The Gospel and the Plow

THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

OR THE OLD GOSPEL AND MODERN FARMING IN ANCIENT INDIA ‘m ) M . uu ACMILLAN CO , L

M O F D LTD . TH E MAC ILLAN C . O CANA A, THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

OLD GOSPEL AND MODERN FARMING IN ANCIENT INDIA

B" A SAM HIGGINBOTTOM, M. .

1mm 130th TH E MACMILLAN COMP AN Y

1 92 6

All rig ht: res erved P " R H T 1 9 2 1 CO I G . .

n e ed Set up a d el ctrotyp . TO THE ONE W ITHOUT W HOSE UNFAILING COUR AG E G OOD- MP F IN G OD A ND I N ME . TE ER. AITH . THIS BOO" COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN VVRIT TEN TO TH E H EL P- M AND P R IN : _ EET ARTNE TH E STRUG G LES REP RESENTED H EREIN M" W IFE

1 1 779 1 7

P RE FA CE

Th is book is written at the request of the publishers who asked me to put into book form some lectures de i livered at Princeton Theolo gic al Sem nary . There is

o th e more in the bo k than lectures . I feel that so lit tle has been accomplished in India Of all I set out to

o f do , that this book is little more than a report prog i - ress . There s a growing interest in the non theologi cal aspects Of Foreign Missions and this production may serve some purpose in drawing attention to the need for other than the ordained missionary to help the backward peoples Of the far countries . Those who are intimately acquainted with my work in India may feel that I have ignored altogether or slurred over some Of the greatest difﬁculties to be faced in the es tablish m ent Of such an institution as is contemplated at

Allahabad .

is t It said tha I speak only Of the high spots , tell only es h milia Of the succ ses , write as though there were no u t ing failures to record . This is largely t rue . But any one familiar with the practical conduct Of affairs knows

iﬂiculties that there are d and lions in the way, that there ff is friction and clash Of will , that there are sharp di er ences Of Opinion before any worthwhile program is car S s ried out. O much o has this been my experience that I have come to see that the only place on earth where men are gathered together without friction is the ceme PREFACE

ter is o o l f y. It n t altog ether loss t be b ind to some O the “ ” insoluble problems . I have found that some Of these

ﬁ r esl with in nite patience , no bitterness Of spirit o of j us o r f l . y, led by His spi it , can be m ade most use u We are told that the mountains shall be a way, the seeming so t barriers shall be the paths to progress, hat I do not Of o new desp air seeing not nly a new heaven , but also a r earth , wherein dwelleth righteousness . The efore in hope and great expectancy I daily pray and work that

m r n His Kingdom may co e h e e and ow.

’ ‘ S AM H IGGIN BOI TOM .

Rad nor Road i o . Cleveland Heights , Oh 2 . 7 192 Dec , 0. CONTENTS

P AG E

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WOR" IN INDIA

’ INDIA S POVERT" AN D ILLITE RAC"

F CASTE, A LIMITING ACTOR

MISSION INDUSTRIES

H ow TH E FARM STARTE D

TH E CATTL E PROBLEM OF INDIA

TH E BRITIS H GOVERN MENT IN INDIA

WOR" IN NATIVE STATE S

’ TH E MISSIONAR" s AVOCATION

’ " ESUS E " AMP LE FOR SUC H WOR"

“ An e a d thine ears shall hear a word b hind thee s ying, This th u h an and is e way, walk ye in it, when ye t rn to t e right h d, ” n e h f a a 30 : 1 . whe y turn to t e le t. Is i h 2

“ e t e a a a t th e . as th e N i her ar your w ys my w ys, s i h Lord For are th e so my ways higher

- 55 : 8 9 . th an your ways . Isaiah

TH E G OSPE L AND TH E P LOW

CH APTER I

INTRODUCTION TO MISSION W OR" I N INDIA

1 903 was In the month Of February , , while I still an d undergra uate in Princeton University, I was invited r a by an Old school f iend, Mr . W . W . Fry , then Secret ry

A . . Of th e Trenton Y . M . C . , to spend Sunday with him n tation I accepted his i V i , and accompanied him to the ’ men s meeting on Sunday afternoon . When the meet ing was over he introduced me to a missionary from

' h llo i . e fo w n Indi a, the Rev . Henry Forman On t g morn on ing in the street car which I rode back to College , the only vacant seat was beside the missionary to whom

I had been introduced the day before, and whom I had never expected to see again . As soon as I had taken ll an my seat he began to ask a m ner of questions . ” What year are you in college " ”

i m . This s y last, I answered ” What next "

A theological seminary . Then what "” ﬁ The foreign mission eld, I hope . Where do you want to go " 3 4 THE GOSPE L AND THE PLOW

i t Either to Ch na or o South America . ” What do you think of Indi a " ” Not much . Why not " Because the missionaries from India whom I have

a o f c s an d heard , all spe k the intelle tual keenne s the -mi n o nimble nded ess Of the Indian . I do n t feel able to cope with that kin d . He then told me Of the mas s movement among the outcastes in which thousands Of the lowest classes of

India were turning to Christ . He suggested that , if I

o out were willing and anxious for work , I should g immediately after my course was ﬁn ished at college to su work among these p oor illiterate folk . He also g gested that this would not be the kind Of work which would overtax my mentality . In View Of my age he thought that the Board might be willing to send me out . I could still take my theological course in India n and be ordain ed later o . Then he put to me the direct question . “ If the Presbyterian Board would send you imme diately upon graduation from college would you go out to India to do evangelistic work among the low " caste people I could , at the moment , think Of no

a so good reason gainst such a proposal , , hesitatingly , e was repli d that , although there little hope Of the Board sending me out as an unordained m an for evangelistic work , yet I was ready to go . “ ” “ All right, he said . Before you attend any lec tures to -day write to Ro bert Speer an d tell him of our

- . l b o ff conversation I will a so write . Good y, I get ” h ere . We had reached Lawrenceville which lies about w half ay between Trenton and Princeton . I had the INTRODUCTION TO MISSION W OR" 5 rest Of the journey in which to ride alone and think of what I had done . I prayed . When I reached my room,

I wrote to Mr . Robert E . Speer . In April I was com n o r missio ed to go ut unordained, to car y on evangelistic

o - work among the l w caste people Of North India . In New York City I was appointed to Etah , in the United and d a Provinces Of Agra Ou h , India . I was gr duated in June and started for India . 1 0 0 O . 19 3 r On N V , , I a rived in Calcutta . I went t ﬁve t a northwes , hundred and four een miles, to Allahab d , the nearest station at which the American Presbyterians were at work . After Spending a few happy days as the

Mrs . . c . a guest Of the late Dr and Arthur H Ewing, I a comp nied them to Ludhiana in the Punj ab , where the as Presbyterian synod w to meet . At the same time the Punjab and North India missions were to hold their annual meetings . Here I received a most cordial and sa hearty welcome from all the missionaries . I t in the meetings and saw h ow the business Of the mission was

e conducted . I noticed how much troubl was caused by the refusal Of a certain miss ionary to accept the work which the missionary body assigned to him . I decided h ow that I would never be SO stubborn . I had little idea soon and h ow keenly my decision would be put to the a test . When the v cancies were considered , there were not nearly enough missionaries to gO round . When my own turn came they surprised me by saying “ W e have decided that you are to teach in the college ” “ ” out at Allahabad . I objected . I had come , I said , “ Of to do evangelistic work . I did not like the idea

ﬁ . teaching , I was not tted for it It was pointed out that in the contract signed in New York I had agreed to abide by the will of a majority Of the mission . The 6 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW majority had voted that I was to go to the college “ f ‘ n at Allahabad . All right , I said . I am not willi g

’ l m contract . to break y I wil do the best I can . I go n under protest , and I do ot hold myself responsible for ” results . The more one studies the organization of a mission and the various ways and means which it employs in

o order to make Christ and His Go d News known , the more one will ﬁn d that it is the spirit and attitude Of the individual missionary which matters rather than

ne the particular work to which he is assigned . If o has the right attitude Of mind and a broad and liberal on education , then whatever the duty assigned , e will ﬁnd a way of using his work to further the great end

V Fo r in iew. the individual who h as once se en the vision Of what the world might be if it had Jesus as

h as him Lord and Master, and who consecrated self to the will Of God and to his fellow men in obedience to ’ “ ” Jes us G O ye into all the world, it is not possible to conceive Of any position in mission work in India which

i out Of w ll not call all the energy, power, initiative which that individual is possessed . It is the fault of

or sh e not the missionary if he, , does go tired to bed every night from a day well spent in the service Of the new Master . The mission merely assigns the arrival to a or a st tion , it cannot give to him either the Spirit the in personality with which to work out his faith . The dividual h as invariably to make his own way Of present i ing Chr st . Whatever his appointment he has to deter min e for himself the best way of carrying his principles h e o f v is into practice . One Of t joys mission ser ice that the individual missionary has such a free hand , and i ﬁ t is SO much the master Of his own work . Dur ng his rs

8 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

n a i i i la gu g e , wh le having certa n Obvious d sadvantages , h as F been a great blessing to India . rom the English classics th e Indian student has mastered some great

world ideas that were dimly stated , or not stated at all ,

in oriental literature . These ideas are now bearing fruit . The great fact Of the growth Of a feeling Of nationalism of in India " the idea democracy, the idea Of human lib ert t y, learned from Mil on and the other English writers , are necessary antecedents Of the idea of responsible gov ernment in India which will be a government in which the majority elected will be Indi ans . English has been a

sch oolm mter h as e ne hard , but it b en a thorough o , and its teachings are now part of the warp and woof Of n o the thi king f educated India . Nothing else could so surely and so quickly have m ade it possible for India to cons ider itself one people . When these students found th at their teacher knew so little about his subject , they were afraid that they n would fail in their Government examinatio s . Up to this time th e Indian University h as been an examining and a e bo dy, not a teaching university , no sep rat college x was can e amine its own students or grant degrees . It difﬁcult to ﬁnd Indian illustrations that the students

a n could underst nd , for the various economic pri ciples d f laid down in the text books . Granted the soun ness O was l s the principles, it essential to Obtain i lu trations and concrete examples out Of the Indian conditions which n to a they k ew . With this end in View we began t ke s s advantage Of the Indian holiday sy tem , which perhap needs a word Of explanation . India possesses the larg est Mohammedan population Of any country in the world . It is greater than that Of E gypt , Turkey, Persia , and Arabia put together and amounts to over seventy INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WOR" 9

Moh millions . When an Indian college admits animedan students it is compelled to allow them to Observe their

own religious holidays and festivals . Again , India is the only country which has any very considerable Hindu

population . At the last census this population numbered a over two hundred and twenty millions, more in f ct than the total Of all the Protestant Christians in the

world tod ay . The Hindu students must also be free to iﬁ erent Observe their religious holidays . With the d

Christian holidays added, including Sunday Of course ,

the college term is somewhat broken up , and the Indian n hi s student, being in most things n ot u like fellow of students the world over, takes full advantage every W holiday . I Often recall a remark of President . 0 .

Thompson Of Ohio State University, that education is the one commodity sold in America for which the pur

chaser is glad to receive less than he has paid for . h The greater the number Of holidays, t e better the

student likes it . z fﬁ hi Reali ing the di culties w ch I have mentioned , of

n inex eri studying in a foreign la guage , and having an p en ced teacher , the students agreed to give up some of a these numerous holidays, in order that we might t ke trips together to study economic conditions in the neigh b orh o f o d . Together we Visited the workshops O the East India Railway and realized h ow human labor had use been reduced to a minimum through the Of power , h ow the inventive genius Of man is multiplying h is own capacity and at the same time ridding human labor Of

“ its most forbidding drudgery . When they saw a p air Of locomotive driving wheels on a lathe in a room where dl s har y a ound could be heard, they stood amazed at the exhibition of such tremendous power applied in 10 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

l we qui etness . In the brick ki ns watched production on

a large scale and the spec ialization of process . We crossed the Jumna river in order to visit the Naini Central Jail which h as accommodation for three thou F sand prisoners . or sixteen years the Superintendant

o f a was . this j il the late Colonel E Hudson , a ffi as British Military Medical o cer . Colonel Hudson w a genius . He tried to manage the j ail SO that no man who entered Should return to his ordinary life without having learned something which would be Of advant age to him if he wished to become a decent citizen . The gardens fi and the eld crops were the best I have ever seen . His fi eld cabbages, crop after crop , weighed from forty to

. c sixty pounds each His auliflowers , stripped of all l l o leaves and sta k , ti l nly the beautiful snowy, white head remained , turned the scale at from ﬁfteen to twenty pounds . His silage m om of sorghum or millet grew to a e height Of from seventeen to eighteen feet , and weigh d -ﬁve Of twenty to thirty tons green fodder to the acre . l f Dean A fred Vivian Of the College o Agriculture , Ohio C s on n State University, olumbu , Ohio , his journey rou d

1 . the world , rated the j ail silage A NO . Colonel Hud son a l - r o for invented coa bu ning st ve cooking the thin ,

as ch a atties . ﬂat , unleavened cakes Of India, known pp

This stove . saved the jail twenty thousand rupees a year in fuel and the daily labor Of ﬁfty cooks . In the days when the kitchen s had been dependent upon wood for fuel , it h ad been almost impossible to Obtain dry wood in the rainy seas on with which to cook the food . As a

s and re ult Of damp wood improperly cooked food , an outbreak Of cholera and dysentery had accompanied the annual rainy seas on . This coal stove alone had been f the means o saving the lives Of hundreds Of prisoners . INTRODUCTION TO MI SSION W OR" 1 1

woodcarv There were machine shops, carpentering and r weav ing shops, and a pottery department " the e were ing Sh eds where the priso ners worked upon the most u - - - own p to date hand looms , making their blankets and

was ru rooﬁn - r clothing " there a g factory, a g tile facto y and modern dai ry which provided milk fo r the sick and ff prisoners jail sta . Various experiments had been carried on with underground silos and I have never seen cattle in better condition than those at the Naini j ail fed o n h a this Silage . Colonel Hudson had learned ow to p peal to the criminal mind and also h ow to get the best o ut of it . In every case he tried to send the man out a

h e better man than when came in . In his gardens and on his farm he had learned h ow best to turn the waste products from the jail into abun dant health -producing food for man and beast . This was on land that had been considered sterile and un pro ductive when turned over

e i i to him . It did not tak many vis ts to conv nce both the ’ students and myself that if only Colonel Hudson s methods for th e utiliz ation o f wastes could be copied all over India, more could be done with these than with any other single factor to rid India Of the terrible fam ines which attack her periodically. The proper disposal Of the refuse would give the people enough to eat and would provide a sanitary system which would greatly za improve the general health . The organi tion Of the was S O fﬁ SO jail nearly perfect, the e ciency remarkable and the cleanliness so evident that the jail was a favorite visiting place for us and we never came away without feeling that the visit had been worth while . In Colonel

sa r e Hudson we w the typ Of public servant , quiet, alert , fﬁ diligent, sympathetic , e cient , never looking for reward is i other than h regular pay, rejoic ng in doing his duty THE GOSPEL TH E PLOW

h as l well, that made Britain the most successfu Of the f colonizing nations o history . “ n h d Wh e t ou go est out to battle against thine enemies, an seest ses and a r e hor , ch riots, and a people mo e than thou, b not a ai f th e : for h fr d o m t e Lord th y Go d is with thee, which t ee u O t e an E e o f . br ught h p u O th l d Of gypt And it shall b , h en e are c n un h a h s a w y ome igh to t e b ttle, that t e prie t sh ll a ac and ea un h unt ppro h sp k to t e people, And shall say o r i them, H ear, O Israel, ye app oach th s day unto battle against u ne es : et no a fa n n yo r e mi l t your he rts i t, fear o t, and do not tremble neither be ye terrified because of th em " For th e Lo rd h a o a ain your G od is e th t goeth with y u, to fight for you g st u en h e es e ou. An f e s a yo r mi , to sav y d t e O fic rs hall spe k unto th e e a h a m an e a a new peopl , s ying , W t is th re th t h th built a

' im o and e u n to house, and hath not dedicated it " let h g r t r u h i in th e a e and an her man e icate his ho se, les t e d e b ttl , ot d d

m a is h a a an e a i e ar and it. And what n e th t h th pl t d v n y d, hath not yet eaten o f it " let h im also go and return unto his h m an t h i in e a e and an e ea Of . house, lest e d e t b ttl , oth r it r a wif And what m an is the e that h th betrothed a e, and hath

r n o h i e no t taken h er" let him go and eturn u t s hous , lest h e h r h f die in th e battle, and another man take e . And t e O ﬁcers

e n s shall speak further unto th e p eo pl , a d they shall ay, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted " let him go ’ h bre hren ea fa n as and return unto th e ouse, lest his t s h rt i t - D ent. 20 : 1 8. well as his heart .

14 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

e these villagers we l arned that they had little capital , ns very little equipment , and entirely i uﬂicient food and clothing . Their capital generally consisted Of

w xen ach One pair Of o rk o , e to A woo den plo w A sickle fo r r eaping gra in A native spa de for digging i A gr ass cutt ng to o l . A woo d en fo rk A th ick h eavy c lub fo r breaking c lOd s A ﬂat bo ard fo r level ing gro und A few Old Standa rd Oil t ins A bi ea h e b a m a intenance er ea g l t r g, p y r A long rope A pulley wh eel

This list usually represents the number of their agri cultural implements . The plow is a wooden one with

or . a small iron tip bar, keel shaped like a boat It does V not turn a furrow, but makes a small Shaped scratch

s throwing the dirt on each side . This scratch is o nar row that to plow an acre means going over the ground at least three times " the distance walked is over ﬁfty miles .

' ill d A small , improved plow that turns a furrow w o a better job and go only Sixteen miles to plow the acre . The ordinary Indian plow h as only one handle so the plowm an is near enough to twist the tails o f his oxen .

