation, he helps to
free human life of its drudgery and monotony. We can
see this when we compare modem transport facilities
with those of even two hundred years ago, the railroad,
steamship, motor car, airship, compared with the pack
horse and stage coach. As labor-saving devices are
brought in the tendency in labor is from that which is
less pleasant to that which is more pleasant. Less hu-
man physical power required, more mechanical power
and man controls by pulling levers or pressing buttons
and man multiplies his physical power manifold.

II. When He had finished His creation, ''God saw
everything that He had made and behold it was very
good.*' In spite of much we see about us God's world
is a good world as He created it and it is the part of
wisdom for men in general to acknowledge this. As we
look over this world and note its constitution and order,
we notice that there are seasons, alternating periods of
rest, of rapid growth, of harvest, and then again rest.
As we think into things we must be struck with the fact
of the oft-recurring and continuing things of life;
hunger and sleep, laughter and tears, birth and growth,
and God made this world in this fashion that these
things should be so. Therefore a great majority of the

142 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

men and women on this earth must spend their time in
caring for the oft-recurring needs of men. A farmer
cannot plow so that it will last for ten years. He cannot
sow in one year enough wheat to last for a decade. The
world is seldom ahead on its food supply more than three
months. There are these daily and seasonal tasks that
must be done in their appointed time. Most of them we
call "secular," and there is in some theological quarters
a tendency to look down upon those who do them as doing
something of a lower order. I do not forget that once
the heavens opened and the voice of God said of the
village carpenter of Nazareth, "This is my beloved Son
in whom I am well pleased." Jesus had no public min-
istry to His credit at that time, but it was as a carpenter
that He had won this commendation from Him who rates
all things at their true worth. Surely unless some
farmer had saved seed and prepared his ground, sown
the seed at the right time, cultivated and protected the
growing crop, harvested and stored the ripened grain,
which the miller took and ground and the baker took and
baked into bread, the philosopher would not have his
leisure to philosophize. His time for thought and study
is purchased by somebody else's foresight and timely,
unremitting toil. So everyone who is doing any helpful
work in the world and doing it unto God, as an expres-
sion of his faith in Him who doeth all things well, who
does it in faith as his share of the common task to sustain
and maintain human life, need not fear in that day when
all men shall be judged for what they have done. God
made His world a good world, a world that gives man a
chance for the fullest self-realization as he diligently
obeys the commands of God with reverent spirit and

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 143

hope in his heart. Blessed is he who does the common
task unto God.

III. In the prayer Jesus taught His disciples there is
one petition that for a long time I regarded as a lower-
ing of the standard. On each side of it, petitions of
highest ethical and spiritual aspiration, what an appar-
ent ''come down" in tone, ''Give us this day our daily
bread.*' How material and mundane it seems at first.
Yet let us try to leave it out and ignore what it stands
for, and see how much we lose. Jesus was familiar with
farming operations. He so often in his conversation
drew upon His agricultural knowledge for illustration.
So here again He talks as one having authority. ' ' Give
us," not me, alone, but us; the great, wide family of
mankind, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, people of
every color and tongue under heaven and all men every-
where are included in my petition. I must think of
them when I pray. I cannot be indifferent to the famine-
cursed anywhere on earth. If I hear of hunger and need,
if I really pray this prayer I will do all in my power to
answer it, and help the hungry everywhere. "Our
daily bread." We depend daily upon God for life. We
recognize God as the Giver of all good ; but we are part-
ners with Him. He gave the soil, the life in the seed,
the temperature, the rain, the sunshine, the increase:
man prepared the ground, plowed, and harrowed it,
sowed the seed, watched and protected it while growing,
reaped and stored the harvest against the day men
needed it. If God had failed in any part of His share,
no harvest. Just as true, if man fails in any part of
his, no harvest. We are therefore co-workers together
with God. Man is likest to God when he is doing things

144 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

to support and improve human life. So many feel that
to be a Christian means to throw aside ordinary foresight
and care, that somehow or other God will provide, that
irresponsibility is the right attitude. This petition
teaches the opposite. The bread we are to eat two years
hence, where will it come from ? At this very time men
are exercising foresight to see that good seed is being
saved in sufficient quantity, stored in proper places, pro-
tected against damp and weevil. They are plowing the
ground and getting it ready for the seed. They will
then throw away perfectly good seed, fit to eat, into the
cold, damp ground, to run the risk of time and weather,
and insect pest, and other enemies, there to die, to be
lost to them, in order that there may be a harvest to
provide seed for the sower and bread for the eater. As
Isaiah says in this connection, ''This also cometh forth
from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in working." It is a matter of historical
record that those individuals and those nations that have
prayed ' ' Give us this day our daily bread, ' ' have had this
prayer more fully answered than those that have not
known this prayer. There is that about the Truth that
frees men. When Jesus said, "The Truth shall make
you free, ' * He was thinking in no narrow sense of truth,
as being only spiritual truth. He who is The Truth, The
Way, The Life, Himself The Author of all truth, is
speaking of all truth, spiritual, physical, social, political,
economic, in fact, any truth to which the human mind
can address itself, and in subduing the earth, this great
body of truth is uncovered for the blessing of men.

After Jesus had fed the multitude there remained
ready for distribution if any more were needed twelve
baskets of the five barley loaves. Jesus bade the disciples

JESUS' EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 145

gather up the fragments that nothing be lost. After the
years in India the greatest abiding impression that re-
mains, is the one of ''loss" in India. Appalling loss
of human life, and stupendous economic waste. Human
life is so abundant, so cheap, so easily given up that it
is depressing. No other civilized country has such a
high infant death rate. Preventable disease is ever
carrying off great hosts who have survived infancy.

A man can be hired for a dollar a month. A woman
or girl for less. A cooly will carry a one hundred and
sixty-pound burden eight miles up a mountain side, five
thousand feet high, for thirty cents. Men and women
everywhere used as beasts of burden but not so well fed
or housed as the beasts. The great loss due to poverty
and illiteracy is beyond power to compute. India has
a great religious sense, it has a great work to do. There
are great isolated landmarks in Indian history where
an Indian had a fair chance and where he has made
use of his chance. The results are part of the precious
heritage of all men everywhere. They are to be found
in the various fields of knowledge, philosophy, religion,
literature and science. They have enriched the world.
India's future can be richer than India's past. I am
always brooding over ways and means of avoiding this
fearful waste of human life, of transforming it into a
positive asset to enrich the world. Then there is fear-
ful economic waste due to ignorance and superstition.
If these wastes were stopped India would not be poor.
The present wastes are the potential capital which should
be used to get national income, the means with which to
get economic independence. As Jesus looks over India
to-day with its rich soil, and teeming multitudes as sheep
without a shepherd, so surely does He say to those who

146 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

hear His voice, gather up the fragments that remain
that nothing of human life or of material that builds up
human life be lost. But rather that it be conserved to
help to bless all men everywhere. When we save India
from these incalculable losses we are helping to save one-
fifth of the human race. A task great enough, and worth
while enough to stretch to the limit the best America has
and cause us to pray anew : The Harvest truly is plen-
ifeous, the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord
of the Harvest that He — God Almighty, Himself — will
send forth the laborers, men and women willing to work
out His will, properly equipped with all labor-saving de-
vices, tractors, plows, harrows, thrashing machines, that
India may be one of the brightest jewels that ennoble
the glorious Crown of Him who once wore the Crown
of Thorns.

Date Due

M P '37

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