olded, though they were still quite visionary. Mr.
Perin, who is still the consulting engineer of the Tata Company, agreed
to send a party of American prospectors, and followed them in 1904 to
India. Long was the search and many the hardships undergone, and Mr.
Jamsheedji Tata himself passed away before he could see the fulfilment
of his dream. But Sir Dorab Tata proved himself not unworthy to follow
in his footsteps, and when an area hitherto almost unknown and
unexplored had been definitely located, combining in an extraordinary
degree the primary requisites of adequate coalfields, vast ore deposits
of great wealth, a sufficient water supply, a suitable site for a large
industrial town with good railway communication though still badly
needing development, he and a small group of his Bombay friends tried to
find in London the financial support which they imagined would hardly be
denied to an enterprise of such immense importance for our Indian
Empire. But they failed. It was then that, largely on the advice of Sir
George Clarke, now Lord Sydenham, who was then Governor of
Bombay--whose great services to the economic advancement of India and to
Indian technical education latter-day politicians are too apt to
forget--they appealed to their own fellow-countrymen for the capital
needed. Never had such an appeal been made, but the response was
immediate and ample. The Tata Iron and Steel Works Company was launched
as an Indian Company, and to the present day all the hard cash required
has come out of Indian pockets. In 1908 the first clearance was effected
in what had hitherto been a barren stretch of scrub-jungle sparsely
inhabited by aboriginal Sonthals, one of the most primitive of Indian
races, and in 1910 the first works, erected by an American firm, were
completed and started. As far as the production of pig-iron was
concerned success was immediate, but many difficulties had to be
overcome in the manufacture of steel which had never before been
attempted in a tropical climate. These too, however, had been surmounted
by the end of 1913 in the nick of time to meet the heavy demands and
immense strain of the Great War, towards the end of which Government
took as much as 97 per cent of the steel output and obtained it from the
Company at less than a quarter of the price that it would have commanded
in the Indian open market.

To-day, just twelve years after the first stake was driven into the
ground, Jamsheedpur is alrea