Seeing this plow one understands why Jesus said , NO his w c man , having put hand to the plo , and looking ba k ﬁ m is t for the Kingdom of God . If the Indian plow an

l ' looks back the p OW will not stay in the furrow, but out s rides , and fail to accomplish the purpose for which ’

as f . it w made . And that is the point O Jesus remark The man who looks back fails to accomplish what he INDIA ’ S POV ERTY AND ILLITERACY 15

“ r i should . The Indian spade o pharwa is shaped l ke l r a large hoe with a short handle . It takes less muscu a effort and accomplishes less work than an American h o spade or shovel . But when we see w hard Indian soil can bake and consider the fact that so few Indian farm

we ers wear shoes, realize that the Indian type is better suited to Indian conditions for digging than the Ameri

can . it or When comes to shovelling sand , lime, coal dirt it is not nearly so efficient as the American type . Wherever an American shovel is used in India it is a two- n an man job " o e man pushes and steers the shovel , other h as a rope attached at the lower end Of the handle and pulls on it . The grass cutting tool is generally a bit Of Old buggy tire sharpened at one end and bent at the other end fo r an a h dle . When grass is to be cut the man takes hold Of a handful Of grass in the left hand and pushes the cutting tool a little under the surface Of the ground to can h a get all he , root and all, so that a freshly cut y fi no t o eld has stubble in sight , bu lo ks as though it had s been harrowed . The method of cutting gra s in India is an interesting side light on the cheapness Of human an d life the expensiveness Of grass . The Standard Oil tin occupies an unique place in the t i . domes ic economy Of Ind a It used to be very cheap , five is about cents a tin . It is now worth thirty . It used for storing seed , jewelry, Oil , water, in fact any thing that needs a water-tight cont ai ner that can resist white ants . When worn out the sides are used for roof in g houses and temples . Comparing the Indianfarmer ’ s capital invested in his land with the investment Of the average American farmer the total is very small , and the investment per acre is 1 6 THE GOSPEL AND ‘ TH E PLOW almost negligible in India as c ompared with the im

an m m I n proved farm l ds in A erica . The fa ily Of the dian tenant farmer usually plans for one meal a day . During part Of the year this meal is Often un cooked and

i s s consists of m llet oaked in cold water, or a pul e parched in hot sand and eaten a grain at a time . When pulse is c o m o - o ked , it for s pige n pea soup , which is seasoned with

r spices, red peppers o chilis . Into this soup are dipped the cakes Of unleavened bread which have been cooked

ﬁre c d n over a small Of dried ow u g . This unleavened c bread usually is made from the cheaper grains , sin e

too V . wheat is , as a rule , expensive for these poor illagers

- The strict upper caste Hindu is a vegetarian , but the

‘ low -cas te man with Whom Hinduism is little more than

Of cow a thin veneer, will eat any meat , except that the x or o . Under the inﬂuence Of c aste the outcastes have o rganized themselves into castes with all the limitations

o e low- s h thereof . One f thes ca tes will eat the ﬂes Of the l cow . , provided they have not killed it Once the anima is dead they ask no questions as to the manner Of its

or e death , whether from disease Old ag , but cook it and d no . o t eat it Sometimes they cook it . I remember a little girl o f about fourteen who was

n MI SS I OII cowstables working o the farm clearing out the , fﬁ earning four cents a day . We have no di culty in get ting all the labor we need because we pay more than the u o market rates , work is reg lar, full pay is there n pay

r day without ﬁnes o deductions . This girl was married and rejoicing in her ﬁrst baby h boy . I noticed that after the work oxen ad gone out to plow this little Indian mother would lay her dear so n little brown baby in the manger, just as once another

Little Baby was l ai d in a manger . She would ﬁll her INDIA ’ S POV ERTY AND ILLITERACY 17

wdun basket with co g, put the basket on her head , carry it out to the ﬁelds where it was to do its work, then a a return for an other load , and. e ch time she came b ck sh e loved and fondled her little one. She was a glad , happy, proud little mother, singing at her work . The a of was one M harajah Bikaner, that Indian King who Of the Indian representatives at the Peace Confer ence in Paris , invited me to draw up a scheme for his agricultural development in country . It involved travel over the state and took me about three weeks . When I returned to Allahabad th e little mother was “ walking round sad and disconsolate . I said Hello ” “ " 0 sh e Nanki , what is the matter Sahib , he died , “ h — e . replied . Why did you not tak him to t e Mem Sahib You know my wife would have given you medicine for ” “ " was not him She answered , It medicine he needed

u . but food . I could not n rse him With four cents a

ul h im n d for " day, co d I buy milk for a food myself

W h him . y Sahib , if I could not nurse he had to die ’ N nki e Many Indian mothers have a s exp rience . Investigators like Sir William Hunter or Lord Cur o r h zon , those Indian gentlemen w o have spoken of the an s poverty of their country in the Indi National Congres ,

or - all r whether pro anti British , are ag eed that the aver age per capita income for India ranges between seven

-ﬁv hi and twenty e dollars per year . T s works out at less than three to six cents per day per pers on for the whole population . When we remember that India has a large

l s Of - and wea thy cla s lawyers , merchants, money lenders u and landlords, it is Obvio s that many Of the village folk s a c have les th n three ents a day upon which to live . About one third of the people Of India are living at a 18 THE GOSPEL AN D TH E PLOW

rate of about two cents per day or less, are permanently

ill- is ar Of underfed and nour hed , e so short food that th ey do not get proper growth and are generally too ’ weak to do a fair day s work . Now a cent does not buy mo re Of the necessities Of life e c in India than it do s in America, for the pri e for grain is ﬁxed by world conditions " wheat is in a world market . i Cotton cloth made in Lancashire from Amer can cotton , w competes with cloth mad e from cotton gro n , Spun and woven in India .

a roxima t It simply means that Indians, in number pp in o g the p pulation of the United States, about one hun l e no dred mi lion , hav t yet come to regard as possible ’ luxuries many things which America s p oorest regard as i absolute necessities . NO one can understand Ind a who

o ne I gnores this degrading, debasing poverty which is r n Of u insepa able li k in the vicious circle ignorance, s per stition - , Oppression , ill health , infant mortality , lack Of sanitation and the continued persistence Of such epidemic

as a diseases cholera, dysentery, pl gue, enteric, malaria,

- - l hook worm , small pox and other preventable i ls . It is nh o a poverty which robs manhood , woma o d , and child d f n m hoo O all that is best a d most worthwhile in the . ’ o f India s poverty is a menace to the rest the world . A prosperous India producing more o f the things sh e can most easily produce could exchange them fo r the manu

r factu ed articles She needs but cannot produce . Self ds e interest, as well as sympathy, deman that a rem dy be ’ found for India s poverty . In many villages with from one hundred to three h un ﬁn d dred inhabitants , one could not one person , man or

r r . . woman , who could read o w ite Sir Michael E Sadler, “ ” in reviewing Village Education in India, INDIA ’ S POV ERTY AND ILLITERACY 19

shows that half a million Of villages in British India are R unsupplied by a primary school . "International eview Of Missions— October The last census taken ten years ago gives the degree of literacy as ﬁve and six

tenths per cent . where the test was the ability to write a letter Of four to ﬁve simple sentences in any one Of th e

and o . languages of India , t read the reply to it This f are shows that about ten per cent . O the men and boys w literate, and about one per cent . of the omen and girls r N o so over ten yea s Of age . w when any people is largely illiterate it is an easy prey for Oppression and r exto tion . Wild rumors ﬁnd ready credence . A lie I n once started is not easily caught up and corrected . dia suffers in full meas ure th epenalty for so great a s degree of ignorance . Illiteracy immensely increa es the Of n troubles gover ment , especially when the government one is a foreign . A demagogue determined to make trouble can go among an illiterate people and stir them up into a state Of frenz y by telling either deliberate false

Or . hoods , by so twisting the truth as to misrepresent it It fﬁ is very di cult for the Government to correct this, since th e Of harm is done before the Government is aware it .

of and Of At the root hatred , is fear, at the root fear, is ignorance . Once the hatred and suspicion have been aroused , it requires months of hard work to put out the

ﬂame , and to establish peace . Any one who is familiar with modern India and wh o is watching with deepest sympathy and good will the progress o f the greatest ad venture in democ ratic government which the world has e ver seen , cannot but wonder at its chances Of success

- when ninety four and four tenths per cent . Of the popula a tion is illiterate . The educ ted Indian is the peer Of any

as ﬁt - educated man anywhere, and for self government . 20 TH E GO SPEL AND TH E PLOW

Six millions have been enfranchised in India . The leadership rests on about a qu arter Of a millio n wh o have

r the necessa y education . It is the un educated Indians that constitute the problem . I am anxious to see the day when India shall take her proper plac e as one Of the

- great self governing peoples of the wo rld . The British Ofﬁcials and the European commercial community have put on reco rd their desire actively to ass ist in making the a n Mont gue Chelmsford Reforms a success, but ma y more schools will have to be built and ﬁlled with Indian boys an d girls before India will be able to accept her fair

th e of share of responsibilities the world , and carry her r z pa t Of the burden Of modern civili ation. Bad and crippling as this lack Of education is among

o - the men Of India , in order to see the m st far reaching and cumulative evil effects o f illiteracy it is necessary to realize the meaning Of illiterac y among the women

o f so and girls India. When we consider the inferior cial status Of women in India " the purdah system which E v shuts them O by themsel es , keeps them prisoners for

s - - life , Often in in anitary , ill lighted , ill ventilated quar ters " the fact that women are by nature more conserva tive than men " and that in the early and most impres sionable days Of life the children are under the care Of

r an mothers , only one out Of a hund ed Of whom c write her o wn name " we ask what chance h as the Indian boy o r girl compared with the American boy or girl " The il literate Indian mother h as her mind ﬁlled with supersti an d tion , myth , suspicion , and the consequent dread

‘ terror and darkness that cramp and dwarf life . The mother can convey to her child only what sh e herself h as h as im in her own mind . The woman Of India had it m S h e pressed upon her that she is inferior to th e an.

“ a c e And it sh ll om to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto c an ments c I c mm an a the my omm d whi h o d you this d y, to love u d d e u a an Lo rd yo r G o , an to s rve him with all yo r he rt d with

ul T his all your so , hat I will give yo u th e rain o f your land in e n ra h a e t du seas o , th e first in and t e latter r in , that thou may s in h a a h e t c n nd th ne and ne . An I wi g t r y or , y wi , thi Oil d ll n as s in th e s fo r h ca e a ma e eat an se d gr y fi ld t y ttl , th t thou y st d Ta e u se es at ur a e no de be full . k heed to yo r lv th yo he rt b t ceiv and u as e and se e he nd ed, ye t rn id rv ot r gods a worship ’ e n h o w a indl a a ns th m. And the t e L rd s r th be k ed g i t you, and h n a r a h e b e shut up t e heave , th t the e be no rain, and th t t land yield no t h er fruit " and lest ye perish quickly from Ofi ” h an h — t e c e e . De . 1 1 good l d whi h t Lord giv th you ut 1 : 1 3 7.

“ Neither is there salvation in any other : for there is none h nam ea en en am m en e w ot er e under h v giv ong , wh reby e must ” e 4 be sav d. Acts : 1 2.

CH AP TER III

E G F T CAST , A LIMITIN AC OR

a Observation shows th t the Caste System , that bed Of rock the Hindu religion , is the fundamental cause for

’ “ India s poverty, in that it is the greatest factor in limit For ing production . It does this in a number Of ways . instance— I employed a sweeper whose work kept him

h o a occupied for less t an tw hours a d y. His wages were

two d a . oll rs a month . Indian servants feed themselves

He had a wife and six children . When I paid him his wages he held it in his hand and looked at it . He said , “ on Sahib , it is very hard to feed eight people such a ” small no s e h ow sum . I answered that I did t e he did

o u it . I said , I would like to pay you more money if y

r earned it . The gardener h as asked fo help to dig in the h im garden . If you will go and help I will gladly pay ” u l yo . He replied that he wou d go and dig in the few garden . He started in to work . In a minutes the n gardener came to me a d asked for his pay . I said , What is the matter " Are you not satisﬁed with your D " ” “ 0 work " O I not treat you fairly He replied ,

es ou y , Sahib , y treat me all right and the work is all ” “ " h h e . t right, but I must leave Why W at is matter " a ou th at you cannot work Well, S hib , y h ave sent ”

n . that sweeper to work i the garden If he stays I go . “ for a . But , you sked me aid and I sent him to help you He h as a wife and Six children and gets two dollars a 23 24 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

" wo month . ou have a wife and four children and get t a and a half dollars a month . Yet , you compl in Of the S fﬁ H o . O di culty . w much harder then for him I

o th ught if he were willing to work extra , I would pay him for it , and you would get your digging done and he ” “ would have more food for his family . Yes , Sahib

s so that is all true , but you ee he is not Of my caste and cannot work in the garden with me . If he stays, I go . If I stay while h e works in the garden my castefellows

no or u will t drink water smoke the h qqa with me, and ﬁ I cannot su er the disgrace Of this just for a sweeper . ” S al O I must leave . I c l the sweeper away from the s garden and explain the trouble to him . He understand perfectly well the reas on . We both know that if the b o gardener leaves , I cannot get another . They would y cott me if I allowed my gardener to leave fo r such a m h h is reason . S O the sweeper ust look otherw ere to sell w re labor , and al ays with the same result , SO with sad, signed air he accepts his fate . Not the oppression Of the

Indian by the foreigner, but the Oppression Of the In dian by the system Of caste which is the heart and essence Of the religion Of the Hindus . Certain castes may not touch the plow or the digging tool " others may not apply

fi re u manure to their elds . Caste is Often behind the p j h dice against t e introduction Of labor saving machinery. Certain cas tes may grow field crops but may not grow e no fi vegetabl s, others may grow vegetables but t eld h r crops . In America it is t e custom for nearly eve y in farmer to have a garden which is grown , in season , ffi f r r su cient fresh vegetables o the family . The discove y “ ” of the impo rtan ce Of the vitamines which exist in r f esh , green vegetables and in milk and fruit and the part which they play in the growth and development of F 25 CASTE , A LIMITING ACTOR

n not malnutri human bei gs , indicates that a little of the tion Of India is due to the absence Of fresh vegetables in o f the diet Of th e farmer . This limiting production is mi one Of the econo c aspects Of caste, but the caste system

also has its religious and its social aspects . “ n is im In Southern I dia, as well known, there exist f S - mense numbers O O called untouchable classes , to whom ,

o n are particularly the Malabar side, denied what might

be called the elementary rights of h uman beings . They are condemned to live far beyond the outskirts Of the villages " they are forbidden to use many Of th e public roads " their very approach within a certain number of

yards is accounted contamination . As a result Of this, these depressed classes live in hovels and seem to delight

in dirt . From a casual appearance it would appear that th e great majority Of them have lost whatever innate love Of cleanliness human beings m ay be expected to

possess . They have no education , because they cannot afford to take advantage Of it even if it is proffered

y free . They have no outlook in life " the are condemned Of to the most degrading forms Of labor . But the root th e matter is less economic than social . Until these de pressed classes can be put on a level with their fellow

an men, can be treated as equals , d relieved from the moral degradation into which they ha ve been thrown Of fﬁ by centuries scorn , it is di cult to do very much with fﬁ them . O cial orders can be passed in such directions as insisting that children Of the depressed classes should

e a be admitted into schools, that m mbers Of these cl sses Should have proper hous es and free access to the public water-supply " but in the absence Of public Opinion it is quite impossible for Governm ent to en force these orders

th e a f a d which ﬂy in f ce o h bits centuries Old . In a di 2 6 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW tion to the particular problems presen ted by the un a o f touchable clas s , which are principally char cteristic

All- of Southern India , there is also the India problem h a the general condition Of t e pe santry . Recent settle ment operations in certain parts Of Northern India have c l a revealed that in some pla es, the average agricu tur l laborer is not infrequently compelled in time Of stress hi to mortgage s personal liberty . In return for a small um m a n s Of money , which he y happe to need at the mo ment, he agrees to serve the man from whom he has bor

. nor i rowed The money is not repaid, s it intended to be repaid " but the borrower remains the life -long bond F Slave Of his creditor . or his work he merely receives dole and an inadequate Of food , to all intents and pur ” o l poses is in the p sition Of a mediaeva serf . "From 1 25 9 9 . India in 1 1 , pp I n its religious aspect caste ﬁxes the status of the in l t dividua by bir h , and birth alone . It determin es what a m an Shall do and the m anner o f his doing it for the n whole Of his existence o this earth . By identifying conduct with religion many things which are not desira ble from the standpoint of san itation and health are in i d ssolubly linked through caste with the Hindu religion .

These may not be interfered with by the British gova ernment h - , which has held t e good will of India in the s s i pa t , largely becau e it has been neutral in relig on , and h as mad e it its policy to interfere in matters religious as l little as possib e . It is tru e that Government interfered ” with the custom Suttee whereby th e widow was burnt

of alive upon the funeral pyre her dead husband , but it did ul not gain any pop ar credit for this interference . The widow was and still is regarded as the actua l cause ’ of u her h sband s death , and possessed Of an evil spirit .

28 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

TO return to what is both the social and economic l aspect of caste. There is an unwi lingness to have sani tary latrines in the villages . The people go out into the ﬁelds to relieve themselves and fail completely to follow

law m 23 : 1 f i the Mosaic in this atter "Deut . 3) O the d s posin g Of refuse . Such an omission is the inevitable

a n Of cause Of widespre d disease , the contami ation the water supply, and the fouling o f all approaches to the re Village . Added to Objections of this nature , caste a stricts marri g e within very narrow limits, caste pre vents those social amenities which the Westerner as sociates with his meal times and therefore hinders the consequent interchan ge Of ideas . It supports a joint t i l family sys em in wh ch al share alike , where the drones ’ and the ne er-do -wells can take the heart out Of the work in ing members Of the family by refusing to work, but sist upon being fed . It causes the minute distribution of all property and thus lies behind the present un economic system Of land holding where the farm is broken up into scatt ered strips and into holdings so small as to prevent a family from Obtaining a decent living from the produce Of such a tiny acre age . od Let it be understo , however, that in this criticism a d n Of the system Of c ste as it stands to ay, condem ation I h as o . n t is not wholesale Caste is ot all bad . its go d side . Surely a system which h as su cceeded in holding a great people together for untold centuries must have in it elements Of unusual cohesive strength . The trouble is that caste has undergone so little change that it has failed to adapt itself to the chan ging conditions Of h u man life . Caste is outgrown . It is an anachronism in a a world in which the railro d, the telegraph, the penny M F 29 CASTE , A LI ITING ACTOR

s a - s po t , the ste m boat and the printing pre s have ceased to be seven day wonders . There are over ﬁfty millions of outcastes or untouch ” ables in India . Men and women at the bottom Of the al social sc e, who do the lowest and meanest tasks, some c r ﬁ are s avengers, some will eat car ion , some are lthy and disgusting in their habits . They have been kept down i a t by the h gher c s es . They have been denied the right

own or to education , to worship in the temples , to read the sacred scriptures Of the Hindus . They are said to be born at the bottom Of a horrible pit and born to stay there . They are considered to be in their proper place , no and there is way out . They are considered to be in the place assigned them by the Almighty and under orthodox Hinduism there is no possibility for them to

i . r se They are degraded and debased , kept down by r n unmeasured centuries of Oppression and ty an y . The missionari es Of Christ have gone among these lowly, despised folk and have told them Of the One who came to heal the broken hearted , to deliver the captive , set t to at liberty hem that are bruised . This message is so different from anything else that t hey have ever heard that it seems almost too good to be true . It is hard to persuade them that there is a way out Of their unspeakable degradation and bondage and poverty .

But some o f them are persuaded and are coming out . They are turning their faces towards the light and fOl it ﬁ lowing . Over fteen thousand a month are becoming Christian and it is this Christward tide of humanity that ” h as been called the Mass Movement in India . Whole Villages Of certain low-castes are being baptized at one

o ne time . If only one or two come ut at o time , they are 30 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

so persecuted that missions hesitate to accept them . It

e is better to wait till the f w have gained more . The whole village is better able to protect itself in its new faith than th e isolated individual . Many more than actually are baptized each month want to be baptized , but because Of lack Of missionaries and lack Of properly trained Indian preachers and teachers , the Christians Of India are saying to the greatest G odward tide Of history “ so ar Not quite fast , you e swamping us , we cannot take ou care of y , wait till we get caught up with our schools c and tea hers and churches and preac hers . The prob lems Of Christian missions in India to -day are not prob lems caused by failure to get converts but are problems caused by the successes Of so great an ingathering that we have not room to cont ain so great a harvest . The per centage Of illiteracy is growing in the Christian church

- nl Of in India to day. O y seventeen per cent . the Christ

o r i ians can read write . It is not because the m ssions are n doing less educational work . They are actually doi g

lo - illiter more . The w caste converts are almost totally ate and it is this great illiterate host Of believers that are increasing the percent age Of illiteracy . There was a day when the missionary felt that bap tism a TO- h e i w s the end . day he knows it is only t beg n

are ning . When these people come they still poor, still ignorant , their eyes not yet clear, SO that they see men as trees , walking . They have in them the inheritance Of n d centuries Of Oppression a d egradation . If we only baptize them and leave them alone we do them inﬁnite harm . Baptized they are babes in Christ and need the milk Of the Word th at they may grow up to the full a of s H o can me sure the stature Of men in Christ Je us . w M F 31 CASTE , A LI ITING ACTOR

we help such a lowly, dependent folk, who have no tradi tions Of independence o r liberty to brace them " If we dole out ch arity to them we rob them Of the very thing

no they need training in most of all . It is t doles of charity they need but help to help themselves . Teach ff them by their own e orts h ow to earn their own living, and such a living as will enable them not only to have eat enough to , and to be decently clothed , but a living

contribu which contemplates education for the children , l tions to schools and churches, to hospita s and libraries , a living which enables them to take full responsibility as citizens . I believe the best and quickest way to do this is to a train them in griculture , train the best and brightest in a good central institution so that the ones so trained can

u g go o t to their own folk in the villa es . The ones trained in modern farming can earn much more than the un

so a trained , much more in f ct that they can pay their own way and take their part as self-supporting members s Of the community . Some people who have seen thi mass movement work criticiz e it . They say these peo ple do not understand Christianity, that their motives are mixed and Often unworthy , that they come to Christ

Of h for what they can get out Him , t at they are mer cenar y Christians, that they come for the loaves and

ﬁ ar . so shes , that they e rice Christians Having said much they think the work is condemned and the case

" s a closed , but is it Grant all they y, it means that these l poor folk see in Christianity more than in their O d faith . While adhering to their Old faith material progress was

is impossible , under Christianity it possible . Under

e a their Old faith they w re denied common hum n rights, 32 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

under Christianity they are recognized as brothers , under their Old faith they were denied the Spiritual resources Of that faith , under Christianity their only limit is their capacity to comprehend the length and breadth and depth and height Of the love Of G od for

a the lost . It alw ys seems to me that Jesus must have h ad the low—c aste in mind when He stated His mission to be to seek and to save that which was lost . After

r all, it is not the motive with which men o women come

' with wh ich to Christ that matters , but the motive they God stay with Him , and many can bear witness that is n raisi g up to Himself out Of these whom m an despises , a body of believers that are the Spiritual equals Of any body Of believers anywhere on earth . In faithfulness to s ﬁ even death , in the last great supreme acri ce for l . ow His dear sake , they are abundant witnesses The caste converts educated in our mission schools and col leges Often attain positions Of distinction and high re

- sponsibility . They move freely among high caste peo ple, where , had they not been converted and trained , of they never could have gone . As I see the progress these masses to Jesus I come to see that the only cure a ff for caste is Christ . Th t He e ectually takes away any disability that caste causes . That in this life if any m an be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation . “ h h And Moses said unto t e children Of Israel, S ee, t e Lord

a cal e na e ale h e n o ri th e on f H ur h th l d by me B z el t so f U , s o , o f th e tribe o f " udah " And h e hath ﬁlled him with th e spirit d in wis in n s an d in n e e and Of Go , dom, u der t ding, an k owl dg , ks in all manner of workm an ship " And to devise curious wor , to in an in r an in as And in th e cut work gold, d silve , d br s, in n O d a t g Of stones, to set them, and in carvi g f woo , to m ke h ea t any manner Of cunning work. And h e hath put in is h r

h h nd A a h e son Of A i tha t e m ay teach, both e, a holi b, t b sa h h e h l e mac , Of t e tribe Of D an. Th m hath e ﬁ l d with wisdom

ea ll anne o f r Of th e en ra e and Of h rt, to work a m r wo k, g v r, o th e cunn m an d f th e r e e in e f ing work , an O e mb oid r r, blu , and e in car ﬁne en and Of h e in purpl , s let, and in lin , t e weav r, e en Of em a an f v th th t do y work, and O those that devise ” c n 35 — u ning work. Exodus : 30 35. CH APTER IV

MISSION INDUSTRIE S

As I had gone to India to work among the outcaste

see people I was eager to what the work was like , SO on some Of the longer college Vacations I went to Etah where I had originally hoped to go to work among the

. M on rs . outcastes I also went tour with Mr . and Bandy and saw the thousands Of converts gathered in by this de

sa voted , original an d energetic couple . I w the great

t n ew pover y Of these converts, I watched them bring in l their gifts Of eggs, chickens , grain and potatoes as wel as Of cash . I found that most Of them were tithing, that is n - f , were giving o e tenth Of all they received O money or produce in order to support their preachers and teachers and to build their churches and schools . I also saw that where the family income , whether measured in o r im money in kind , was two dollars a month it was possible for a tenth Of SO Small a sum to do all that was

- needed to bring about a self supporting church . I looked forward and tried to imagine the day when the missionary program in India should have been completed .

