ence and
inertia of Anglo-Indian officialdom, and with the almost solitary
exceptions of Sir Thomas Holland, then at the head of the Geological
Survey, and Sir Benjamin Robertson, afterwards Chief Commissioner of the
Central Provinces where the first but unavailing explorations were made,
seldom received more than a minimum of countenance and assistance. Not
till Messrs. Tata's American prospectors had explored this region did
the Government of India realise that untold mineral wealth lay there
within 150 miles of Calcutta, almost on the surface of the soil, and not
until the pressure of the Great War and the inability of India to draw
any longer upon British industry for the most vital supplies compelled
them to turn to Jamsheedpur do they seem to have at all appreciated what
an enterprise that owed little or nothing to them meant to India and the
Empire. When the war was over, Lord Chelmsford paid a visit to
Jamsheedpur and generously acknowledged that debt. "I can hardly
imagine," said the Viceroy, "what we should have done if the Tata
Company had not been able to give us steel rails which have provided not
only for Mesopotamia, but for Egypt, Palestine, and East Africa." One
may therefore hope that the lesson of the war will not be forgotten, and
that Sir Thomas Holland, who has now exchanged the Munitions Board for
the portfolio of Industry, will prevent a relapse into the old
traditions of aloofness now that the war pressure is over.

The cotton-mills of Bombay, the jute-mills of Calcutta, the goldfields
of Mysore each contribute their own remarkable chapter to the story of
British industrial enterprise in India, but none can compare in point of
romance with the story of the iron and steel industry of Jamsheedpur. It
need only be very briefly recalled. In 1902 Mr. Jamsheedji Tata, a
veteran of the great Parsee community of Bombay and one of the founders
of the Bombay cotton industry, visited the United States. His active
mind had already for some time been busy with the idea of starting a
metallurgic industry in India, and he had received in the course of
conversation with Lord George Hamilton, then Secretary of State for
India, about the only encouragement he ever did receive in England. He
fared better in America. In New York he called with a letter of
introduction from Lord Avebury on Mr. C. Page Perin, an eminent mining
engineer, who was at once impressed both with his visitor and with the
schemes which he unf