INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN INDIA.
Last July two men, Mr. D. C. Churchill and Mr. J. B. Knight, sailed from New York, to take charge of the industrial work connected with the American Board's Marathi Mission in India. Mr. Churchill is a graduate from the Massachusetts School of Technology, and Mr. Knight from the Massachusetts Agricultural College. The Missionary Herald says of this enterprise:— These two men go out to the Marathi Mission under an agreement for three years. The mission has been led to take in over 3,000 famine children, of whom nearly 2,000 are boys. The primary attempt of these two experts will be to train the majority of these boys in lines of mechanical and agricultural industries. In Western India the Marathi Mission has for many years felt the urgent necessity of industrial training. So many questions relating to the rapidly growing Christian communities—the condition of new converts, the education of children, the progress and elevation of Christian society, the self-support of the native church, the self-propagation of Christianity—all so center around the practical habits of life that sporadic attempts at industrial training have been necessitated. Before 1880, Rev. R. Winsor, at Sirur, established an industrial training school. He taught in this school carpentry, rope-making, and blacksmithing. The work done here has been recognized by the English Government as most beneficial, and grants-in-aid have been made annually. At Ahmednagar a new and large School of Arts has been recently built, which trains boys scientifically in drawing, carpentry, metal hammering, and carpet-weaving. The Indian Mission Industries, Ltd., a company of Christian capitalists in England, have taken up the commercial problem concerned, and have opened a factory for Oriental rug-weaving under European management. They have more than a hundred boys and girls in this factory who are now earning their livelihood. At the beginning of the year land was bought, and a factory to accommodate five hundred hands is now in process of erection. The company, composed as it is of Christian men, have not only a philanthropic object in view, but have every reason to expect that the industry will be commercially successful. The famine has intensified the industrial problem. The legacy of almost 3,500 famine destitutes has made imperative some well-organized industrial work. Already something has been done. The carpet-weaving classes at Ahmednagar have been enlarged. The same work has been opened at Sholapur, a hundred miles southeast of Ahmednagar. In Bombay, in the High School, the industrial class of gold and silver embroidery has done splendid work. The embroidery is so beautiful and well made that it has a ready market in England and the United States. The profits go to the support of famine children. At Miss Abbot's Widows' Home, sixty-five women are at work making embroidered mats, tablecloths, handkerchiefs, etc. At Rahuri, Vadala, Ahmednagar, Sirur, Kolgaw, etc., agricultural lines are being successfully carried on. Weaving of native clothing is being taught in a few places. At nearly every one of the nine stations of the Marathi Mission there is some attempt to teach self-support and industrial habits. But larger plans are now under way, and these two trained men have been chosen to take charge. The missionaries have been hampered in their endeavors because of lack of training, and still more, lack of time to manage such industrial lines. These two Christian men go out to give their whole time and thought and trained energies to the successful establishing of industries which shall be commercially valuable, and so help to put these children, as well as others, on their feet and make them truly independent.