- - n - A self supporting, self gover ing, self propagating Chris tian church seemed the minimum for which to look for a I i w rd . t was Obv ous that if the averag e church mem ber was living at a rate Of from one to three cents per person per day something would have to be done to increase the earning capacity and the income of the 34

36 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

fﬁ him to be strong, healthy and e cient , the better for . “ They used to talk Of the great danger Of the rice con ” f ﬁ verts, O those who followed for the loaves and shes and Of those who sought material gain . The Bible says, “ What " know ye not that your body is the temple Of the Holy Ghost therefore glorify G od in your ” 1 — . 6 : 9 20. body Cor . The body surely has its rightful

for demand care and protection . Investigation Shows that most mission industrial en terprises in orphanages and for low-caste converts are failures , that generally, just as soon as a mission could w close do n its industrial work it did SO , and only opened again when famine provided large numbers of children to be cared for . The causes Of failure are First : The lack Of properly and technically trained r missiona ies . Seldom did a mission have a member, man or r k woman , with the necessa y technical training to ma e r industrial work a success . Most missiona ies have n special traini g for evangelistic work , that does not i or imply the tra ning necessary for a good blacksmith ,

r - for carpenter o shoe maker . It would be much wiser Foreign Mission Boards to take a leaf out Of business experience and to appoint missionaries who have had Special training for the particular pie ce Of work to be done . An evangelist for evangelistic work : a black smith for iron work : a carpenter for working in wood a farmer for farming . All should be controlled by that

One Spirit without which no mission work can succeed . a There are diversities Of operations, but it is the s me ” God which worketh all in all . Granted that a certain ordained evangelist who had of been brought up on a farm , and remembers the labors his youth makes a success Of managing an orphanage, MISSION INDUSTRIE S 37

i m aking up in enthusiasm what he lacks in technical sk ll , the boys under such a missionary may be passably trained in their particular trade , SO that , if the mission ary does the business managing and the marketing, they are able to earn an ywhere from three to ten dollars per month . Perhaps this success ful missionary goes on furlough or dies . The mission has to make provision for his

- work . Often the most awkward , three cornered person ,

ﬁ an who cannot t in ywhere else, and who ought to be b e sent home , is put in charge Of the industrial work “ cause it is argued th at he will do less harm to real ” th e mission work there th an anywhere else . Some Of mission industries are big enough and involve sums Of money large enough to demand real business manage ment . The mission usually makes no provision for the continuity Of th e industrial work " when one man drops o ut there is no special ly trained man to step in . If a l missions are going to engage in industry t al , it would be well to see that properly trained men and sufﬁcient capital are Obtained I n order to carry it on with some measure Of success . I take it that in a country like di mi In a, with fa ne ever threatening and poverty ever ss o in present , mi ions will be compelled to c ntinue in dustrial work for some time to come . Second : The reason for failure Often is — th e in dustr s y cho en is not suitable, or located in the wrong place with respect to markets . The caste system, in its economic as pect gives to each separate trade or occupa tion a far greater power and control over its mem bers than a trades union claims over its members in America . If the missionary trains a boy fo r one Of these caste a h e tr des has to employ the boy whom he has trained . 38 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

If the boy leaves the mission in order to follow his trade in the open market he imm ediately comes into conﬂict with the caste trades union which will not only not ad i mit him , but wh ch will boycott anyone who employs

s him , until he is compelled to fall back into the rank ’ of the casual laborer an d thus the missionaries effort is largely wasted . The boy also does not get a fair a i ch nce in l fe . Then too it is not worth whi le for a missionary to de

o - a i vote his life to teaching sh e m king, tailor ng, carpen o r tering blacksmithing in India . When a Christian boy

o f not is train ed to any these trades , even if there were ifﬁ s d the d culty Of caste trade men to conten , with , the wages he can earn at present are not such that he can H is live decently and bring up a family o n them . pre war wages in Northern India would have been about

Sixteen cents per day . Wages have risen but SO have prices . It is essential for missions to train their con verts in those callings where they are not likely to run counter to any caste trades un ion and where they may r n t be sure Of ea ning a livi g wage . There are less cas e s i restriction in farm ng than in any other occupation ,

s l and those restrictions that do exist , u ual y apply to the higher, rather than to the lower castes . Indi a is about one million eight hundred thousand

one- of Square miles in extent , that is , half the Size the n l United States and Alaska . Nearly o e mil ion square ﬁ miles is culturable . About two hun dred and fty l n thousand square miles are forest . The rest is cal ed u culturable waste . Much Of this unculturable waste can be reclaimed by modern methods Of drainage " by pre vention Of erosion " by washing out harmful salts from alkali lands " and by us e of power plowing machinery . MISSION INDUSTRIE S 39

According to th e Ofﬁcial report prepared for presenta “ ” tion in Parliament— India in 1 91 9 — India h as eighty

i an am Of million acres in r ce, d grows the largest ount

rice Of any country in the world . India in the se as on of 1 91 9— 1 920 had about thirty mil lion acres sown to wheat and grew over ten million tons

of that staple, which was three million tons more than

the year before . India had the largest acreage under sugar cane "about half the world ’s area under sugar cane is in India) and until 1918 grew more cane sugar than any other country fo 1 918 on earth . The yield Of sugar r was estimated

at three million seven hundred thousand tons . India grows and exports more tea than any other n h cou try in the world, t ree hundred and eighty million 1 91 8 pounds in . India leads the world in the production Of Oil seeds "

a c - c stor, linseed , mustard, sesamum, co oa nut and peanut

Oils . India leads the world in the production Of sorghums and millets " pigeo n p ea and other edible legumes . India grows about eighty million tons of food grains

a year . d h as In ia a world monopoly in the growing Of jute ,

our from which all gunny bags and sacks are made . India leads the world in the production Of Shellac for varnish . In 1919 India grew six mi llion eight hundred thousand

o f on o a bales cotton over twenty milli n acres, each b le

weighing four hun dred pounds . India has several million acres under “ Sanai ” which ﬁ yields a ber like hemp . 40 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

India h as two hundred and sixty million head Of

e f horned cattle and wat r buf aloes .

on n India is rich in fruits which include , the plai s ,

a ita th e the mango , the banana, the p p , custard apple , a u the bear j ck fr it, the orange and citrous fruits , in w a r the mountains gro apples , pe rs , che ries, peaches, r plums, apricots an d strawbe ries . Many Of these were introduced by Dr . Carleton Of the American Presbyt e rian Mission .

The largest Silk mill in the world is in Kashmir . is India rich in spices and condiments Of all kinds. India mined over twenty-o ne million ton s Of coal dur

a for ﬁ s ing the last ye r which gure were published . Oil h as just been found in India proper .

e a re This list is not exhaustive . It shows the larg g g ’ gate production in India Of the world s staple crops and

o f their wide variety. On the investigation details it is foun d that India in general uses tod ay the same too ls and implements that Sh e used in the time Of Moses , that

Of or the yields Of these crops per acre land, per man a on for eng ged the land raising the crop , are the lowest

on o f any civilized country earth , this in spite the fact ’ s i that India soil is naturally fertile , and the grow ng e s ason SO long . The British Government started an Agricultural De

f Of scien partment nearly thirty years ago . The sta f

is z t ts h as been somewha t small but the results ama ing .

Mrs s Mr . and . Howard Imperial Economic Botanist , “ bred The Pusa Series o f wheat which was so wn on over half a million acres las t year . It is only ten years since this breed Of wheat was in the experimental plot s as stage . The net increa e due to this good seed is at le t five dollars per acre per year better than the local vari e MISSION INDUSTRIE S 41

im le ties it displaced , with the present methods and p ments . But this improved seed responds to better methods in a way the local varieties do not , SO that when the better methods are introduced a net increas e is Ob tained of ﬁfty to one hundred per cent . more than the t local varieties yield . Dr . Barber, Imperial Bo anist , worked on sugar cane for seven years . The local variety

Of cane sugar grown in Northern India is a thin , hard cane chosen because Of its power to resist the attacks Of

a . the wild pig, jackal , deer and dise se It responds only

. n slightly to m a uring and better cultivation . It gives about ten tons o f cane per acre and less than a ton of sugar . The improved variety Of cane is giving up to forty tons Of cane per acre with over four tons Of sugar . ’ s o f c ﬁ Mo t India s cotton is short staple , oarse ber, low- i 25-33 yielding, ginn ng percentage "the ginning

ﬁ r percentage is the proportion Of ber o lint to seed) .

Most Of the Indian varieties have a h ai ry leaf . Most good long staple cottons have a smooth leaf . The smooth leaf is readily att acked by insects while the hairy leaf is not . Mr . Leake , Director Of Agri culture of the h as ff United Provinces at Cawnpur , crossed di erent varie

Of so now a - ties cotton that he has a h iry leafed , long staple cotton with a high -ginning percentage Of 35- 40 per cent . This cotton is worth more per pound than

r . i the sho t staple Mr . Roberts, Principal Of the Agr l L al ur cultura College at y p , Punjab , has done much to increas e the yields and quality Of American cotton grown H in the Punj ab . e has further devised a scheme for selling this improved cotton which gives a fair share of the increase to the farmer who grew the cotton . 42 THE GO SPEL AN D THE PLOW

ul Mr . Clouston , Director Of Agric ture for the Central h as o Pro vinces, is lated a high yielding local variety, ﬁve a ﬁ Roseum , which gives dollars an cre net pro t more than the local variety. A breed o f rice has been isolated for Bengal which gives twenty per cent . more i s than the loc al varieties . Plant d sea es have been studi ed and in some cas es remedies foun d" New varic

O rative i ties have been introduced . Co pe cred t societies for purchasing an d marketing have been organized .

- Twenty nine thousan d societies are now active . When we recall tha t modern agricultural sc ience is S O recent in

America, what India h as done compares very favorably w r h V ith what other count ies a e done , after due allowance has been made for all the unusual difﬁculties Of the Situa tion . If there is any place for criticism Of the Govern ment it is in the fact tha t methods were not devised and staff not provided for the spreading among the Indian farmers Of the results Of laboratory and experimental ff research . E orts to this end are now being put forth a so but the are is vast , it takes SO long for a foreigner trained in agriculture to get acquainted with the Indian conditions " the ignorance , the suspicion , the illiteracy a and superstition Of the Indi an farmers SO widespre d ,

a that progress is necessarily slow . The illiterate Indi n farmer h as for centuries been fair game for anyone to fﬁ exploit . It is di cult for him to believe that anyone l hi h is real y trying to help m . W en any improvement is being introduced he always imagines that some new trick n is being played upon him . The Gover ment is estab lish in r i g ural , m ddle and high agricultural schools but is Compelled to go slowly because Of the dearth Of prop erly qualiﬁed teachers with the right attitude towards the villager . It is at this particular point that America

44 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

conditions which call for such institutions . As I go

sa about America many say to me Yes, what you y ss about India is interesting, but after all what busine have American Mis sions in India " India is Great Bri ’ ” k r tain s job . Fran ly I admit that Ame ican Missions have no “ business ” in India and th at no legal claim can be made upon A merican Christians to send help to India . ’ - It is only in the abundance Of America s good will , Of re her sources, of her conspicuous ability to help , and ﬁnally in her Obedi ence to the comm and o f Christ to go to the uttermost parts Of the e arth that justify her s in giving this a sistance to India . Even in my copy Of the American revis ed vers ion it does not say to Ameri “ can Christians Go ye into all the world except the ’ ’ to British Empire . India s n eed , America s ability meet that need in relation to the command o f Christ , is ’ America s reason for sending of her sons and daugh ters to help this great and ancient peo ple to gain the s fullest mea ure Of human freedom, and to learn the God s peace Of which pa seth understanding . The reason I advise that SO many properly qualiﬁed Ameri cans be ’ sent out is not that India s own sons and daughters are not capable , but they have not had the chance for train ing in India which they need and whi ch America has . i Other things be ng equal , the greater the number Of r American helpe s as a temporary measure , the quicker w India ill be able to manage her own affairs . After I had made a study Of the problem Of mission in dust ries and saw they must be an essential p art Of the missionary method , I decided to choose agriculture in preference to anything else for the followin g reasons :

1 - . l m i Agricu ture is to day the a n occupation in India.

It is the basic industry Of the world . MIS SION INDUSTRIE S 45

2 r . Ag iculture is likely to remain the main occupa Of h e tion India, because Of its climate and t long grow ing season . 3 . Improved agriculture is the line Of least resistan ce in a society bound by caste and may b e the line Of i greatest w sdom . It is the simplest and most direct way an to give India enough to eat d to prevent famine .

- 4. l low as Improved agricu ture , taught to the c te con vert will give him enough to eat and will provide him h with a surplus with whic he can purch ase clothing, o pay the d ctor, educate his ch ildren and contribute

r reasonably to the support Of his religion . He lea ns own ff t h w m by his e or s o to support hi self and his family . 5 . Improved ag riculture provides an occupation for sons Of Christians wh o are not ﬁtted to be mis sion

c ﬁ s f tea hers or preachers . Hitherto the main e ort O mission training have been directed toward the keep of N t ing up the supply Of evangelists and teachers . o all good Christians are called Of G od to these forms of

‘ ur service . Since mission service is a form Of life ins

r ance for the time se ver, many have entered into this form Of Christian work wh o were not suited either by their aptitude or their consecration to teaching or hi preac ng . Because there was no other form Of train ing provided by the mission a class of professional re ligionists has been fostered who are not always a credit

s r i to their mi sion o to Christianity . The boy who s trained in agriculture has no difficulty in Obtaining a o go d job apart from the mission , Often at a salary much f higher than the mission could af ord to pay . We have

on h e a a delib had men , trained t farm at Allah b d , who

eratel s i . y cho e mission serv ce at a lower rate Of pay, rather than other employment at a higher salary b e 46 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW cause they felt that in the mission they might help their o wn people better than by earnin g a big salary for them to selves elsewhere . This raises the Indian the same r status as the missionary hi mself, who se ves not for what he can get but for what he can give to others . This Opens another possible occupation for Indian Chris tians and the more Of such properly trained men there th e are, the sooner will the Indian be real leader Of his o wn people in their long struggle out Of economic bondage int o economic freedom .

6 low- . The fact that SO few caste folk possess land h as been us ed as an argument against mission agricul

i h e o r ask Of tural tra ning . What is t good , u critics , training men in this profession when they have no land

Of their own or are unable to rent land " The answer is,

h - - t at even illiterate low caste non Christians, who have worked on the mission farm for two or three years and

n h o use b arro s who have lear ed w to iron plows , w , rollers , seeding, mowing and threshing machinery and silage

a g o - cutters , are in great dem nd at wa es tw and one half

as as g times great the avera e village wage . We have never had difficulty in getting eager laborers wh o wish to improve their own condition by getting practical training with us which fits them for higher wages else where . 7 fi s - . When I r t came into contact with the non Chris was find tian student Of an Indian college, I interested to 1 out what he was going to do with his education . dis covered that a very large majority were looking forward

o r to Government service . In fact f every Government post which fell vacant about a hundred students applied . The ninety and nine who failed to Obtain the post fed the ranks o f the embittered and made Indian unrest more MISS ION INDUSTRIE S 47

“ r n widesp ead . They as ked, Why did the Gover ment accept our fees for educating us and then not give us jobs "

i e la Fa ling Government servic s , the w is their second

choice, and India, though possessed Of some good, great , ru an d s f const ctive clever lawyer , has ar more men in

this profession than the country needs . If they fail in law s , things have come to a bad pa s, and there is nothing i r m left but teach ng in a Gove n ent school , or failing this, i r in a m ssion school , o a clerkship on the railroad or in

a mercantile house . But in any one Of these oc cupa tions life can never have the glory and honor it would h m ave had in Govern ent service . Only a small minority go out into life looking for re sponsibility or for public service or to see h ow much

good they can do . There are a few who do not feel like accepting any post under Government since in such a position they would be prevented from criticiz ing its policy or ques ionin r n t g its action in any way. They p efer their i de “ p endence and poverty to a post in a Government ma ” is n f chine where there the assura ce O a fair salary , l leading to a comfortable O d age with a good pension . The number Of occupations open to educated Indians which allow them to preserve their independence are few very . In choosing agriculture I felt that a‘ training in it would give the educated non -Christian Indian Opportu i d n n ty to earn a decent livelihoo , a d to keep his own in

- dependence and Self respect . If a large body of such men coul d be created in India tod ay they would be Of r great assistance both to the Gove nment and the people . A S a class they would not be so bitter as the present dis 48 THE GOSPEL AN D THE PLOW

n n s appoi ted candidates for Gover ment service, nor o l S pliant and servi e as some Of the success ful O Often are . They could be Of great service in providing an educated

Indian public Opinion free from prejudice . d 8. There is a great call to ay for more technical and industrial education in India . Some urge the Govern i ment to press on with th s to the exclusion Of all else. The patriotic Indian does not like to see India so de pendent u pon other countries for the very Simplest manufactured neces sities such as matches , lamps and tools . He wants the Government to subsidize in some s way all Indian manufacturer . One great reason

— so against this, is that India to day has small a propor tion Of her population that can use tools and manage c machines , the la k Of trained machinists could not be ﬁ overcome for years . I would be the rst to agree that India needs a greater proportion Of her pe ople engaged in manufacture and industry and fewer in agriculture . I feel that this can best be brought about by the devel o pm ent Of those industries related to and subsidiary to agriculture such as The making and repairing of modern farm imple

ments and machinery .

Modern dairying . e er n The canning, and pr s vi g, and drying of fruits an d vegetables .

Sugar making .

Oil pressing .

T an ning .

Rope makin g . To illustrate h ow improved agriculture helps th e in dus ries a o f th e th t I spe k , on land of e miss ion farm MIS SION INDUSTRIE S 49

k one where, before we took it , one blac smith and car p enter were occupied for less than half their time , after the mission took it and introduced labor-saving machin w ery, t o blacksmiths and two carpenters have steady our m c or work all the time, keeping a hines in working der, and setting up new machinery for purchasers . The limiting factor to -day to the introductionOf mod ern fﬁ - , e cient , labor saving farm machinery into India is not money, but lack of men train ed to use modern farm tools and to keep them in rep air . India has several million wells in areas where there never can be ﬂow irrigation . At present the water is raised by bullocks, a

Slow and expensive method . The engineer who can overcome all the difficulties and give to India a cheap , ff - ﬁ do durable , e icient and Simple well pumping out t will a great thing for India . We therefore wish to establish a strong agricultural engineering department to remedy this Obvious lack . 9 . The present system Of rural and primary educa tion is not popular in India largely because it is not “ ” or o l too vocational dollar education , it is t o litera , h detac ed and unrelated to the life Of the people , but even more so because the boy who succeeds in it is lost to his village and to his own people . If he succeeds he w i is dra n away to the cities . India s a land Of peculiar a rural type . Over ninety per cent . Of the popul tion live in small villages and less than ten per cent . in cities and

. f towns The large cities O India , for a country with such a teeming population are very few.

