The juxtaposition of vast natural resources and a limitless supply of cheap labour has encouraged the most ambitious hopes in Oriental minds. Some Orientals look to a combination of Western money and Eastern man-power, expressed by an Indian economic writer in the formula: "English money and Indian labour are the two cheapest things in the world."[213] Others more ambitiously dream of industrializing the East entirely by native effort, to the exclusion and even to the detriment of the West. This view was well set forth some years ago by a Hindu, who wrote in a leading Indian periodical:[214] "In one sense the Orient is really menacing the West, and so earnest and open-minded is Asia that no pretence or apology whatever is made about it. The Easterner has thrown down the industrial gauntlet, and from now on Asia is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the Occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the East, and the Oriental endeavouring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he has been an easy victor.... In competing with the Occidental commercialists, the Oriental has awakened to a dynamic realization of the futility of pitting unimproved machinery and methods against modern methods and appliances. Casting aside his former sense of self-complacency, he is studying the sciences and arts that have given the West its material prosperity. He is putting the results of his investigations to practical use, as a rule, recasting the Occidental methods to suit his peculiar needs, and in some instances improving upon them."
This statement of the spirit of the Orient's industrial awakening is confirmed by many white observers. At the very moment when the above article was penned, an American economic writer was making a study tour of the Orient, of which he reported: "The real cause of Asia's poverty lies in just two things: the failure of Asiatic governments to educate their people, and the failure of the people to increase their productive capacity by the use of machinery. Ignorance and lack of machinery are responsible for Asia's poverty; knowledge and modern tools are responsible for America's prosperity." But, continues this writer, we must watch out. Asia now realizes these facts and is doing much to remedy the situation. Hence, "we must face in ever-increasing degree the rivalry of awakening peoples who are strong with the strength that comes from struggle with poverty and hardship, and who have set themselves to master and apply all our secrets in the coming world-struggle for industrial supremacy and for racial readjustment."[215] Another American observer of Asiatic economic conditions reports: "All Asia is being permeated with modern industry and present-day mechanical progress."[216] And Sir Theodore Morison concludes regarding India's economic future: "India's industrial transformation is near at hand; the obstacles which have hitherto prevented the adoption of modern methods of manufacture have been removed; means of transport have been spread over the face of the whole country, capital for the purchase of machinery and erection of factories may now be borrowed on easy terms; mechanics, engineers, and business managers may be hired from Europe to train the future captains of Indian industry; in English a common language has been found in which to transact business with all the provinces of India and with a great part of the Western world; security from foreign invasion and internal commotion justifies the inception of large enterprises. All the conditions are favourable for a great reorganization of industry which, when successfully accomplished, will bring about an increase hitherto undreamed of in India's annual output of wealth."[217]
The factor usually relied upon to overcome the Orient's handicaps of inexperience and inexpertness in industrialism is its cheap labour. To Western observers the low wages and long hours of Eastern industry are literally astounding. Take Egypt and India as examples of industrial conditions in the Near and Middle East. Writing of Egypt in 1908, the English economist H. N. Brailsford says: "There was then no Factory Act in Egypt. There are all over the country ginning-mills, which employ casual labour to prepare raw cotton for export during four or five months of the year. The wages were low, from 7½d. to 10d. (15 to 20 cents) a day for an adult, and 6d. (12 cents) for a child. Children and adults alike worked sometimes for twelve, usually for fifteen, and on occasion even for sixteen or eighteen hours a day. In the height of the season even the children were put on night shifts of twelve hours."[218]
In India conditions are about the same. The first thorough investigation of Indian industry was made in 1907 by a factory labour commission, and the following are some of the data published in its report: In the cotton-mills of Bombay the hours regularly worked ran from thirteen to fourteen hours. In the jute-mills of Calcutta the operatives usually worked fifteen hours. Cotton-ginning factories required their employees to work seventeen and eighteen hours a day, rice and flour mills twenty to twenty-two hours, and an extreme case was found in a printing works where the men had to work twenty-two hours a day for seven consecutive days. As to wages, an adult male operative, working from thirteen to fifteen hours a day, received from 15 to 20 rupees a month ($5 to $6.35). Child labour was very prevalent, children six and seven years old working "half-time"—in many cases eight hours a day. As a result of this report legislation was passed by the Indian Government bettering working conditions somewhat, especially for women and children. But in 1914 the French economist Albert Métin, after a careful study, reported factory conditions not greatly changed, the Factory Acts systematically evaded, hours very long, and wages extremely low. In Bombay men were earning from 10 cents to 20 cents per day, the highest wages being 30 cents. For women and children the maximum was 10 cents per day.[219]
