Mahavira Jain Vidyalaya Rajat Jayanti Mahotsava

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 183

14
MANU SUBEDAR
[M. J. VIDYALAYA
tion, which I can give him, is in the matter of caps. Caps are at present made in the cities in small shops, which are also workshops and selling places. Craftsmen, who are making caps, find their own raw material and do the selling themselves. In other words, they have to engage their time in purchase and sale as well as their capital. If one of these artisans were picked up and induced to go and work in a village, where he will be guaranteed an income similar to what he is making in the cities (sometimes reduced, having regard to the standard of life in the villages), and if he was given there a place to live and a place to work, and he was supplied with raw material and the finished product was taken from him, can anyone question that such a man would produce enough to cover what is paid to him ? If, in the course of time, the boys associated with him were to learn the trade under him, doing simple operations at first and merely assisting him and later on getting into the more complicated ones, can anyone doubt that the output of the artisan himself would, under such circumstances, be slightly increased ? That this increase would be slight in the first or second year, but would be considerable in the third or fourth year, is a proposition which will not tax the credulity of any critic. My own feeling is that at the end of the fifth year, a boy pupil would not only be adding value to material to cover his schooling, but he would be adding more, because, the intention is that, at the end of the fifth or sixth year, he should be in a position to maintain himself, and the cost of maintaining himself is always more than the cost of merely schooling. In this manner, the number and variety of crafts selected would be very large. Thus the same thing would apply to Indian shoes (Chappal). It would also apply to hand-made paper and stationery of all kinds and description. It would apply to toys of all kinds and description. It would apply to wood-work. An equally good field is offered by containers of all kinds and description from the smallest pill box to the biggest box and from the smallest bag, either of paper or cloth, to the biggest. A field may be found for ready-made clothing. All other articles relating to personal adornment and apparel, furniture and household things, and books for printing and in many other fields, could become the subject of industry located in the villages on these lines. These are lines which must especially appeal to the socialists, because, whereas they have been merely shouting for the nationalization of industry and for the right to work, Mahatmaji has evolved something, which will embrace both these ideas in the most practicable form in which they could be put into effect. I have deliberately omitted spinning and weaving merely because this is a field in which all these experiments have already been made and have proved