Calcutta inh abitants approxim ate inh abitant s appro xim ate Madras inh abitants approximate 50 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

L ucknow from to

Including these cities there are only seventy-ﬁve towns and cities with over ﬁfty thousand population each . Men trained as farmers will do their work and earn l their living among their own people in the vil ages . Each properly trained farmer will be as a light on a i hill to all the ord nary village farmers . He will use and

u . introd ce the better seed , methods and implements When h is neighbors see the better yields h is practices will be noted and copied by them . This will raise the yield Of the crops and the standard of living for all . I believe this is the quickest way to reach the whole Of i al India helpfully, naturally and econom c ly .

1 0. a India needs roads, railro ds , canals, schools , col

i r - leges, l bra ies , and hospitals . Sixty two per cent . Of the people Of India are beyond the reach of any medical aid whatsoever . India is SO poor that sh e cannot in her present condition provide the capital for a large part ,

all much less , for Of these things . Such blessings are not going to be given to her as an act Of charity by any other

S h ef people . If e ever gets them it will be by her own forts . The only possible place that I can see that she ﬁ can get them is from the rst foot of her own soil , prop fﬁ erly tilled . By the present Old fashioned and ine cient di methods, In a out of one of the richest soils o n the earth has the smallest yield per acre or per man Of any civil ized S O country. the rapid introduction Of better farm ing is the most natural and e asy method Of giving to

e e ear and ear ce ear en an Giv y , h my voi " h k , d hear my speech . Doth he th at ploweth to sow plow continually " doth h e co n tinually open and b arrow h is ground " When h e hath levelled th e f ace ere f h e no t cast a h ﬁ h s d th o , doth broad t e tc e , an

a e th e c umm n an d t i i d h e sc tt r i , p u n th e wheat n rows , an t

a i h a h h r b rley n t e ppointed place, and t e spelt in t e bo der 1“ F h h thereof or is Go d doth instruct h im aright, and dot h h teach him . For t e ﬁtch es are not t rash ed with a. sharp

r n n r en ne e is a ca ee urne a u th eshi g i st um t, ith r rt wh l t d bo t aff upon th e cummin " but th e ﬁtch es are beaten o ut with a st , ra is r und fo r and th e c ummin with a ro d. Bread g in g o " h e will no t be always threshing it : and though th e wheel o f

h e no t nd it. T is h is cart and his horses scatte r it, doth gri h

h a f h wh o is w n e fu also cometh forth from " e ov h o osts, o d r l

ce en in w sd m . in counsel, and ex ll t i o — 2 2 . . Isaiah 28 : 3 9 . Am. R V CHAPTE R V

H OW TH E FARM S TARTED

In going into these mud villag es one not only learned “ a that India w s poor beyond compare , cabined, cribbed , ” conﬁned by caste , and illiterate to an appalling ex tent " but als o that India was a land where one occupa c was tion overshadowed all others . That o cupation

- ﬁ e ﬁve . farming . The census gur s give sixty per cent

ﬁ . engaged in agriculture proper, and fteen per cent in as looking after cattle, working in forests or in working

casual landless laborers on the farms o f Indi a . Thus

of l of v eighty per cent . the popu ation India gets its li ing i from the soil . Ind a will remain predominately agri

e cultural larg ly because of the climate .

For the four months from November to March North f ern India where Allahabad is located h as a delightful

r climate, sunny days , starlit nights, little o no rain , the thermometer occasionally registering frost at night and 90 ° rarely rising beyond F . at noon . This is the season

of when there is a riot ﬂowers " roses , violets , heliotrope ,

m and Chrysanthemu s , pansies, oleanders , poinsettias many others add color and odor that enrapture the lover m of a good garden . The best A erican vegetab le seeds

l of give resu ts a kind that is rarely attained in America.

March is a month of transition . In April the weather 52 HOW THE FARM STARTED 53

begins to warm up , May and June are called the hot ” weather months and have a shade t emperature from ° ° ° ° 1 05 1 18 F sun 1 60 1 80 F to . , temperatures from to “ There is a hot wind from the west known as the Loo . “ L It is dangerous to be out of doors in the oo . The

o f . Indian is afraid it , many die from its effects About “ ” July ﬁrst the monsoon bursts o r the rains break and Allahabad is due to receive forty inches of rain in the following three months . The rain seldom comes in

w - gentle ell timed showers, but often in a series of cloud

. 9th 1 91 9 bursts On August , , fourt een inches fell in eight hours at S utna which is about a hundred miles of 1 3 191 9 of south Allahabad . On August th , , an area over forty thousand square ' miles in extent received over

- l 9th 1 920 four inches in twenty four hours . On Ju y , , Allahabad had eight and twenty-four hundredths inches of rain . I have measured on our farm a fall of four and

- ﬁ . a half inches in forty ve minutes All roads , bridges ,

enb ankm en s culverts, railway t have to be built with such m abnor al rainfall in mind . Between these heavy down ” pours we are apt to have breaks in the rains . Sev as in 1 91 8 eral days perhaps , sometimes several weeks, , may pass without a drop of rain falling . The air is often saturated to such an extent that linen after ab sorbing moisture from th e air can be wrung out as Al though it had been dipped in water . Humidity at lahabad

1 920 l 0th 93 Saturation 100 54 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

COLD W EATHER CHART. I

TH E W EATH ER"

METEOROLOG I CAL OBSERVATI ON S

Rec o rded at Allah aba d

Week E nding 2 4 2 5th 2 6th " a n . 2 8. 1 9 2 0 z2 ud th B a r o m e t e r re ° F d uc ed to 3 2 . Te m pera ture o f th e air H um idity "sa tu r ati o n 1 00 ) W n e n . i d dir cti o . Max im um tem per a tu re in s hade Mi n im um tem per atu re in sh ade M e a n tem pera ture o f th e d ay No rm al tem pera ture of th e d ay R a in Total rain fro m l at Janu ary No rm al to tal up to d ate

N B — '‘ . . I h e no rm al temper ature a nd r ain f all o f each d ay are d erived om th e ob se va on s o f 2 8 ea s 1 8 0—9 8 fr r ti y r , 7 . uo e d om th e P ion eer M ad anua 3 0 1 9 2 0 " t fr , J ry , .

L T" P I CA H OT W EATHER CHAR T. I I

TH E W EATH ER

METEOROL OG I CAL OBSERVATI ON S

Reco rded at Allah abad

Week E nding une 9 1 9 2 0 J . B a r o m e t e r re ° duced to 32 F . Temperatu re o f th e air H umidity "satu rati on 1 00 ) Wind di e ion r ct , . HOW THE FARM STARTED 55

Maximum temper ature in sh ade Minimum tem per" a ture in sh ade M e a n tem pera ture o f th e d ay No rm al tem pera ture o f th e d ay R ain 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total ra in from l st January No rm al to tal up to d ate

— m . B Th e n m a m e o N . o r l te perature and rainfall o f each d ay are deriv d fr th e ob se va on 8 - i s of 2 ea s 1 870 9 8 . r t y r , T s s ows n es of a n in ix m o n s hi h i ch r i s th . ° ° Th e m aximum sun temp erature w o uld b e 1 6 0 — 1 80 uo ed o m th e P ioneer Mai une 1 1 1 9 2 0 " t fr l , J , .

RAIN S

E W EATH ER H ART I I I TH . C

METEOROLOGI CAL OBS ERVATI ON S Reco rded a t Allah aba d

Week E nding u 1 4 1 9 2 0 l oth 1 1 th 1 2 th 1 3th 1 4th J ly , B a r o m e t e r re ° d uc d 2 F e to 8 . Tem perature 0 f th e air H um idity "satu ratio n 1 00 )

W W . W n W W . NNW E NE . S i d directi o n S . Max imum tem per ature in shade Minimum tem per atu re in shade M e a n tem pera ture o f th e d ay No rm al tempera ture of th e d ay R ain Total rai n from l st Janu a ry No rm al total up to date

N B — Th e n m a l em e a u an d a n all f a r e ived o m . . or t p r t re r i f o e ch day a e d r fr — th e ob s e va o ns o f 2 8 ea s 1 870 9 8 . r ti y r , u d m h 1 9 0 o e e M il o f u 1 6 2 . " t fro t P ioneer a J ly , 56 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

A moldy Bible or moldy pair of shoes during this season is no particular discredit to their owner . The humidity r f is very favorable to the g owth o molds of every kind . This also is the seas on o f prickly heat and boils, both o f which need strong counter -irritants in order that the mind may be diverted from them . During the hot sea son and the rainy seaso n the effort to keep alive absorbs ’ h o f s . most one s energie Under such conditions , w ich , “ n with some variatio s, are common to the plains of

i an d Ind a , mill factory life with their regular hours , ﬁn k i f r hard , con ing wor , h ave l ttle attraction o the

- Indian . Every large non agricultural industry in India h as great difﬁculty in obtai ni ng an adequate supply o f labor . Until the general standard of living be raised an increase in wages may result only in the workm an f Working fewer days in the month . Increase o money “ ” is n ot so necessary as a divine discontent with his f present standard . An increase o desire must precede any rise in the standard of living . Not onl y is the climate against mill and factory life but the fact that in India the growing season for crops lasts for twelve months as ag ainst six months per year in t m the northern United S ates also favors Indian far ing .

In late October and early November wheat , barley, peas , mustard , linseed , potatoes and vegetables are sown .

s s re l The e crop a reaped normally before April 0th .

Sugar cane is sown from January to March , reaped and crushed from December to March , cotton sown from

March to July is picked from August to December . The hi fodder crops, w ch include sorghums, millets, maiz e, and pigeon peas and the seeds of the castor oil plant and the plant family which includes watermelons , cucum w bers , and squash are so n with the coming of the rains

58 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

a : Finally the Mission authorities s id Well , if you

we e ﬁ think ought to be teaching sci nti c, modern farm

r ing, as a missionary method , why do you not retu n to America and study the subject and see if the folk in ” America will back your fai th with their money " In 1 909 March , , I left Allahabad and went to the Ohio State

i For University to study agr culture . the next two r yea s , in addition to studying in the University, I made on the average o f thi rty missionary addresses each

c month , in churches , s hools, colleges, theological semi

r was . na ies , clubs . Sometimes the response touching ’ After the L aym en s Missionary meeting in the great

o f auditorium Chicag o , a scene shifter, all grimy and in his shirt sleeves , pres sed a soiled ten dollar bill in my “ ”

a s . hand , s ying, Take this and u e it for me over there Some o f the boys at one of the reformatories gave all

e their savings . A little two dollar and a half gold pi ce was un given me by an aged lady in Sta ton , Virginia, the

o f birthplace President Wilson . It had been presented

h e in to her by r lover who was killed the Civil War , and f hi m n was all she had left to remind her o . A other woman from the Pacific Coast sent me a five dollar gold fi piece , the rst earnings Of her son who had recently died

of l . e a tubercu osis Som l rge gifts came also , but most were in sums under ten dollars .

There was also a response in the dedication of life . I have shaken hands in Indi a with five women mission aries wh o had attended my first mission study class on 1 909 India at the Lake Geneva Student Conference in . It was a great privilege to coOp erate with the Student u for Vol nteer Movement in recruiting the foreign field . n Many nights each month were spent o sleeping cars , and by overnight journeys from Columbus I spoke in HOW THE FARM STARTED 9

s N ew such centers a Washington , York, Chicago, Roches ter, Philadelphia , Cleveland and Cincinnati . It was n hard , exhausting work, especially as for ni e months I suffered with severe attacks of malaria brought with me

o f from India . But , the thought the need of the India that I loved, to which God had called me , gave me a strength beyond my own .

S e 1 911 was . I graduated B . in Agriculture in June , , an d 1 91 1 returned to India in October, , with thirty thou sand dollars of real money given by friends who believed

o f in this form evangel . With th e thirty thousand dol lars given by friends in America , two hundred and seventy-ﬁve acres of land in one solid block were pur e l chas d for about eleven thousand dol ars . In order to secure this land for an agricultural college it was uccea sary to appeal to the government to put the Land A c uisi ion A hi o q t ct into force . T s it was kind en ugh to do to secure the land , but the Mission paid for it . The old Jumna Mission compound , which has been in posses sion of the Mission since before the mutiny, contains the ’ Ewing Christian College and the boys high school . It occupies a beautiful site on the north bank of the Jumna

- f f river, having about one third o a mile o river frontage . The Jumna river at Allahabad varies in width from a half mile during the cold season to about a mile during the rains . The college campus goes right up to the two story bridge which carries the main line of the East I n dian Railway on the upper story with a cart track underneath the railway . Across the bridge and imme diatel i y opposite the college campus s the Mission farm . This gives a most desirable and beautiful location for a a college c mpus and agricultural institution . The land

was selected for the farm rough , and very badly eroded 60 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

and cut up into gullies . There were a great many small , l irregu ar shaped ﬁelds . The land , having been deposited f n by the river in lood time , consists Of nearly every ki d l of soil found in Northern and Centra India, ranging from nearly pure sand through the loams to the clays “ ” and some patches o f the charac teristic black cotton f n ot soil o Central India . A good deal o f this land had

. been plowed within the memory of man . It was very badly infested with two grasses both o f which have nu

r u de gro nd stems . When this land was plowed with the little Indian plow it cut across these underground stems and every place the plow broke the underground stems a new clump of grass came up so quickly that no seed that the Indian farmer could sow could get a sufﬁcient f s start to keep ahead o these grasses . The gra s would

u t a choke o t any hing pl nted in it . The Indian cultivator cannot plow this land except under the most favorable

s dr f condition . During the y season o the year the groun d is so hard th at his little plow will not get in to break it so he has to wait until the rains have sulfi ciently softened it to enable his little plow to sc ratch the 1 91 2 surface . In when I was down with typhoid fever my colleagues tried to rent some of this land to the farm

fo r ers, but they would not give eight cents an acre w some o f it . I knew that this land as very poor and

fﬁ as on di cult to cultivate . That w e of the reasons that

h ad s o I chose it . If I cho en a good piece f rich , level

land , irrigated from the canal , the Indian farmer would have sa id that anybody could farm and get a living on

good land like that . I chose this poor land, eroded and

o f an fﬁ t full pest pl ts di cult o eradicate, in order to show that the millions Of acres of such land in Northern India

ﬁ r s could be redeemed and made pro table . Another ea on HOW THE FARM STARTED 61

s for choosing this land was its location , o near the college and the city . Allahabad is the capital of the United Provinces which have a population of about ﬁfty mil

r o f lions . At some time o other the leaders these Prov i nces come to the capital city . The farm being on the two river bank , overlooked by the railway, and having d i n of the main roa s into Allahabad pass by it , is a commanding position for a demonstration farm . Being so near the city provided a market for the dairy products u and surplus vegetables . Furthermore , during the Hind

of our month , Magh , from the middle January to the

l of u a midd e Febr ary, Allahabad is the gre test pilgrim n o f center o earth . On some of the big days the Mela , crowds Of from two to four million pilgrims gather to bathe in the sacred waters of the two rivers which are

G au es seen , the g and the Jumna, and the river Saraswati , the river that can only be seen by the eye of faith , that is said to ﬂow underground for hundreds of miles and joins the sacred Ganges at this hallowed spot . Where these three sacred waters unite great beneﬁt is supposed to accrue to the one bathing under th e right auspices

n f of during this mo th , Magh . Hundreds o thousands these pilgrims each year walk past the Mission farm .

Many stop to see our improved tools and implements ,

- a n . our sleek, well fed c ttle, our silos and sanitary bar s They carry the tidings to the most remote parts of the h Indian Empire . We get many inquiries about t e pur ch ase of machinery from far away places where these pilgrims have told of what they have seen . I have said that this lan d was badly infested with

an a d . m l weeds, thorns gr sses The Indian tools and i p e

-s c i r m r ment could not eradi ate them , but we , w th ou A e i can w Titan tractor ith th ree American plows behind it , 62 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

- i or a Spaulding deep till ng tool, drawn by six pairs of ﬁ s h oxen , could go into these eld when they were ard and an dry and thoroughly Open them up , destroy the hard p , t the impervious layer, jus below where the Indian plow could reach . When the land was thus plowed , the hot , scorching sun dried out all the stems and roots of the grasses which had been turned up and these when dead

s o f i improved the soil . Being po sessed implements wh ch could master it we succeeded in cleaning the land by

- this deep hot weather plowing . We are raising large

o il on fodder crops, and grain and seeds land which eight Th e years ago would not rent for eight cents per acre . farmers that refused eight cents eight years ago offered

1 91 9 fo r last year, , seven dollars per acre rent the same land , because they said we had so cleaned it and increased its fertility that it would produce crops enough to pay the big rental . Improved implements are a necessity f if the yield o crops in India is to be increased .

B emb ower My colleague , Mr . , has laid out vegetable s gardens and orchard of mango , orange and guava . After purchasing the land the rest of the thirty thou

‘ sand dollars was spent in building one six-room bunga low " building a cattle shed two hundred and forty feet long by twenty-four feet wide " in putting in under

a ground silos , building store room and shed for tools , implements and grains , in purchasing dairy cattle and

f o f s f n work oxen , a lock heep and goats , buying wire e c i ing, putting in roads and paths , mproving our wells so that we were sure o f an abundant supply of water for the f cattle and the people . A number o implement makers in America gave us tools . In most cases these have led to business from Indians who have seen the things work ing on the Mission farm . The thirty thousand dollars , HOW THE FARM STARTED 63

we however, was all spent before had any dormitory,

- class room or laboratory accommodations . We urgently

need a laboratory and houses for our teachers . The ﬁ rst students who came to us were poor Christian boys . My wife gave the back verandah of the six-room bunga

- low and part o f the dining room for a dairy . I ﬁlled the guest -chamber with our good seed and used the front ou out veran dah as r recitation room . The students slept

r when the weather pe mitted , and when it did not , they went in under the cattle shed or the machinery store

Mrs . room . I was very glad indeed to receive from

McCormick of ﬁve r , Chicago , thousand dolla s to build the ﬁ of rst wing a dormitory . The very day on which Sir

s Meston now n o of Jame " Lord Mesto ) , then Govern r the Mrs Provinces , opened the dormitory a check came from .