With such extraordinarily low wages and long hours of labour it might at first sight seem as though, given adequate capital and up-to-date machinery, the Orient could not only drive Occidental products from Eastern markets but might invade Western markets as well. This, indeed, has been the fear of many Western writers. Nearly three-quarters of a century ago Gobineau prophesied an industrial invasion of Europe from Asia,[220] and of late years economists like H. N. Brailsford have warned against an emigration of Western capital to the tempting lure of factory conditions in Eastern lands.[221] Nevertheless, so far as the Near and Middle East is concerned, nothing like this has as yet materialized. China, to be sure, may yet have unpleasant surprises in store for the West,[222] but neither the Moslem world nor India have developed factory labour with the skill, stamina, and assiduity sufficient to undercut the industrial workers of Europe and America. In India, for example, despite a swarming and poverty-stricken population, the factories are unable to recruit an adequate or dependable labour-supply. Says M. Métin: "With such long hours and low wages it might be thought that Indian industry would be a formidable competitor of the West. This is not so. The reason is the bad quality of the work. The poorly paid coolies are so badly fed and so weak that it takes at least three of them to do the work of one European. Also, the Indian workers lack not only strength but also skill, attention, and liking for their work.... An Indian of the people will do anything else in preference to becoming a factory operative. The factories thus get only the dregs of the working class. The workers come to the factories and mines as a last resort; they leave as soon as they can return to their prior occupations or find a more remunerative employment. Thus the factories can never count on a regular labour-supply. Would higher wages remedy this? Many employers say no—as soon as the workers got a little ahead they would quit, either temporarily till their money was spent, or permanently for some more congenial calling."[223] These statements are fully confirmed by an Indian economic writer, who says: "One of the greatest drawbacks to the establishment of large industries in India is the scarcity and inefficiency of labour. Cheap labour, where there is no physical stamina, mental discipline, and skill behind it, tends to be costly in the end. The Indian labourer is mostly uneducated. He is not in touch with his employers or with his work. The labouring population of the towns is a flitting, dilettante population."[224]
Thus Indian industry, despite its very considerable growth, has not come up to early expectations. As the official Year-Book very frankly states: "India, in short, is a country rich in raw materials and in industrial possibilities, but poor in manufacturing accomplishments."[225] In fact, to some observers, India's industrial future seems far from bright. As a competent English student of Indian conditions recently wrote: "Some years ago it seemed possible that India might, by a rapid assimilation of Western knowledge and technical skill, adapt for her own conditions the methods of modern industry, and so reach an approximate economic level. Some even now threaten the Western world with a vision of the vast populations of China and India rising up with skilled organization, vast resources, and comparatively cheap labour to impoverish the West. To the present writer this is a mere bogey. The peril is of a very different kind. Instead of a growing approximation, he sees a growing disparity. For every step India takes toward mechanical efficiency, the West takes two. When India is beginning to use bicycles and motor-cars (not to make them), the West is perfecting the aeroplane. That is merely symbolic. The war, as we know, has speeded up mechanical invention and produced a population of mechanics; but India has stood comparatively still. It is, up to now, overwhelmingly mediæval, a country of domestic industry and handicrafts. Mechanical power, even of the simplest, has not yet been applied to its chief industry—agriculture. Yet the period of age-long isolation is over, and India can never go back to it; nevertheless, the gap between East and West is widening. What is to be the outcome for her 300 millions? We are in danger in the East of seeing the worst evils of commercialism developed on an enormous scale, with the vast population of India the victims—of seeing the East become a world slum."[226]
Whether or not this pessimistic outlook is justified, certain it is that not merely India but the entire Orient is in a stage of profound transition; and transition periods are always painful times. We have been considering the new industrial proletariat of the towns. But the older social classes are affected in very similar fashion. The old-type handicraftsman and small merchant are obviously menaced by modern industrial and business methods, and the peasant masses are in little better shape. It is not merely a change in technique but a fundamental difference in outlook on life that is involved. The life of the old Orient, while there was much want and hardship, was an easygoing life, with virtually no thought of such matters as time, efficiency, output, and "turnover." The merchant sat cross-legged in his little booth amid his small stock of wares, passively waiting for trade, chaffering interminably with his customers, annoyed rather than pleased if brisk business came his way. The artisan usually worked by and for himself, keeping his own hours and knocking off whenever he chose. The peasant arose with the dawn, but around noon he and his animals lay down for a long nap and slept until, in the cool of afternoon, they awoke, stretched themselves, and, comfortably and casually, went to work again.
