lousies that had grown up between the old
Bengalee leader on the one hand and Tilak and his younger followers in
Bengal on the other. The second day's proceedings ended in still wilder
confusion, and after something like a free fight the Congress broke up
after an irreparable rupture, from which its prestige has never
recovered.

Tilak's own prestige, however, with the "advanced" party never stood
higher, either in then Deccan or outside of it. In the Deccan he not
only maintained all his old activities, but had extended their field.
Besides the _Kal_, edited by another Chitpawan Brahman, and the
_Rashtramadt_ at Poona, which went to even greater lengths than Tilak's
own _Kesari_, lesser papers obeying his inspiration had been established
in many of the smaller centres. A movement had been set on foot for the
creation of "national" schools, entirely independent of State support,
and therefore of State supervision, in which disaffection could, without
let or hindrance, be made part and parcel of the curriculum. Such were
the schools closed down last year in the Central Provinces and this year
at Telegaon. The great development of the cotton industry during the
last ten years, especially in Bombay itself--which has led to vast
agglomerations of labour under conditions unfamiliar in India--had given
Tilak an opportunity of establishing contact with a class of the
population hitherto outside the purview of Indian politics. There are
nearly 100 cotton spinning and weaving mills, employing over 100,000
operatives, congregated mostly in the northern suburbs of the city.
Huddled together in huge tenements this compact population affords by
its density, as well as by its ignorance, a peculiarly accessible field
to the trained agitator. Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the
Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of
a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere
contact may involve "pollution." In this, as in many other cases,
politics were closely mixed up with philanthropy, for the conditions of
labour in India are by no means wholly satisfactory, and it would be
unfair to deny to many of Tilak's followers a genuine desire to mitigate
the evils and hardships to which their humbler fellow-creatures were
exposed. Prominent amongst such evils was the growth of drunkenness, and
it would have been all to his honour that Tilak hastened to take up the
cause of temperance, had