Livingston Taylor for the other wing . Friends of the

late Mr . John H . Converse have provided the dormitory of body to which the wings are attached . Each one these buildings had students living in them before they

ﬁ ﬁ of s were nished . We have had to t up some the e small dormitory rooms as recitation and laboratory

rooms until we are fortunate enough to secure our lab "

oratory . The local government has promised a grant in- aid Of one-half the cost of a laboratory as soon as we

raise the other half . With what equipment we had my colleagues and I a were tr ining Indian boys, both Christian and non

Christian . Many missionaries thought we were run ning a reformatory and were an xious to send th ese with al whom they could do nothing . At this time agricultur as education w not popular in India, the government

colleges could not secure enough students, the idea being th at any Old fool knew h ow to farm and that there was 64 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

e nothing that could be taught to the farm r from books . a A Gr dually in India, as in merica, the idea is taking as hold that the farm , the ultimate source Of food , the supplier o f food for the toilers in the busy cities is worth the best brains the country can produce . Some of the students of these early days are now rural sec retaries for the some have received in addi r tion to ag icultural training, special training in rural economics and are now organizing rural coiiperation so cieties among the outcastes " some are managing estates fo r large land - owners " some are members o f our faculty " some are in cha rge of mission work in orphanages and schools " some are farming for thems elves " some are working in Native States " and although some are neither a credit to themselves nor to the institution , yet I know of no other form of mission education in India where so many o f thos e trained have put to the good o f their fellows the training received and are a credit to the institution that trained them . was son Harry Dutt the of an Indian Pastor, a nice z h boy but la y . He felt that t e Mission owed him an w education . He had become parasitic in spirit . O ing to ill health he h ad not appeared to take his college en trance examinations , so could not go to college . I was

A r fin urged to admit him to the g icultural Institute , and fir ally, after much misgiving , consented . During the st a a and f ye r I watched him c refully , at the end o it I ffi “ called him to my o ce and said , Well , Harry, I have observed you carefully for this year and I have come to the conclusion that for your own good and the welfare of the institution , you had better make arrangements to go somewhere else for next year . I consider you thor

y oughl lazy . Your inﬂuence an d example on the other

66 TH E GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

’ out when he came to Harry Dutt s plot , so well laid ,

l . s c ean , thrifty, with wonderful crops His Highne s ” ’ a . s id , Whose plot is this " I rep lied, Harry Dutts

Come here Harry . The Maharaj ah wants to Speak to ” r o f you . Har y stepped forward and answered a lot h “ questions . Then t e Maharajah said , Well , Harry , come and t ake charge of my palace gardens and I will pay you one-hundred and ﬁfty rupees a month with l ” a lowances . Harry looked at me and said , What “ " ou shall I say to His High ness " I answered , must ”

" . answer for yourself . ou have your own life to live “ e He hesitat d a moment , then said , Your Highness , I ou ff thank y for your kind o er, but I think I had better ” ﬁ few nish my course before I accept a position . A a weeks later I received a letter from Mr . Ray C rter, of Me a l - g , who had started the school for training ow caste converts to go out as V illage teachers to their own peo

. r for ple Mr . Carter felt that it was necessa y these teachers to have a knowledge of better farmin g and so wanted to add an Agricultural Department to the school . h ad In his letter Mr . Carter as ked if we any Indian

Christian student well enough trained to take charge . I ﬂ ’ called Harry Dutt to my o ice and read Mr . Carter s “ Now r letter to him , and said , , Har y, what do you think of this for next year " He replied that he had the ’ f v s him nk Maharajah s o fer to consider . I ad i ed to thi ’ of o both . He too k ten days leave t go to both the ’ King s palace and the Mission School to look the jobs

r fﬁ over . When he retu ned he walked into my o ce and told me that he h ad accepted the position in the Mission

Me - School at ga at seventy ﬁve rupees a month . I asked him why he h ad accepted the Mission job on half the pay the Maharajah would have given . HOW THE FARM STARTED 67

He said , Sir, you remember that day you threatened to expel me because I was lazy " I was very angry with

o y u for speaking to me the way you did, but after think ou ing it over, I felt that y , a foreigner, were trying to as do something to help my people , and I w hindering

u . yo , so I decided I would not be outdone by a foreigner I too would give my life to help my own Christian peo ple . I have accepted the lower salary in the Mission School because I feel I can help my own people better there than by ac cepting the larger salary and easier work ” with Maharajah .

wa When I s about to return to America, the Institute r - n was sho t handed , and we were looking rou d for some one a i to ss st us . My colleagues unanimously agreed that we ought to invite Harry Dutt back to teach . One o f the last pictures I saw of Harry Dutt was o ne in which he was teac hing several young princes how to use the Planet junior wheel hoe . we After got fairly started , the Crown Prince and his younger brother and four companions from one of the Oldest and most inﬂuential states in India came for training in farming and sinc e that time we have us ually had some relative of one of the most ancient Indian royal

r houses among our students . We a e teaching not only e thos from the bottom but those from the top . I con sider that if these young nobles, many of whom will oc

u o f r c py positions g eat power , understand the fundamental relation of larger crops to the better ment of India a great forward step will have been taken . In the Allahabad district there are sixty-two village s - chools , generally in charge of a middle aged or elderly ’ gentleman who h as never done a day s manual work in 68 TH E GOSPEL AND TH E PLOW

his life . His salary ranges from three to six dollars a

fﬁ o f month . When the British o cial in charge the dis

e a triet , the Honorable Mr . S . H . Freemantl , re d Of what had been done in the southern st ates of America

by the Rockefeller Foundation , and in the Philippine Is

lands by the United States , he arranged that every

- school should have a fenced in school garden . We had a special summer school for these village teachers and while not much agriculture could be taught in ten days

was h ow at to these men , it wonderful to see their whole titude of mind toward the importance Of agriculture was

changed , and with what enthusiasm they went back to

r theirvillage schools . We have had two o more of these Government teachers each year t aking a special two ’ years course in practical agriculture suitable for school f garden work . The most important part o the work the

Mission Agricultural School has done in India, is not

l of the very few sma l things which it has done itself, but the fact that it has aroused interest and called attention ’ to the fa ct of Indi a s need o f better farming and has caused other people to do very much more than we our

s selves could have done . Being a mis ion institution

tu n or - a s every s dent, Christia non Christi n , attend a daily Bible class because the institution believes that it is not

better plowing o r larger crops that is going to save India,

t s re a impor ant a they a , but a f ith which comes from ’

of . knowledge Jesus , the world s Saviour It is not that we want men to change their religion just for the sake

a of changing it , but because we believe th t in Jesus there is the complete and adequate satisfa ction for every

r hunger o f man whether spiritual o material , whether

for time or eternity . Fo r e e e h n a v ry b as t of th e forest is mine, an d t e cattle upo

usan I n h e f f h un a n : and tho d hills . k ow a ll t owls o t e mo t i s the a o h r m n f I e un r wild be sts f t e ﬁeld a e i e. I wer h g y, I

u not m n h fu ness wo ld tell thee : for th e world is ine, a d t e l

e e i I ea h e ﬂes o u s d n th e d Of th r of. W ll t t h f b ll , or ri k bloo goats " Offer unto Go d thanksgiving " and p ay thy vows unto th e most H igh : A nd call upon m e in th e day Of trou ” ble : I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me . — P s . 50 : 1 0 1 5 .

CHAPTER V I

TH E CATTLE P ROBL EM OF I N DIA

There are over domesticated horned cattle, ff in including water bu aloes India . This works out to sixty-ﬁve head of cattle to every hundred of the popula tion . Hence in the densely populated areas there is a very keen economic competition between the human b e

f ob ings and the cattle for the produce o the soil . My servation leads me to believe that over ninety per cent . of these cattle are an economic loss to the country, that

ow off is, the c does not pay her board in the milk and s ex of so pring which she gives, and the is little value that it does not pay to raise him . Over ninety per cent .

‘ of the cows of India give less than six hundred pounds of l mi k a year . In most parts of India a three year old x o can be bought for twenty dollars . The milk and food ﬁ he ate in his rst year was worth more than this . I estimate that the loss per animal per year for 000 r head is ten dollars each , o a total aggregate loss per year of 70 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

The cow is the most sacred of all the gods of India.

It is worshipped by the Hindu . Hence the remedy for the excess Of cattle in the western world can not be ap

plied in India . In the west this excess of cattle would

e be sent to the packing hous s, but in India , except for the small number of cattle eaten by the Mohammedans and Europeans most of the cattle die of old age or T disease . h e solution Of the cattle problem of India

‘ by the Hindu hims elf is one of the most important and necessary reforms of India . It is evident that being a Hindu religious question it is not for a non -Hindu to f one decide it , but as a student o economics it is left to to point out that the enormous number of cattle which do not pay their way are a very serious economic drain r as to a count y poor as India . It is not more cattle but better cattle that India needs . It is obvious h ow the cow and the sacred bull rose to laCe e x their p of pre minen ce in In dia . The 0 is the ’ of source India s power whether it be pulling the plow,

a out drawing the water from the well , tre ding the grain or in taking the produce to market . He is well nigh

x dispensable , and has no substitute . The o can work in an average mean temperature of eig ht to ten degrees l hotter than the horse can stand . With the very smal holdings which obtain in the densely populated parts of

India , power machinery is beyond the reach o f the ff i farmer and if he could a ord it , his holding s too small a to m ke its use proﬁtable . Therefore the ox seems des ’ tined to remain the source of India s power . There are many more breeds of cattle in India than there are in

r Europe o America. Some of these breeds are unsur passed for draft and speed . Some are of excellent beef

. ﬁ type There is no real rst class dairy breed . The best

72 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

as r f of some domestic event , that a thank Offe ing , one o the villagers takes a bull calf to the priest and h as the sacred brand stamped upon it and henceforth it is

sacred . It is then turned loose . NO one may tie it up and it goes into the ﬁelds o r into the village eating at its

r own sweet will and is usually in ve y good condition . The t rouble with this method of breeding cattle is that

there is no control . I have investigated a good many cases where cows of a fair dairy breed were brought into f a district . The daughters o these cows sired by a local sacred bull give from on e-half to one-fourth of the milk

a that the mother gave , proving that these s cred bulls are

- often very inferior dairy breeding animals . Often times the bull calf thus sacriﬁced is deformed or very small in siz e or unsuitable fo r some other reason for r making into a work ox , thus with infe ior sires the

breeding of the cattle seems to be p rogressively worse . In certain parts of India there are certain castes whose business it is to breed cattle and they are very careful not to allow a sacred bull into their herds and also to

choose good sires . They keep up the standard of their o wn particular breed . The cattle of India are in general much more docile a and e sily handled than western cattle . This may be e from the fact that they are Often r g arded as members

o f t o u the family from bir h , in and t Of the house at

ow will . The placid , contemplative c is the type that appeals very strongly to the Hindu religious mystic whose idea is to Spend his time out in the forest away

cow from man , contemplating , as the appears to be do

in sh g as e placidly chews her cud . In Europe the man who formerly wished to perpetuate his name built a cathedral " in modern America he builds THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA 73 a University " in modern India he builds and maintains ” a Gowsh ala where the aged , deformed , sick and de r i for c ep t cows can be sure of being well cared , until they a die a n atural de th . Much more is being done in India by the Hindus to preserve the cattle than to preserve the

- and . sick , decrepit and ill nourished men women There are a number of breeds of water -buffaloes in

India " some of which are no better than those found in

r the Philippine Islands o China . Some breeds are ex

elle buﬁ aloes c nt dairy animals . The Delhi weighing on anywhere from ﬁfteen hundred pounds to a t , with six short , intensely curled horns, often give to seven thousand pounds of milk a year having seven and a half n to nine per cent . of butter fat . In the Gover ment Mili tary Dairies where some attention is now being paid to the improvement Of the dairy cattle of India a number of buffaloes have given over ten thousand pounds of milk a year of about eight per cent . butter fat . The buffalo is much more nervous th an the cow and must be

' handled more gently . Their habit is to feed at night and in the day time lie in water with only the eyes and n f ff nose showing . There is o e breed o bu aloes that has s four perfectly formed quarters and only two teat . There are no rudimentaries or anything to suggest that two teats have been lost . They are a very fair milking breed and are worth investigation . I believe that the water buffalo of India has a future in the southern states of

America , notably in Florida where there is an abundance of water with lots o f rough age . The cattle of India are usually hardy and resistant to

s of of disease . Mo t the cattle India are only slightly affect ed by foot and mouth diseas e and are immune to ’ m tick fever . Tuberculosis is very rare among the . For 74 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

this reas on they have proved thems elves o f use in Texas u our t and other so thern states , being crossed with wes

ern breeds . The Bikanir camels are said to be the finest in the Bik ni world . The great help that the a r Camel Corps gave in defending the Suez Canal and in pursuing the retreating Turks is a glorious chapter in the history of Bik ni f finest the Great War . The a r sheep is one o the wooled sheep known and is worth studying and develop ing . India is a land that h as millions Of goats . Some o f these give as high as eight pounds o f milk a day . Some of them give actually more milk than many of the cows . The cattle problem of India cannot be solved until there is an adequate veterinary force with power to stamp ou as t disease was done in the Philippines . We must n ot forget however and disregard the fact that in the Philippines it was infinitely easier because there were a of number islands and segregation was easy, while India is a great continent and thus almost impossible to isolate and segregate . The bigness of the problem however is

o no no reas n why it should t be tackled . The longer the delay the greater the progressive economi c loss to India . It was seeing the importance of the cattle as the power of India that led me to make my ﬁrst serious agricultural

- study the means to safe guard this power . I came to h s a t e conclusion that the silo was the be t single me ns . During the normal rains in India enormous quantities Of

l . fodder grasses grow, both cultivated and wi d If at this time earthen silo pits could be dug and ﬁlled with f s these grasses it would keep or years . The e pits would be a fodder bank . If when the time of sc arcity came this fodder bank could be drawn upon , millions of cattle that are now lost could be saved . Here again ignorance and THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA 75 illiteracy have stood in the way of such a simple and u Obvious reform as this . F rthermore in these Silo pits a great deal o f vegetation which the cattle will not eat normally can be turned into succulent fodder . The students of the Allah abad Agricultural Institute counted and named twenty-two weeds which the cattle would not eat green which were put into the farm silo f w pit , and at the end O t o months were fed to the cattle and the dairy herd increased in milk production . In the Old Testament a truly delectable land is de ” scribed as A land ﬂowing with milk and honey . Modern India h as the same conception o f physical and n material blessedness . Yet as o e gets to know India and of sees its multitudes cattle , one is struck by the great

fﬁ H . di culty of getting reasonably pure milk . Dr . H . f f o f . o o Mann Poona , Mr Carruth Madras, Dr . Joshi

Bombay, Major Matson of Calcutta have all investigated city milk supplies in India and each speak of the very few samples of milk taken from the milk sellers that were pure , most o f them adulterated from twenty to -ﬁv seventy e per cent . with water . Now if the water with which th e milk was adulterated were only pure water not so much harm would result , but often the water used to adulterate the milk is unclean . It is likely to be con taminated with sewage and is very dangerous to health .

of Many serious attacks dysentery , cholera and typhoid a m have been tr ced to ilk adulterated with dirty water . Because of the difficulty of Obtaining pure milk in India the military authorities put in their own dairies to supply the troops with safe milk and of better quality .

The milk is supplied to the troops in bottles, sealed with the standard cap end seal made in Chicago . It is the only bottle fastener I have ever seen that the Indian 6 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

milkman could not tamper with . If the cost to the military for milk - and butter be considered apart from l anything e se , the cost is rather high, but when the

u h e medical ﬁg res are considered along with the cost , t absence among the troops of enteric disease sin ce the

o f installation the military dairies , it is then seen that

many lives are saved annually by these military dairies . In addition to providing goo d milk and butter for the troops the military dairies, in an indirect way, are doing set much to better the dairy industry in India . They f im standards o cleanliness and sanitation . They are f porting pure bred bulls o the noted dairy breeds , many of the offspring o f which aresold at auction and eagerly bought by the India Gowala "the caste that looks after the cows) with the result that the Gowala is growing less and less satisﬁed with the poor yields of the Indian

n t . cow. The Gowala ow wants better s ock In our mission dairy farm we have had no trouble in

o f ur disposing all o milk, much of it goes to educated

Indians o f caste who appreciate it fortheir children . A ’ Miss ionary s daughter at seven months old was one

pound lighter than the day she was born . The doctor

said it was due to b ad milk . The mother said the Gowala brought the cow and milked it in front of her and

sh see h ow e did not the milk could not be pure . The ’ se doctor said he could not e either, but the baby s lack a f o f growth was bec use o bad milk causing dysentery . Th e mother brought the baby to live near our mission dairy and drove night and morning to get our fresh

pure milk . At eleven months the baby was normal in

saw sh e wa weight and the last time I her s a beautiful ,

- a e w well grown child . We feel th t w o e the life of at n f least o e O our own children to the good , pure milk sup THE CATTLE PROBLEM OF INDIA 77

m is plied by the mission dairy . The Govern ent very anxious for us to have a properly equipped dairy school where we can train Indians to go out to supply the I n i dian cities with pure m lk . The medical authorities feel

of for that a good supply pure , clean milk Indian cities

would do much to reduce the high infant mortality. So we are anxious to get our dairy equipment as soon as possible to enable us to meet this urgent demand and a thoroughly trained dairyman who is not afraid of dif ﬁ ul c t problems .

CHAPTER VII

TH E BRITI SH GOVERN ME N T I N INDI A

I am frequently asked what the British government n t has done for Ind ia and why it do es o do more . I hold no brief for the government and I can point out serious mistakes it has made . But others have written power

Of a fully these mist kes , while few have spoken of the f positive, constructive side o British administration in

India, so I shall conﬁn e myself chieﬂy to the credit side of the account . Among the things that the British have given to India is the system o f law courts which rec o niz s l l a g e all men as equa s before the aw. This , in country of many religions and many languages , and

a all f s r . bove o ca te, is a ve y important thing

- d India has a postal , money or er and telegraph system which is very much cheaper and better than the Ameri 9 can . In 1 14 a twelve word telegram could be sent any

in I z where the ndian Empire for twelve cents , no one r system , one ﬂat rate for the whole count y . If the tele ’ gram were sent by cable from Aden which is ﬁve days mail steamer journey from Bombay then across India by f land , again under the Bay o Bengal by cable to Ran goon , it would be sent over three thousand miles . The

n - postcard costs o e half cent , a sealed letter one cent . Five rupees or multiples o f ﬁve rupees can be for sent by money order two cents for each ﬁve rupees . 78 THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 79

The money-order form consists of four parts " one is re

tained fﬁ one is by the o ce receiving the money , kept by fﬁ the o ce distributing the money, one is kept by the man receiving the money an d the fourth is returned to th e remitter with the signature of the rec eiver and is consid

ered a legal receipt . Furthermore the postman actually h brings the money to the person w o is to receive it . So there is not the waste Of time going to the post ofﬁce to H get the money . ow much greater service is this than

- the modern American money order service . The post a man also sells st mps and postcards on his rounds . India has approximately thirty-six thousand miles of u u railroad , nfortunately divided between four ga ges,

ﬁve------six - foot six inch gauge , meter gauge , two foot inch ,

wo - u a and t foot gauge . No narrow ga ge railw y enters an Indian port , though the narrow gauge often serves a very rich and large district . There is therefore a very great economic loss in the trans -shipment of goods from f w the various gauges . Most o these rail ays were built l f with capital borrowed at a ow rate o interest , none of

six f . it above per cent . and most o it much below In order to induce capital to invest in Indian railroads the British government guaranteed the interest to the in

r r vesto s which the railway paid o not . With the credit of the British government the Indian railways were thus built about as cheaply as any railroads on earth and the be public in India gets the beneﬁt . The mail trains e tween Calcutta and Bombay, thirteen hundred miles , b

tween Calcutta and Lahore , about the same distance , run at about thirty-three miles an hour for the whole of the ﬁ mm l distance . The rst class acco odation which equa s

if it does not excel the Pullman , costs between three and e o four cents a mile , s cond class about tw cents , inter 80 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW mediate less than one cent and third class three miles for n e o e cent . Had the railways o f India b en com p elled to depend upon Indian capital for their building there woul d have been very great difﬁculty and fewer

o f - miles road , for the Indian investor or money lender ,

a is ﬁ the B nia , seldom satis ed with less than sixteen per

- cent . per annum but prefers from seventy two to o ne hi hundred per cent . per annum . The story of famines

one in India is divided into two clearly marked portions , before the coming of the railroads when famine in any district meant death to great numbers of the people and i to cattle w thout any hope of relief . It is on record that Agra was having famine during which more than

of . ne h un half the people died At Mainpuri , less than o dred miles distant from Agra , grain was being sold at two for a pounds a cent . Owing to the absence of ro ds or railroads everythin g had to be transported o n pack oxen which made it a physical impossibility to transport u eno gh grain , even over such a short distance , to save “ a the people . "See Sir Theodore Morison The Industri l ” Equipment o f an Indian Province ) A hundred miles in those days under those conditions was at least a ’ -da a week s journey. To y when famine occurs speci l rates are given on the railroads for the transporting o f grain and fodder into the aff ected area and very few

- people die compared with the pre railway period . ” Famine in India is not always understood in America . Seldom is there a time in India when there is not food n enough to go around . In the same year o e part o f India m ay be breaking the record by a bumper crop and a short distance away there may be a total crop failure . The beginning of the agricultural year in India is the

82 THE GOSPE L AND THE PLOW enterprise will not suffer from lack of labor due to gov r e nment competition . When there is no work in the villages the people come to the famine relief work . As soon as private enterprise can pay more than famine d “ work the private enterprise gets its labor . In a dition ,

n - w m to the la d o ner , and to tenants having per anent of rights in the land , advances are made money, “ ” - Tacavi . , long term loans, usually at three per cent

This money is to be spent for permanent improvements, such as digging o f wells with permanent masonry cylin

or o f o ders tile draining Of land , the building store ro ms Of permanent material . One of the best ways to prevent famine is to increase the irrigation facilities , for where there is an abundant supply of irrigation water people A s su o f are indifferent to the amount of rainfall . a re lt r the ir igation system , large tracts that formerly were desert and very precarious and uncertain are now secure

of r against any failure the rains . The ir igation pro a of w t j eet India are divided into t o classes , one protec ive , the other productive . In the case of the protective irri ation g project , the object is not to earn large dividends, but the protection of the people in a famine year . In parts of Central India which normally get sufﬁcient rain

a r ﬁv f ll , there is every four o e years a partial or total failure of the rains when suffering and loss is very great . Large irrigation works with storage reservoirs have b een put in . When there is a normal rainfall there is little o r no demand for the water which has been stored and the project does not pay directly that year , but when e the rain fails , this water that has been stored , is us d and enables the country to tide over a bad time without f serious loss . The loss o water by surface evapo ration is THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 83

not less than eight feet per year . So that to do any good these irrigation works have to have such large storage capacity that they are sometimes larger than b - c seems necessary . One very interesting y produ t of this large storage reservoir system is that there is a seep age and ground ﬂow with a lateral movement of the

ﬁve s ix water in the soil , so that wells or miles away from the storage reservoir that would have gone dry now an before the storage was put in , have abundance f o water all through the dry seas on . These works are u well named protective, and f lly justify their construe tion . In the case of the productive works there were large areas of good land in the region of deﬁcient rain -fall in Northwest India in cluding the Punjab where the slope was right and the rivers , the Jhelum , the Ravi , the d n Chenab , the Beas, the Sutlej and the Indus, bring ow an abundance of snow waters from the Himalaya mount ains which can easily be Spread over the desert of the

Punjab and cause it to blossom as the rose . Ten mil lion acres are now thus irrigated and schemes are pre pared for the irrigation of twelve million more acres . The Bhakra Dam project on the Sutlej will give

H .P f 4 f . The height O the dam , 39 t. , will make it the highest in the world . The area that will be irrigated will be four times the irrigated area o f Egypt . The value of the crops raised by the aid of the canal water during 1 918 and 191 9 was well over ﬁfty-ﬁve crores of rupees "a crore is ten million rupees and the

a o f a was -ﬁ v lue a rupee at th t time about forty ve cents) , so the value of crops was Had there been no canals it is safe to say that the area concerned 84 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW would not have produced crops to the value of more than ten crores . The minimum new wealth created in a

- ﬁve . single year, was thus forty crores Of rupees The ’ value o f the year s crops amount to two and one- half times the total capital outlay on the whole canal system concerned . These productive canals earned in direct receipts a net return of per cent . of which , after de fraying interest charges , the net return was per cent . The direct canal charges for water averaged Rs .

per acre o f crop matured out of a gross value of Rs . ” n Th e 64 per acre of the crop grow . " uoted from 1 8 20 P i n r Mail o f n 1 9 . o ee Ju e , In the same year over nine million acres were irri gated and over twenty thousand miles o f canals were Operated in the Punjab alone and over fourteen million acres were irrigated by ﬂow in the whole of India . It is safe to say that the government h as charged to the culti vator a much lower water rate than a private concern

is - would have done . It hard to over estimate the value a o f an irrig tion system to a people . It gives a sense of

an security d certainty that nothing else does . During the war the irrigation department went on and was very largely increased . It is estimated that two hundred and twelve million dollars have b een in vested by the government in irrigation in British India and it has still larger projects in hand . Not only is there promise of more water for irrigation but an

o f - l abundance water for hydro electrica power . No l s tab e examples are already in operation . The mill , o f factories , the street car lines Bombay are run largely by water-power that falls down the Western Ghauts from thirteen to seventeen hundred feet in a sheer fall .