To such people the speed, system, and discipline of our economic life are painfully repugnant, and adaptation can at best be effected only very slowly and under the compulsion of the direst necessity. Meanwhile they suffer from the competition of those better equipped in the economic battle. Sir William Ramsay paints a striking picture of the way in which the Turkish population of Asia Minor, from landlords and merchants to simple peasants, have been going down-hill for the last half-century under the economic pressure not merely of Westerners but of the native Christian elements, Armenians and Greeks, who had partially assimilated Western business ideas and methods. Under the old state of things, he says, there was in Asia Minor "no economic progress and no mercantile development; things went on in the old fashion, year after year. Such simple business as was carried on was inconsistent with the highly developed Western business system and Western civilization; but it was not oppressive to the people. There were no large fortunes; there was no opportunity for making a great fortune; it was impossible for one man to force into his service the minds and the work of a large number of people, and so to create a great organization out of which he might make big profits. There was a very large number of small men doing business on a small scale."[227] Sir William Ramsay then goes on to describe the shattering of this archaic economic life by modern business methods, to the consequent impoverishment of all classes of the unadaptable Turkish population.
How the agricultural classes, peasants and landlords alike, are suffering from changing economic conditions is well exemplified by the recent history of India. Says the French writer Chailley, an authoritative student of Indian problems: "For the last half-century large fractions of the agricultural classes are being entirely despoiled of their lands or reduced to onerous tenancies. On the other hand, new classes are rising and taking their place.... Both ryots and zamindars[228] are involved. The old-type nobility has not advanced with the times. It remains idle and prodigal, while the peasant proprietors, burdened by the traditions of many centuries, are likewise improvident and ignorant. On the other hand, the economic conditions of British India are producing capitalists who seek employment for their wealth. A conflict between them and the old landholders was predestined, and the result was inevitable. Wealth goes to the cleverest, and the land must pass into the hands of new masters, to the great indignation of the agricultural classes, a portion of whom will be reduced to the position of farm-labourers."[229]
The Hindu economist Mukerjee thus depicts the disintegration and decay of the Indian village: "New economic ideas have now begun to influence the minds of the villagers. Some are compelled to leave their occupations on account of foreign competition, but more are leaving their hereditary occupations of their own accord. The Brahmins go to the cities to seek government posts or professional careers. The middle classes also leave their villages and get scattered all over the country to earn a living. The peasants also leave their ancestral acres and form a class of landless agricultural labourers. The villages, drained of their best blood, stagnate and decay. The movement from the village to the city is in fact not only working a complete revolution in the habits and ideals of our people, but its economic consequences are far more serious than are ordinarily supposed. It has made our middle classes helplessly subservient to employment and service, and has also killed the independence of our peasant proprietors. It has jeopardized our food-supply, and is fraught with the gravest peril not only to our handicrafts but also to our national industry—agriculture."[230]