86 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

population to increase rapidly. The result is an in creased competition to secure land . Therefore while the land -lords in Bengal have been able to increas e their rent at will to the tenant, the limit being only what the land

o u th e h e lord could squeeze t of farmer, t amount he has paid to the government has remained ﬁxed . The land ’ lord is the one who has received the lion s share o f the n a unear ed increment o f the l nd . It has not been fairly

- f divided . To day all the other provinces o India are taxed to provide Bengal with money enough to run its government . Bengal h as a large number of wealthy

- n m f roﬁteers s land ow ers , any o them Opulent p , who e h a position s been strengthened by time . The injustice wrought through such an iniquitous contract falls very

few ﬁ heavily upon the many, but the who pro t have never been willing to give up anything . The British government made a bad bargain for itself and has stuck

its to it , in order to keep word . a In the United Provinces , which has an area of p one proximately hundred thousand square miles, and a

a o f ﬁ popul tion about fty million people, there is a land a h n owner class and a tenant cl ss . When t e British e

r n a te ed this part of India , more ofte by contract th n by I n conquest , they brought peace . the old days the chiefs s maintained them elves by strength of arms . The larger and better trained the ﬁghting force of the chief the a easier he could gobble up the sm ller chief, and defend a himself in case o f attack . There w s then great com petition for the services of ﬁghting men who were treated

o very generously by the chiefs , and given land n very

t . favorable erms When the British came in , ignorant ff of the real state of a airs, thinking the conditions were THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA 87 similar to the conditions in England where there was

- and a large land owning class, a yeoman class farm

fi - laborer class , they con rmed the chief as land owner and the fighting man was considered the yeoman . With the coming of peace the yeoman lost his value as a fighting man which was due to the strong hand of the British preventing the chiefs fighting among themselves . The

ﬁghting man soon became little better than a serf . For thirty years legislation has been enacted seeking to re store to the tenant farmer the rights which he had b e TO— is fore the coming of the British . day there a large

- s one land owning class, and two classe of tenant , class with permanent , inalienable rights to his land , the other

n -a - a tena t t will . The ﬁrst class cannot be dispossessed

n . for any cause . He is a permanent tenant , a part ow er

- s ix f . This clas forms sixty s per cent . o the tenants The

- - a a h as . second cl ss , the tenant t will , no rights in the land He is usually not allowed to remain in possession longer than one year . If he remains on the same piece of land i for two years, he gains these inalienable r ghts , hence the landlord keeps him moving to prevent h im acquiring

o f n - these rights perma ency . He forms thirty three per of is im cent . the tenantry , and indescribably poor and provident . The government maintains a settlement department where specially trained ofﬁcers are sent once every thirty years into a district , going into every ﬁeld and deter mining in the presence o f th e landlord or his agent and the tenant the amount which the permanent tenant u is to pay to the landlord . Of this s m paid by the tenant to the landlord the Imperial government takes

ﬁ . s fty per cent a land revenue while eight per cent . goes 88 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

s in local asses ments and taxation . Suppose the settle ment Ofﬁcer decides that a given ﬁeld shall pay annually

per acre rent to the landlord , the government gets fi o a f . fty per cent . the dollar, as land revenue Th t par ticular fi f a eld may grow a crop o sugar c ne , turmeric o r potatoes where th e net profit might easily be from fi m fi thirty to fty dollars per acre . This su xed by the settlement Officer is the amount of rent which the tenant with permanent rights must pay to the landlord . It

of s cannot be enhanced . In the case as essing the land of the tenant -at-will the settlement ofﬁcer makes no iﬁ r n h d e e ce. He decides t e land revenue as though all a tenants had perm nent rights . For all the land held

-a - l under cultivation by tenants t wi l , the landlord can charge as much rent as he can rack out of the tenant ,

fi o but he pays the government only fty per cent . f the ‘ fii r amount determined by the settlement o ce . For some o f this land assessed by the settlement officer to pay one

-at- as as dollar per acre rent , the tenant will pays high ten dollars per acre . The government only gets ﬁfty per f cent . o the assessed rental irrespective of the rent paid

o r by the tenant the crop grown . The mistake in the

a ﬁ o f statement th t the government takes fty per cent . th e of produce the soil , is made in confusing the amount

- o f h e Of the land revenue with the total produce t soil ,

ff - which are two entirely di erent things . The land reve

d o f nue seldom equals ten per cent . of the pro uce the ﬁ soil and of that ten per cent . the government gets fty

- . t t per cent and the landlord for y two per cen , eight per cent . goes into local uses . for Again the government is criticized taxing salt , a a o of necessity . The re s n is, course, that salt is the one

90 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

roads and irrigation schemes and other public utilities where the British lent their credit SO that India could o b rrow money cheaply for all its public utilities . In each case it can be shown that whatever interest -money

f . India pays outside o India, is paid for value received Whether one nation is justiﬁed in ruling another is

ne still an open question , and o can fully sympathize with f wn the desire o the educated Indian to keep his o house . The British government h as itself on record as delib erately planning for responsible government in India in

c the very immediate future, when every legislative oun e cil will have a majority Of el cted Indian members . To bring this about in the short est possible time needs the very heartiest coOperation and good will between the educated Indian and the British government . It is not by constantly remembering the mistakes of the past of either side and brooding over them in a spirit Of ven

an ge ce, but it is in looking to the future with a mutual trust and good will that promises the speedi est ful ’ ﬁllment o f India s desire for the fullest realization of her own genius in complete responsible government .

h h as E ach as much to learn from the other, each much

e ask n to give to the other . Som may , if the Gover ment of India is so good why is there any need for missionary effort " Th e same question may well be as ked in the

United States and the answer is the same . The govern ment does not claim to cover the whole needs o f the individual or social life . There is a limit to the caus es for which public money may be Spent . There is a cer “ ” tain soullessness to government which handicaps it and prevents its laying stress o n certain n eeds o f the people . It stands for the status quo . A government THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT I N INDIA 91

represents the people . It can go no faster than they of will let it . The history reform shows an individual t f of in advance Of a majori y o his fellows, in advance the government and often such an individual is a thorn ov in the side of a government which wants peace . A g nm an er ent is not equipped to experiment , d seldom takes up successful experiment . In the South it was Arm o Founda strong, Peabody, Miss Jeanes, The R ckefeller tion and others who have advanced and compelled the l United States government to fo low . In India Chris

mi an a . tian ssions st d as the pioneers, the tr il blazers In most educational affairs the Indian government h as for followed the lead of the missionary, example Carey ff r are and Du , and in this day when all men eve ywhere longing for the time when men shall beat their swords s into plowsha res and their spears into pruning hook , in l the day when agriculture and not war sha l be supreme, it seems entirely fitting that the Christian missionary should maintain his place by demonstrating his fitness to lead India out of economic bondage into economic freedom, which is at the very foundation of all other ve freedom . Christian missions are spending about fi “ s million dollar on education in India . India in 1 33 “ page , says, The contributions from missionary bodies and from charitable endowments is of rather g reater importance than is indicated . by its financial u eq ivalent . Missionary bodies very often succeed in enlisting the services of devoted men whose ability is quite out of proportion to the remuneration which they are content to accept . Indeed Indian education , as a ' i whole, owes to missionary bodies a debt which it s ffi very di cult to estimat e with justice . 92 THE GOS PEL AND THE PLOW

Thus the government acknowledges its debt to the mis

ar h as sion y and admits he a place in the full , rounded, ordered development of Indi a into a self-governin g nation .

Ge neral Statement of th e Revenue and E xpenditure ch a rged to

h nm ent o f I n ia in I n ia and in En an . Revenue, o f t e G over d , d g l d

Revised Budget E stim a e E s im a e t , t t , 19 18— 19 19 19— 20

inci a o f Re nue Pr p l Hea d ve .

To tal Prin cipal Hea ds

I nter est Po sts and Telegr aph s

R i ec e pts by Civil D epa rts . Miscellaneo us Ra ilways : N et Receipt s

Oth er Public W o rks Milita ry Rec eipts

“ Ch arts quoted from I ndia in Taken from between 8 pages 57 and 5 .

“ l ’ m And when th e queen of Sheba h ad seen a l S olomon s wisdo , h hi n and t e house that h e h ad built, A nd th e m eat o f s table, a d h a h i n t e sitting o f h is serv nts, and t e attendance o f h s mi isters,

a a an h i a a hi as n c and their pp rel, d s cupbe rers, nd s ce t by whi h h e went up unto th e house o f th e Lord " there was no more

r i h r A h h n a u e spi it n e . nd s e said to t e ki g, I t w s a tr e r port ear m n wn an h s d o f h d th at I h d in i e o l d o f t y act an t y wis om. n e s ame an ne H owbeit I believed ot th word , until I c , d mi ” m . eyes h ad seen it : and, behold, th e half was not told e — I Kings 1 0 : 4 7.

96 TH E GOSPE L AND TH E PLOW

is ro square miles in extent . Mysore a very p

i - gress ve state . Large hydro electric power is being de or veloped and used to foster industry . It has a well ganized department of agriculture . l Gwal ior is square miles in extent , popu ation

a count ry of marvelous possibility . The ruling n f family is Mahratta, o e o the most famous warrior f castes o f Western India . As most o the state was won by conquests it is scattered and not in one continuous e be tract . It li s in larger or smaller patches roughly h as tween the Nerbudda and Chambal rivers . It some a be beautiful scenery . Water power and irrig tion are l o f ing developed on a large scale . A tiger popu ation a a not about four hundred , with leop rd , p nther , d enumerated black bear, black buck and deer and wil

pig in abundance . Bikanir ne is square miles, o solid block of

- desert . About one third in the northern part will soon

be under irrigation . I have never seen richer land and

water will transform it into a wonderful garden spot . These are the largest and most important of the native

states . In all , there are about seven hundred , ranging from larger than Minnesota down to the siz e of an Ohio

farm .

Colonel Sir James Roberts, Surgeon to Lord Hardinge , a the Viceroy , visited the leper sylum in company with su erin his Old college classmate, Colonel Hudson , the p tendent of the Naini Jail which is right next to the leper n asylum . Sir James was much i terested in the garden him ing which the lepers were doing . In order to give

more information , Colonel Hudson was kind enough to

invite me to dinner one hot April evening . The dinner a n hour is eight . We s t o the lawn and talked until h nearly three in the morning when Sir James said , W en WORK IN NATIVE STATE S

Colonel Hudson was telling me about your agricultural work I thought you were jus t a missionary who had learned some new way of spending money, but I believe that you have got hold of something that can be of k great help to India . If I could ma e arrangements for

o f you , would you go to a number the native states and

e ne give a f w lectures in each o , telling of the possibilities

o f h ow for the improvement agriculture in India , and improved agriculture is at the very fou ndation of any im provement in th e material prosperity o f India " that it ’ of is out India s fertile acres, properly cultivated , that must come the crops that can be sold to provide the money for food , clothing, schools, libraries, hospitals, of museums, universities and all of the amenities civiliza tion "” I said I would gladly go if I could be of any service . He arranged the trip . I Spoke at Dhar, Dewas Rutl m a . Senior, , Jaora, Indore The lectures were usually given in the palace with the Maharajah as pre

oﬁi r f siding ce , with the nobles o the state, and all his fﬁ as . . . o cials audience At Indore , the Hon Mr Tucker,

- fii r Agent to the Governor general,was the presiding o ce . In each case the Maharajah had called in all his oflicers who understood English . I lectured and was much gratified at the great interest shown in agricultural things . Since that time a number of these states have put in their own departments of agriculture , most of which are doing excellent work . At the invitation of the m an late Maharajah, who was a young not yet twenty years old and who had been at an English public school , odh ur fi a I went to J p , where an audience of ve thous nd

‘ for were gathered . There had been little rain over a year and a half . The cattle were dying by the thousand ’ an d the people were at their wits end . The Mahara 98 THE GOSPEL AN D THE PLOW

’ o f Bikanir one jah , of India s representatives at the

Peace Conference in Paris, a cultured gentleman , a great i a e orator, a forward look ng statesman , sked me to advis

a him in agricultur l matters . I was invited to lecture in a number o f other states but returned to Am erica on a

1 914 u to di in mon ey raising campaign in , ret rning In a 1 915 March , . When we got to Bombay letters were awaiting me from

i r D . anv e f l r J , the principal o the Col ege , and from the Ofﬁcers o f an Indian state government urging me to go immediately to the state to confer with the Maharajah . As soon as I had seen my wife and children safely set tled in our bungalow at Allahabad I went over to this country where I found a very great interest arous ed in agricultural improvement very largely through the con

a Th e versation of Sir J mes Ro berts with His Highness .

Maharajah sent me to stay in his guest house , an Old

ﬁ e of u palace , tted up for the entertainm nt his g ests ,

e and said to be the most beautiful gu st house in India ,

h s ne certainly t e most b eautiful I have seen . He ummo d

a me to the p lace , jumped in his motor and took me and one o f my coll ea g ues along to a quiet little summer -house palace in a garden where he could be uninterrupted . ’ For several hours he poured out to me his heart s de sire for the improvement o f the of his sub t f o f e s . o j c , only two per cent whom are literate , most

a ne of them poor and backward . The Mah ar jah is o ’ r n India s leading p inces, and an exceedingly wise cou

h e a selor . He has helped t British in many w ys that have been made public and in a great many which the

H e time h as not yet com e to disclose . bought a great ocean liner and transformed it into a beautiful hospital

us and s ship . Tho ands of Indian British wounded oldiers

1 00 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW line of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway p asses through this state . In addition there are two hundred and seventy-five miles of two -fo ot -gauge feeder rail way which h as brought prosperity to districts formerly inaccessible . About six hundred miles of the Grand T runk road from Bombay to Delhi is within this state and is kept in first class condition by the state govern f fi ment . This stretch is one o the nest roads I have ever motored over . In addition there are several hun dred miles of excellent macadam feeder roads and His ’ Highness program calls for much more . There is nothing like a good road to bring prosperity to a back ’ om ward territory . When the Maharaj ah s program is c l p eted his state will be well protected and accessible . W ith the splendid irrigation and transportation facili

o f ties , the next step naturally was the improvement a a g riculture . The Mahar jah gave me his ideas and laid as ﬁll a down an outline o f his plans . I w to in all det ils , make a budget and check up and see that the scheme

s wa workable . When the scheme was on paper and had been approved by the Maharajah he as ked me who was going to carry ut so it o . I told him that I considered the poss ibilities great that I thought he ought to go to the British gov ernment and get the very best agriculturist they had in their service . There were seven hundred and fifty thousand acres o f land in h is state which would have been worth in the corn belt of America one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars per acre but not yielding fiv r to him e cents per acre land revenue . It was wo th a good man to bring this under cultivation and populate out it with prosperous farmers . His Highness pointed ffi that owing to the war, nearly every British o cer that WORK IN NATIVE STATE S 101 could be Spared h ad gone to the front and those that re mained were carrying double burdens . Under the cir cumstances he said that it would not be fair to ask the ‘ ffi ai British for an o cer . Finally he s d, You have drawn ’ "” up the scheme, why don t you carry it out I said there were se rious objections as I was a Christian mis sionary and being a director o f agriculture was hardly a in line with my work . The Maharaj h told me that he had cabled to our Mission ary Board in New York ask ing them if they would allow me to act as Director of

r Agriculture fo him and the an swer he had received was , h that if the mission , to w ich I belonged , and I personally were willing, the Board had no objection . Facing me “ so with this he said , Now your objections are removed , resign from the mission and gi ve your whole time to my ” state . I pointed out that owing to the war our Insti

f - tute had also su fered , that we were short handed and heavily in debt and I had obligations to Allahabad that H n so I could not possibly throw O o somebody else , we ﬁn n f ally agreed that o e o my colleagues, an Agricultural

and D e e Engineer, I , as irector, w re each to giv eleven e For w eks each year of our time to work in the state . this service the Mah araj ah paid the college over seven thousand dollars a year, none of which we touched per sonall y. He then provided us with traveling expenses in the state and with a budget and equipment to do our fﬁ ﬁ work . In addition to an o ce sta I was given a motor and adequate tent equipage to travel over the state . The Agricultural Engineer was given funds for agricul

- - ture machinery , for a work shop , show room and an ex erim ental p laboratory for farm machinery . The budget sanctioned was most carefully drawn up and while not allowing for any extravagances was adequate to enable a 1 02 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

most constructive piece o f work to be done . The con

e as n z tract was sign d for three years . It w recog i ed by both the Maharajah and the Mission that as a temporary

e as ﬁ as war measure, such divid d time w justi ed but a

e perman ncy it would not be wise . The work to be done

r fﬁ in the state called fo a full time o cer . In the three years I did my best to establish a d epartment and get

ff k . . ﬁ together a properly quali ed sta , wor ing smoothly This was about all one co uld do with the interruptions a i e and dis ppo ntments caused by the war , that prevent d us getting out American helpers and American agri l i cultura mach nery . When I came home on furlough, 1 91 9 ne of l August, , o my col eagues took over the job o f ofﬁciating Director and another was put in charge of the second experimental and demonstration farm at

r o f t the southe n capital the s ate .

ﬁ a The scheme nally pproved by H is Highness , called ﬁ f for , rst , the building o a research laboratory " the lay ing out o f an experimental and demonstration plot of

one about hundred acres at the capital city . The equip in f g o the laboratory was done by one of my colleagues .

Second , the building and equipping of an agricultural

n - - an d i machi ery show room , work shop , exper mental lab oratory for farm machinery and thirdly , the establish

a e ment of demonstration vill g s over the state . The state is divided into eleven districts or counties each one having a county headquarters where the government fﬁ e ca . o c s , courts , police and treasuries are lo ted It ’ a or was the M harajah s idea that , at , near, every county h eaquarters a bankrupt Village should be t aken over by the Agricultural Department and transformed into a

a model demonstration village. Each Vill ge was to be in charge of an Indi an who had had special training in

1 04 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW that otherwise would be lost and which the soil of India

so . needs much , is very important The agri cultural ’ engineer working in the Maharajah s agricultural ex

erimental -Sh O of p work p , devised a little plow made is a steel . It simple and che p in construction " it can be easily repaired by the Indian blacksmith " it is of suf ﬁciently light draft for the small under -nourished I n . dian oxen to draw it . This plow is one of the most use ful inventions for India that has been devised within n was the last o e hundred years . His idea to work out a complete set o f improved farm implements that will f be within reach o the poor small farmer . When the research laboratory and equipment were r fﬁ eady, through the kind o ces of Mr . Bernard Coven

o f try, formerly head all government agricultural work in India , we were able to secure for the state the very valuable co iiperation and advice of som e of the best fﬁ Mrs . British Agricultural o cers, notably Mr . and

Howard . Three very busy years were spent in this state and when I left the program laid down by His Highness was still a long way from completion but the department was

z n organi ed and a goi g concern . In addition to giving so fﬁ much of my time in an o cial capacity to this state , I was called upon for advice which 1 was very glad to give , from other Indian rulers , notably Their Highnesses, f Bikanir the Maharaj ahs o , Jodhpur , Benares, Alwar, amna ar a J g . I w s also advising the great Central Hindu University at Benares in their agricultural aﬁ airs and I felt in all this work a great opportunity to help India ’ s poor and needy in a way that they could appreciate , in

and a a language they could read underst nd . “ And e e ca e d r h im n , b hold, th re me a l per an wo shipped , sayi g,

if an m a m A nd " esu u Lo rd, thou wilt, thou c st ke e clean . s p t h i an c ean s h d, and touched him I will " be thou l . ” h is leprosy was cleansed. Math. CHAP TER Ix

’ TH E M I SS I O NAR" S AV OCATI O N

During the Christmas vacation of 1 903 I was sitting in a Mission prayer meeting in the Mission hous e at Katra at Allahabad . The missionaries were planning for and praying about their work . One of the Older mission “ aries turned to me and said , It is always the custom for the new man to have charge of the blind asylum and

e l the leper asylum in addition to his r gu ar work , so , ” e Higginbottom , there is your job . He smiled and spok f ﬁ h im with a great deal o con dence . If I had answered on the spur o f the moment it would have been without

fi contradic the smile , but no less con dence , and a flat tion . I did not think that caring for lepers was my job . fi a I remembered my rst Sunday evening in Calcutta, fter having placed my goods in the hotel from the boat , I went out and stood on the corner of one of Calcutta ’ s m ain thoroughfares and while I stood almost entranced by the wondrous surging tide of oriental life , to me so new was u and strange , passing before me, I interr pted “ by hearing a thin , squeaky voice saying, Bakhshish , ” n Bakhshish , Sahib . I tur ed and close up to my face n were a pair o f stumps of hands . Instinctively I k ew it was a leper . I had the idea that the greater the dis tance between us in the shortest possible time the better

h ad o f to for me . I not thought lepers as belonging I 06

1 08 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

was seen that surely the worst . It was only a few min n as utes u til we were in the asylum and Dr . Ewing w w sho ing me around , introducing me to the inmates and i explain ng my work to me . What I saw on this ﬁrst trip through the Leper Asy lum was so awful and overwhelming that I had fully

a D n e m de up my mind to tell r . Ewi g that I did not fe l be cut out for the job , that I considered the task would very much better done if he continued to do it rather h than turn it over to me . W en I got back to the gate I took hold o f my bicycle and was takin g what I thought a was my farewell look into that unlovely pl ce , when I happened to catch sight of an old man lying ﬂat on his back in the dust in the shadow o f a tree . He had on

l r - ul se . on y a ve y small loin cloth . You co d e every rib

His breath was coming with very great difﬁculty . What were left o f his hands and feet were all festered and unbandaged and the ﬂi es were thick-clustered o n the open wounds . He was altogether the most loathsome a e as and repulsive hum n being I had ever s en . Yet I looked at him , it came over me that , after all , he was my was brother " in that unlovely, broken body there a heart that would respond to love and sympathy as would any old human heart , and more than all that , in that poor dis ease -rotted body there was a soul for which my Lord

wh o was l had shed His blood , and I , that I shou d leave him just because his need was so d esperate " So I never told Dr . Ewing that I would not care for the lepers . I took hold o f the job and found that the asylum was u s pported by the Allahabad Charitable Association , an organi zation trying to do a great work on entirely in i sufﬁc ent funds . It was responsible for the blind , and

‘ f r the cripples in their asylum , o a number of indigent THE MISSIONARY ’ S AVOCATION 109

Indian Christian widows, for a number of poor Euro pean and Anglo -Indians " altogether too much for its liv meagre income . The result was that the lepers were ing in houses not ﬁt for human habitation with iusuf i ot h ad ﬁc ent food and clothing . Everything the leper g to come out of one dollar a month for each leper , food ,

a clothing , medicines and attend nce . The result was that if any leper had feet enough left to walk on and strength enough to Walk he considered that he could do so much better begging than he could in the asylum that he went h e out to beg in the Bazaar . I decided that , in t condi

was h ad . tion it , the institution no right to exist It should either be mended or ended . There is an organization that is known as the Mission

1874 . to Lepers, founded in by a missionary to India , Mr f Wellesley C . Bailey . The operations o this mission have gradually extended until now it has charge of ll a a . asylums in every continent , bout eighty in The Mission to Lepers came along and said to the Charitable “ i Association , Turn the asylum over to us and we w ll be entirely responsible for it and spend more money

“ than you are able to . We will also rebuild and give ” was habitable quarters to the lepers . The transfer made and the Mission to Lepers asked the Presbyterian

Mission if I might continue as Superintendent . The s s Mission gave its consent . The Mis ion to Lepers a ked t me what my plans were . I went to study the bes asy

m I n - lu s India , got a number of ideas from each one and laid out a scheme for the rebuilding and management of the asylum . As these asylums are all voluntary it is essential that the management be such as to make the asylum more attractive to the leper than begging or wandering about the country . The leper can not b e 1 10 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

as i treated a cr minal and be put on prison diet . The so “ lepers often have said to me , Sahib , we are not we for criminals , are only unfortunate . The food a

leper, who is a sick man , must be better than the food for the prisoner in j ail . When th e Mission to Lepers took over the asylum we started our building program and immediately displaced the mis erab le old mud huts with brick and mortar structures having good roofs with iron

t of battens ins ead bamboos, and good French pattern o f tile instead the small country tile . The hospital was built with two wards for men and one for wom en ' and a a dispens ry properly equipped , a store room , two large tanks in the asylum for the washermen to wash the clothing . Heretofore the washermen had taken the lepers ’ clothing down to the river to the regular “ Dhobi ” Ghat where all the city clothing is washed , much to of h the danger the general public . W en the lepers were comfortably housed and the hospital built and running, u nu we next sec red , about a mile away , a home for the tainted children of the lepers where the children could a be kept part from their parents , trained , educated and

given their chance in life . An Indian widow gave the as site . After this the next building to be built w the d - s church an instead of having beautiful , stained gla s windows we have great big arches with chicken -wire screens . This is to make certain that the ventilation is good . My wife and I like to be present for the Sun

r a of day morning se vices . With congregation from ﬁv i a is three to e hundred lepers , unless the vent l tion good , one is apt to be in distress . The Mission to Lepers placed at my disposal twenty ﬁve dollars a year for each adult leper and twenty dol of h e lars for each child . Out that , all food , clot ing , m di

112 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW been threatened to be mobbed by the disappointed ones who failed to receive a garment at the Christmas treat . A blanket which now costs about two dollars is issued a every second year . Medicines and band ges will aver age about thi rty cents a month for each leper . The as wages of the doctor, the compounder and hospital sistants r s or c , se vants, wa hermen and the sweepers s av engers use up most of the rest of the money . I us ed to

o issue all food to the lepers . I s on learned that I knew so little about Indian food and what the people liked that was I in constant trouble . After talking it o ver with

was a the lepers , it decided to give e ch leper about a o n rice p u d of grain a day . Some prefer wheat , some , some millet and some a mixture o f ba rley and peas .

Whatever they preferred , they had . At their request I built in the asylum a little country store and one of the lepers was put in charge as storekeeper . In this as ff store w kept the many di erent kinds of pulse , spices , curries and condim ents that make Indian food so won drousl y tasteful and so marvelously indigestible . After r having provided clothing, medicines, se vants and the grain ration , it worked out that there was about eight cents a week left for each leper to spend at the store . This was given to him on Saturday morning and he could spend it in any way he liked— buying any luxur ies that his fancy dictated and that coul d be bought at f the rate o one cent per day . It was one of the social events of the day for the leper to go and do h is shop ping . One cent in North India does not buy any more than one cent in North America but Indian merchants are in the habit of selling smaller amounts of comm odi ties . The anna , value two American cents , breaks up “ ” into twelve pies so that with one American cent a THE MISSIONARY ’ S AVOCATION 1 13

person could buy six different things . Of course it was

- - only a half teaspoonful of sugar, a soup spoonful of salt ,

few e or . a head of garlic , a red p ppers other spices The amount of ghee or clarified butter that they could buy f - o all or One sixth of a cent was s sm , I often thought that if any of them should have been so unfortunate as to lose it he would have to borrow a magnifying glas s to find it again . Before any money leaves the Asylum to go out into circulation it is carefully steriliz ed . In the early days when I went over to the leper asylum f fi I would be surrounded by a lot o the lepers , ghting , wrangling and squabbling, asking me to decide between them . They would complain that Some one had stolen their food o r their clothing or their cooking utensils .

I am sure that if I had as little of these as the lepers had , I should not have felt very badly at acquiring a little more , even at the expense o f my neighbors . I had a a great deal of symp thy for the thief, but I had a little h more for the man or woman w o had lost his dinner , is and what more, I had to provide him with a new one fﬁ which often put me into serious di culty . As I studied this quarrelsomeness among the lepers I found that most o f it was due to the fact that there were twenty-four hours in every day and the leper had nothing to do but a think about himself and his own trouble . He w s bound

i f r to be nto mischief o one sort o another . The leper is the greatest traveler in India . He is constantly going one or from shrine holy place to another, from one “ ” Mahatma , a man claiming to be divine , an incarna

o f tion of one the gods , and , if divine , able to heal all

a f i s s s o . m nner s cknes and di ea e , to another I have seen one of these Mahatmas sitting on th e banks o f the Ganges fﬁ clothed in the four directions, that being su cient cloth 1 14 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

ing for a god , having wrapped up in a dirty little towel ,

e corr spondence with women , society leaders, in some of our American cities whom he h ad known when lecturing was i as a Swami to American audiences . He tell ng our students what fools they were to let missionaries teach

as in them the Bible, as it w not taught America any s more . I do not blame the leper for traveling o much , since his quest is in search of health , but it made my fﬁ work among the lepers very di cult . It seemed as if I were running some sort of a transient hotel where the

or lepers could come in for a day two , pull themselves u together and o t again . In those early days at leas t

-ﬁve n ninety per cent . of the lepers in the asylum o the ﬁrst o f January were OE again o n their travels before

-ﬁrst o f the thirty December . I conceived that the duty

- o f a superintendent o f a leper asylum is two fold . ’ com First , he is to care for the leper, and obey Jesus

a m nd to cleanse the leper . Secondly, he is to protect the l pub ic from the menace of the leper at large .

of After studying a number occupations , recognizing of the physical limitations the leper , realizing that noth ing made in the leper asylum could be sold outside , but e must be consumed in the asylum , and having s en the ’ wonderful results of Colonel Hudson s garden in the jail I decided that we would have gardening in the leper asylum . When I announced this to the lepers they said , “ ” “ not " d But that is work , is it , Sahib I sai , Yes , it ” s can be o considered . They said , If it is work we ’ don t want anything to do with it . I had to bribe

r them to take to the work . I gave seeds of f uit , vegeta bles and ﬂowers to as many as I could persuade to take

ff ﬁve them . I o ered prizes beginning with rupees , four,

wo . three, t , one , down to two annas With nine months

1 16 THE GOSPEL AND THE P LOW

. n out f away from them We pla ted a lot o mango , guava , orange , and lemon trees, papitas and bananas . Imagine I have given a man o r woman a banana shoot about eigh

a teen inches high . He plants it and waters it and in th t rich soil and sunshine it is soon up ten to twelve feet .

The big he a rt - shaped purple ﬂower appears like the ’ of ff knob a shepherd s crook and as each petal falls o ,

- not out Shoots a little green ﬁnger like banana . It is very long until there is a great big beautiful bunch o f bananas . About the time it is ripening I notice a little wooden bed at the foot of the banana plant and I say “ or ou to the man woman on it , Hello , have y taken to ou ﬁnd living the simple life , do y that sleeping in the " ” “ 0 open air improves your complexion , no, Sahib , it is not that but that my friends and neighbors have become so interested in this bunch of bananas that they are sampling them and if I want any for myself I must ” stay pretty close by . Or imagine a man with a cauli

ﬂower patch or potatoes just about ready . It does not m atterwhat a priest or Mahatma a thousand miles away

th e says about curing leprosy, the man with garden patch “ a s ys , I planted it and watered it and before I leave I am going to tas te the fruit thereof So with the

b and o f our good God upon us , gardening has been a h as great blessing to the as ylum . It given the leper

o o h as something t occupy his time, s mething more to eat , made discipline easy and h as been of the greatest service

in - keeping the leper in the asylum . Ninety eight per

cent . of the lepers in the asylum have come to regard it

as their permanent home . They do not wander , they do not want to be driven out as they have established themselves in their little houses and are as happy as peo

ple can be su ffering from such a terrible disease . THE MISSIONARY ’ S AVOCATION 1 17

When the church was about ﬁnished a number of the “ " ” lepers came to me and said , Whose church is this “ I said , Well , the ladies in Ireland who sent out the so as money to build it , said it was to be for lepers, far ” a s any church can belong to man it is yours . They w said , Well, if it is our church e would like to have ” “ ’ some part in it . I said , Well, I don t see what you “ can do , you have no money . They said , But , Sahib , have we not been praying for this church for years , and if we were praying don ’t you think we were saving up " “ ’ so se ou I said , Well , you get little that I don t e what y “

out o f. we could save They said , Well , have saved and we have got money and we would like to have some ” r pa t in the church . So they bought the pulpit Bible , the largest the Bible Society puts out in the Hindu lan guage . They also bought a clock and a bell so that they could be prompt in their attendance at service . They give regularly to all the Presbyterian causes . They give to the Bible and Tract Society . During the war they took up two collections a year for co mforts for the

n s wou ded Indian oldiers , giving in some collections over thirty dollars . I can not go before this leper asylum congregation and tell them of any worthy cause or needy “ ” sa an " individual but what they y, C we not help I feel that if there is any person on earth that I could o ad ﬁ forgive , and f rgive gl ly, for being sel sh and self centered it is the leper . When one thinks of the misery and the pain of the disease and the mental attitude in duced ff by the su ering, I would not blame the leper for ” et for saying, I g so little that all I get I want myself , and yet I have known leper men and women , when some d thing appeale to them , to put the whole eight cents into

‘ the collection plate at once , denying themselves the pleas 1 18 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW ure o f going to the little country store to do their shop ping " living a whole we ek on bread m ade without rai sI ng of any kind , just m eal and water mixed together , in order that th eir eight cents might go to the Spreading ’ o f s so Christ s gospel . To these lepers Christ seem real ,

so a an His treatment pr ctical , that there is intimacy in th e way they speak o f Him that shows a depth of faith d sel om found . Fifteen years ago in the American Mission Famine

a a a was o f e Orph n ge at L litpur a girl s venteen , Frances

e t a by name , swe t , a tr ctive , a general favorite , engaged to a e one f h e th e in be m rri d , o t most capabl e girls in stitu io f t n . on o There came her hands , round the joints

ﬁ s ea f her ngers , ome sores that refused to h l in spite o the application o f every remedy the lady missionaries pos

h a h o sessed . An English p ysici n was called in w said the girl was suffering from leprosy and should be removed at once from the orphanage . The lady superintendent wrote to me to ask if the girl could be admitted to the

h r Naini Leper Asylum . I wrote back asking e to send th a e a e girl . A few d ys later while I was s ated t break

a . fast , the arrival o f c llers was announced It proved to

h a ad be Frances and her brother , who d just been gr uated from the Methodist Episcopal Theological Seminary at n Bareilly . I told them to drive o over to the Asylum and n I would catch up with them o my bicycle . After ﬁnishing my breakfast I rode over and caught up with them just before reaching the Asylum . We walked in

new ﬁne together . It was not into the asylum with its

a u buildings and well l id o t and ﬂourishing gardens , but a into that old unspeakable place . Leprosy so often m kes me think of strong drink . It is bad enough when it gets

f m an ﬁ control o a , but in nitely worse when it gets con

1 20 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

n to lear ed play the piano in the orphanag e . So I got a

or friend to buy f h er a little folding organ . This was a r g eat joy to her and helped her in h er work . Gradually ’ there came a transformation over the women s quarters .

The houses were made clean and neat and tidy . The women also improved in appearance . They washed their s clothes , combed their hair, and tried to make themselve attractive . When the very hot weather came , my wife h a d to take our little baby daughter up to the mountains . I went to our Women ’s Hospital and said to the lady in “ so charge , Dr . Binford , the leper women do miss the of ou to visits my wife , if y would go over the Asylum some afternoonyou would cheer them greatly . They are ” very grateful for the Visits of an American woman . She promised to go and a few days later with Miss Alice

Wishart and another l ady missionary sh e drove over . On their way back they drove through the college campus

ur t where we were pl aying tennis . After o game I s rolled

over to their phaeton . Dr . Binford said , Mr . Higgin

d . bottom , Frances opened her heart to me to ay She said that when sh e ﬁrst went into the asylum she could

s G od r a not believe that there wa a , or if there we e God Sh f , e did not see h ow He could be a God o love and

ffl f h er a ict any one as He had af licted , but Frances went l h ad on to say that now she could see it al . God a work h to h . s e for her do , ministering to t e other lepers If had not herself become a leper sh e would n ever have dis a now covered her work, so she s id every day I live I thank Him for having sent me here and given me this work to do . fi For fteen years I have known Frances . I have seen i sh her work . I know that greater than anyth ng e says is the witness of her own life . That first heartbreaking THE MISSIONARY ’S AVOCATION 121

cry I can never forget . Her face is furrowed with pain

snﬁ rin as . and e g . The dise e has worked its way in her

The little organ is always carefully dusted and polished , i s sh e . but it never open , plays it no more So many of th e joints of her ﬁngers have rotted off that Sh e cannot

e touch the k ys . But her face is always radiant , a smile

- r of com plays about that pain w ought face . No word plaint, ever a word of cheer for him that is weary . Most o f i the women in the asylum are now Chr stians , after having confessed their faith in the God and Saviour they have learned to know through Frances . I know of no human life into which there has come a heavier cross h nor than as come into the life of thi s Indian leper girl , do I kn ow any other human life that has taken its cross and borne it more bravely or with such unﬂagging cour i age . And after associat ng with such Great Hearts as some of the leper Christians I too thank God for having h driven me into the Leper Asylum , aving forced upon me a job I did not want and was not looking for , but a job that has provided me with the richest and deepest spiritual experiences of my life .

- When I said good by to the lepers "temporarily, I on t 1 919 hope ) the thir eenth day of August , , there were ﬁve nearly hundred lepers in the asylum , although the for accommodations were about four hundred , the extra on h hundred squeezed in veranda s , under trees , some h sleeping on t e ﬂoor of the church . In the place of the ten acres of land there were nearly one hundred and

f e twenty in a high state o cultivation . There w re dairy cattle , silos, and beautiful gardens and orchards . A lit tle over a mile away was one home with nearly forty of ai girls, children lepers, but unt nted, and another home for boys with a like number . These children are being 1 22 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

of is trained and educated . The older the girls , my wife training as Bible women and nurses " the older of the

all s boys are being taught modern farming , and the e little children handicapped by such parentage are getting their l h as chance in life . As I look over al that God wrought h l in t is institution , I thank Him for having al owed me to ff work among these poor , sorely a licted people whom

Jesus bade His disciples to cleanse .

1 920 o f In February , , there was a conference leper asylum superintendents held in Calcutta . At this Sir

ri i Leonard Rogers, a great autho ty on tropical d sease , read a paper on the progress m ade by medical science

s in the treating of this awful diseas e . It looks a though , f ﬁ . in some cases , de nite cures had been e fected About forty-two cases in our Asylum are receiving his treat

r ﬁ i ment with ve y great bene t . There is reason for h gh hopes that this disease can be stamped out with the help of segregation and the medical treatment now being fol m h lowed . I a frequently asked ow it is that my wife and I are able to go among these people as much as we do without contracting it . There is undoubtedly danger . it We take every kn own precaution . We do not believe do z right to tempt God by carelessness . We recogni e that if He h as given us this work to do it is better for o f us t do it , even at the risk o contracting the disease , l than it is in dodging His will . Fortunately the baci lus of u leprosy does not live very long o t of its host . Lep

- rosy is nothing like as cont agious as small pox o r measles .

If it were , pretty nearly everybody in India would have fﬁ it . The government o cials of India from the Viceroy a n one d Lady Chelmsford down , British and Indian , are and all helping the Mission to Lepers by giving sites for

-in asylums, contributions toward new buildings , grants

“ e e s th e ear and ue . en 1 28 R pl ni h th, subd it G . : . “ " n h e shall k ow t e truth and th e truth shall make you free. " ohn “ h n n h G ather up t e fragments that that othi g e lost . " 6 ohn : 1 2 . CHAPTER "

’ " E SU S E" AMP LE FOR SU CH WOR"

I went out to India having specializ ed in philosophy

h i end and Op ng to be an evangelist . I up by being a

e missionary farmer . I have had friends t ll me they could not see why I am interested in the things in which

. a I am interested They ask wh t plows, harrows , tractors , a silos, threshing m chines, and better cattle have to do with the evangelization o f India . Bulletins upon the use a t is of manure and sil ge are good , but wha their value as missionary tracts " I am accused of having lost my ﬁrst love and of hav f o f ing grown cold, o having become a materialist , and ff t having lost my aspirations, of being indi erent to spiri r of ual and eternal things , of ca ing only for the things time and sense , the things that shall pass away, that are N o f not eternal . w I cannot be indi ferent to such eriti c ism e no from such sourc s . I do t doubt the honesty and r kindliness of my c itics . It behooves me therefore to see u what there is in such criticism . For, if it is tr e and ﬁe n justi d , my work is a hi drance rather than a help to f ’ the spread o Christ s kingdom in Indi a . I should d deeply eplore such a result . In speaking o f this criticism I do not wish to give the impression that the whole missionary body is opposed h to t is kind of work . In fact there is a very large majority who heartily approve and wish it Go d speed . 12 4

126 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

n 3 . That the Cou cil recommends missions in mass movement areas to deﬁnitely plan for adequate instruo

as tion in agriculture and allied industries , such silk ,

i of poultry, the mak ng and repairing agricultural tools and implements . 4 . That the Council urges upon the Home Boards the necessity o f providing an adequate supply of trained men and suitable equipment to carry on agricultural an d allied industrial training , especially in mass move ment areas .

I realize that I am livin g this life only once , that if

I make a mistake with it, there is no chance to come back a gain and do the thing right . I understand that the

Will of God is the supreme thing for my life , the only thing that really matters . It is not whether I am a mis sionar y that matters , or not a missionary, but wherever ’ ﬁ I live and whatever I do , God s Will is rst , the con trolling factor that determines the whole o f my life .

Further, I am not afraid o f His Will . Trying to obey it has led me to do some things I would not have done on o my wn initiative . But I have always foun d that His Will has been inﬁnitely larger and better than my own

f r n will o my life . When choosing my ow course for

a myself I have made so m ny mistakes , missed the way f so often , that I gladly turn over the guidance o my life

for to His Will and trust it fully . Should I any reason whatsoever fail to do His Will with my life , I should consider that the greatest possible tragedy . I am anxious to do His Will as soon as I see it . There is often great difﬁ culty to know what His Will is . I h ave found His Will for my life most clearly laid JESUS ’ EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 127

u - down in the Bible . I consider the Bible the one p to date book in a world where most books are soon o ut of date and behind the times and needs of men . When a ’ boy on my father s farm in Wales it was reading the ﬁ Bible hours each d ay by myself for over a year , ghting ff it all the time , that caused me to o er Him my life n without condition or reservation . I sought to k ow His Will for my life and I was not sure that I knew what it was . I knew His last command to His disciples was to go into all the world , to preach the Gospel , to teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever

He had commanded . I was not sure where He wanted

or a me , wh t He wanted me to do . But until He made the way plain , I considered it was my duty to get ready to obey His last command and prepare for that which was

off farthest , and if He wanted me anywhere else it would be easy for Him to stop me at any intermediate place , if that were where He wanted me to live my life and do

So when criticisms became severe and I felt uncertain

‘ of myself it was again to this Book that I went . I ﬁ wanted to be sure rst o f all that I knew what the Gospel , “ G a the ood News , really was . I studied new the life f o f Our Lord . I noticed that on the threshold o His public ministry He went into the synagogue where He w a had been brought up and , as as His custom , the vill ge carpenter stood up to read . The scroll was handed to Him an d He unwound it till He found the place where “ f e it is written , The Spirit o the Lord is upon me , b cause He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the

- poor, He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted , to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of the 128 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

set e sight to the blind , to at liberty those that are bruis d , ” to preach the acceptable year o f the Lord . St . Luke l et a . The ﬁrst thing I notice is that the Spirit was upon ” Jesus for service . To preach the Gospel to the poor .

That I take to mean the oral , the spoken , presentation of

His truth about salvation . A great many good people would stop with this oral presentation of the Gospel because they are afraid o f works . It is true that Jesus

ﬁ of placed preaching rst , but it is only part His mes

sage . He continued , He hath sent me to heal the broken recov hearted , to preach deliverance to the captives and se t ering of sight to the blind , to t at liberty them hat ’ i are bruised . Jesus Gospel is preach ng plus action which explains and gives content to the preaching . We

of i can take all these clauses in their pr mary literal sense , and from the literal interpretation find a place for help ’ - - ing India s outcaste , broken hearted and broken spirited by centuries of persecution, degradation and oppression , we can find warrant for medical missions and all other n forms o f huma itarian and social service . We can take all o f these clauses in their spiritual and figurative sense sa fin and some would y, their fuller sense , and d out that a Christ was anointed to help all human life , to m ke it of better, to rid it wrong and oppression . In other words His complete Gospel is more than an oral presen

ation of . t , more than a matter words It calls for doing “ as well as being, the act that proves the faith , Not every o h ne that saith unto me , Lord , Lord , but e that doeth ” “ my Will " He that heareth my words and doeth shall ” “ be l ikened unto a wise man . If any man will do f His o . Will , he shall know the doctrine

130 TH E GOSPEL AN D TH E P L ow

s ing, tediou convalescence , He healed them all . Another 5 striking demonstration is recorded in St . Matthew 9 : 3 .

l n of of H is And this hea i g the body is part Gospel . His first miracle confirms His program for His own life . There is great Significance in this first miracle of Ch ri s t at the wedding at Cana,the turning o f water

. a was into wine The occasion , the pl ce , the fact that it ﬁ mi was His rst miracle and that the racle what it was ,

H h o should be noted . e knew w His every act would be n im scrutinized . With Him there was no forgetti g the

of e port what He did , no wast movement , no slip , no second try, no failure to take into account the vista of ﬁ s as history . His rst miracle was o chosen by Him to

of e . reveal His meaning to the world , it is full purpos

H r e By is ﬁrst mirac le He turned wate into win . In these days there are many who are afraid of this miracle . They think it would have been better had he turned wine into water . He actually turned water into wine " He gave color to that which had no color " He gave taste to the t as teless " He gave sweetness to that which lacked sweetness " He gave brightness and sparkle where it had ﬁ ’ m not before existed " He satis ed man s taste . He co l l p ete y changed the water into wine, something totally

ff . di erent , He enriched water into wine Surely He u comes into o r dull , drab colorless lives and enriches them in a way that is beyond the power of any person to

N o o f wa explain . , the greatest miracle all is the y He comes into human life so that it is not what it was before

He came . S o great is the change which He makes when “ ” He comes into our lives that we call it a new birth " and it is nothing less . We have seen what Jesus considered the program for

His own life work . We have noted h ow He carried out " E S US ’ E " AMP L E FOR SUCH WORK 1 31

1 0 : 7— 8 His program . In St . Matthew in sending forth the twelve He lays down a program for His disciples . “ A s o of ye g , preach , saying, The Kingdom Heaven is at hand . Heal the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead , ”

ou . cast t devils , freely ye have received freely give Again it is evident that while He puts preaching ﬁrst it f o is not all o His Gospel . A series of co rdinate clauses “ ” give the other parts o f His Gospel . Heal the sick , etc . So many people tell me they are interested in the work

h as to God given me do because , like medical missions , ” it is a good wedge for the Gospel . When people say I this, wonder what their conception of the Gospel is . Is f it sermons only, statements o doctrine , words arranged of f ﬁr o f s in in tomes theology, words o e to convict ,

o f m o f words forgiveness to hi who repents , words hope h i to cheer the pilgrim on s way, words to comfort the " All mourner these it surely is and must be , but all

ﬁll out of this does not the compass His Gospel, nor test

or or . its fullest length depth , breadth height “ ” I utterly repudiate th e wedge theory for the G os pel . The Gospel that I received o f the Lord Jesus needs no wedge . A Gospel that needs a wedge needs careful examination . It is not the Gospel that Jesus brought o n into the world . If the Gospel is not its w wedge then it is the most colossal and pathetic failure o f history .

Medical missions are the Gospel . Cleans ing th e lepers

e is the Gosp l , as much as preaching is the Gospel . These carry out His speciﬁc commands as much as preaching

no h does . Is t the slow progress of t e Gospel over the world to -day partly due to the fact that believers have often had a one -sided and incomplete Gospel " Less than Jesus laid down as the Gospel " People can often better

r h as understand the oral p esentation , if there been loving 1 32 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

service to give content to the words , to prove that the

f . words have Life back o them . The word became ﬂesh Jesus ’ matchless sermons and parables are strengthened H l s by is deeds . When chal enged it was not to His word “ a but to His works He appe led , Many good works have I shewed you from my Father " for which o f those works "” do ye stone me St . John

i as Aga n when John the Baptist w in prison , doubts arose in his mind as to whether Jesus was really the

One that should come . He sent two of his disciples to “ in ask Jesus, And that same hour He cured many of inﬁrmities their and plagues, and of evil spirits " and unto an many that were blind He gave sight . Then Jesus sw rin e g said unto them , Go your way and tell John what h w see things ye have seen and heard , o that the blind ,

e the lame walk , the lepers are cl ansed , the deaf hear , the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached .

ﬁ r o This He o e s as proof f His Messiahship , and in this instance He does not mention preaching till the last " His healing of the body and caring for its needs come ﬁrst into His mind in this hour when He wants to strengthen the faith o f him of whom He says that of those born o f women there is not a greater prophet than John the

Baptist . There is a very real danger that all desire to guard “ for against . The danger is in substituting service “

l . salvation , business for God iness We are commanded ” ut our own to work o salvation , something we already possess , not to work in order to gain salvation . The idea

a of th t work , if there is only enough it , can save a sinner I was from his sins is held by some . asked to give an address to a company o f students to answer the question

134 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

v timate relation to some indi idual or group in need . The great majority have to do with meeting immediate human need . Wh y did Jesus perform these miracles " Some say to ser teach spiritual lessons, to give preachers texts for mons wherefrom they can draw analogies between the h p ysical ill and the spiritual ill . I have no obj ection to any one getting all the spiritual meaning he can out of re the miracles of Jesus . I think it well, however , to member that the primary object of Jesus in performing these miracles was to meet the present physical needs of

a . l those He he led or fed as we l as to forgive their sins . I never go into the leper asylum o f which I have charge

o f without thinking that leper who, as Jesus passed by “ a o s id , L rd , if thou wilt Thou canst make me clean . “ ” Jesus said , I will, and put forth His hand and touched him saying, I will , be thou clean . And immediately a of his leprosy was cleansed . That f ir, pure hand the Son of God touched that disease -rotted body and it was of clean . This man who had been outside the pale

ordinary society, by that touch , was brought back into h " the human family . W y did Jesus cleanse the leper To enable men to draw analogies between leprosy and

sin " of Or was it , that seeing the desperate need the ’ s a h im " leper and the leper faith , He he led Jesus healed the leper because he was a leper and it was from leprosy ’ u he needed relief . It was his physical need and Jes s ability to meet that need that caused Him to heal the

leper .

The blind m an found out that Jesus was passing by . He had faith to believe Jesus could give him sight and

Jesus spat upon his eyes and the man saw. It was the JE SUS ’ EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WOR" 135

’ man s blindness that moved the Great Heart with com s pa sion and He healed him . out I think o f the ﬁve thousand far from home , in the

se . de rt , hungry , tired, night coming down Jesus com m anded His disciples to feed the multitude . They in showed h ow impossible His command was, again He ” sisted Give ye them to eat . They found the boy with ll ﬁ h ad . a the loaves and shes , all they They brought it

ﬁve le v s ﬁ to Jesus . Jesus took the a e and two shes and blessed and brake and not only were all fed and had all they would eat , but there were twelve baskets full more than were required . These twelve baskets were h ff not t e leavings, the o al , but were there ready to be ’ distributed to any wh o needed more . God s measure is l always abundant , no niggard y hand when He is Pro h vider, He prepares more t an we need . Jesus fed this great multitude because they were h h hungry, p ysically . It was their need t at appealed to

Him . He drew no spiritual lesson at this time . The next day He preached His sermon and emphasized th at “ m ‘ th He is the Bread of Life . I a e Living Bread , if ” any man shall eat o f this bread he shall live forever. Nowhere else does He make greater claims for Himself than in this sermon that came as a result of feeding the

e h h e multitude . Before He pr ac ed t sermon He fed the

no th e ch urch o crowd . Would t be wise t copy her Lord in this wherever necessary " As He looks out over stricken A rmenia " over famine cursed China " over a large part of Europe where t h e children to -day are dying of hunger " over India where from the cradle to the

one ar h roni grave a multitude, over hundred millions , e c

sa - cally hungry, does he y less to His disciples to day in 136 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

A " i merica than He said that day in Galilee I th nk not . If we bring to Him all we have and let Him bless it and

see u r break it , we will the continuing miracle . We o selves will have all we need and the hungry everywhere m will be fed . His com and still holds to feed the physi cal hunger, and after that the spiritual hunger with the Bread of Life that came down from heaven and giveth life to the world . He came that they might have life and n have it more abu dantly . I think again of that great picture drawn for us in the ’ - ﬁfth f . twenty chapter o St . Matthew s Gospel The na tions are separated from one another as a shepherd sep

o n arates the sheep from the goats . The sheep His right

on hand, the goats His left . To those on His right hand “ f He says, Come ye blessed o my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the ” ﬁ world. It is signi cant that no commendation is given to those who have not gone to their needy fellows and

e e was helped th m where th ir need . They say unto Him , " a Why, Lord , for what do you call us blessed Wh t have ” “ " u " ou saw we ever done And Jes s says , me hungry “ and e sa on y gave me to eat They y, Hold there s o " Lord , are you not going too fa t , making s me mistake ” “ 0 a saw . We never saw you , let lone you hungry , yes ” “ o a y u did , Jesus s ys When you went to that little famine -cursed Indian village that had been growing ten bushels of wheat per acre and you taught it to grow ” “ twenty you were helping to feed the hungry . When you went to that Village that was growing sixty pounds o f poor short - staple cotton per acre and taught them to grow three hundred pounds per acre of good long -staple ” h cotton you were helping to clothe the naked . W en

1 38 THE GOSPEL A ND THE PLOW sole trust was in the power of heavy artillery or battle " ship It is the rightness, the justness of the cause that ’ h w ﬁ o . nerves men s wills , that teaches them to ght ’ To sum up we see that Christ s program for His own

u of life, the carrying o t that program in practical demon stration in His miracles , His commands to His disciples ,

His commendation of those wh o feed the hungry , clothe th e the naked , give drink to e thirsty , all call for mor

r f r than p eaching . They call o the practical application o f that which gives a meaning and content to the oral ’ presentation o f God s t ruth . I believe the church would do well to pay more attention rather than less to this as

o f a wh t or peet the Gospel . M ny o cannot unders and interpret words , can understand loving deeds . I am not

i o f no decrying preach ng . We need more it t less, we n one of eed The Word become ﬂesh . Preaching is the d most powerful forces in the world to ay . Knox , Calvin ,

e t . Wesl y, Spurgeon , Moody , have made his ory The place in the missionary program of the work we are tryin g to do at Allahabad falls in with events as

in h e recorded t sixth chapter o f Acts . There had been a great ingathering The number of the disciples was

e e n multipli d , there aros a murmuri g of the Grecians against th e Hebrews b ecause their widows were neglected h ” in t e daily ministrations . Then the twelve called the “ o f s e and multitude di cipl s unto them said , It is not reason that we should leave The Word o f God and serve

e e e out tables , wher fore , brethr n , look y among you seven

o f men honest report , full of the Holy Ghost , and wis m a n dom whom ye y appoi t over this business . But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and the min ” istering o f The Word . In India we have thousands of lo - fe o r w caste converts , very w foreign Indian mission JESUS ’ EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WOR" 139

aries . It is not reason that these few should leave the o f and as a word God serve tables . They, the postles , have had a special training for ministering The Word, u but there is this other work that must be done . It m st be done or there will b e more than murmuring in the

Indian church . Let the church choose out from among

- the non theologically trained disciples , those having what re was called for in the Acts, men and women of honest o f port, full the Holy Ghost , and wisdom , educators, doc r tors, engineers , farmers, nurses, teache s of domestic no science . These are t to supplant the preacher, they are to ff supplement him , to make his work more e ective and far reaching, to conserve that which the preacher began . We frequently hear it stated that the evangelizing of the

h ow whole world is the task of the whole church . Yet little provision the church has made for equipping and sending forth any but the theologically trained . If we call on these non -theologically trained we are widening the scope of those actively engaged in winning the whole world . And if we really believe that a person is better off with Christ than without Him , we will do our utmost to use all the gifts with which He has endowed His fol

Cor 12 of lowers . The Apostle Paul , I . . , speaks the of of h e a diversity gifts believers, but t s me Spirit con so as re trolling and directing this diversity, that , the sult of the perfect and complete working of the various s member , we get a harmony as complete as a healthy body where every organ is functioning properly . He o f sums up with irrefutable logic, the great mystery “ our N faith , ow ye are the body of Christ and members in particular . And God hath set some in the church , ﬁ a a rst postles , second rily prophets, thirdly teachers , o f after that miracles , then gifts healings , helps , govern ‘ 140 TH E GO SPEL AND TH E PLOW

i of H ow ff ments, d versities tongues . di erent this teach ing of Paul from some of our modern denominational

. God h ath set in th e ch urch papers , apostles, prophets , c i mi s tea hers, preachers , evangel sts, wonderworkers , s ion l u hospita s, leper asyl ms, schools and colleges . These

are of G od belong in the church , part its appointed

equipment to carry out the greatest task in the world . I am frequently asked if I believe the church will u m s pport such a work as I a trying to do in India , if it will not have to be separated from the church in order to grow and develop properly " I answer that all I have done has been done at the express command of duly

constituted church authority, that the church at large will support such a work for it believes that G od hath set in the church such things as we are trying to do for H i s glory .

I am told that the church should be inspirational , not institutional , that it should inspire its members to go an d do outside the church what its present limitations e make inconvenient to be done inside . I believe th

church should be both inspirational and institutional , should have to -day as Wide a program as Jesus stated

and carried out and as the Apostle Paul laid down . There are a few fundamental facts that it is well to keep in mind in a consideration of such matters as have been treated of in this book . ﬁ I . The rst command God gave to man regarding the “ ” is earth is Replenish the earth , and subdue it . It in f following out this command o God to subdue the earth , to master it and make it serve mankind that man has i h s r . oppo tunity to develop intellect , mind and will

If man did not have this for his task , if he were like th e l " is to ravens, what wou d he be now It him that

142 THE GO SPEL AND THE PLOW

men and women on this earth must spend their time in

- caring for the oft recurring needs of men . A farmer

so cannot plow that it will last for ten years . He cannot w so in one year enough wheat to last for a decade . The world is seldom ahead on its food supply more than three

months . There are these daily and seasonal tasks that

must be done in their appointed time . Most of them we ” call secular, and there is in some theological quarters a tendency to look down upon those wh o do them as doing f something o a lower order . I do not forget that once the heavens opened and the voice o f G od said of the “ of villag e carpenter Nazareth , This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased . Jesus had no public min istr was y to His credit at that time , but it as a carpenter that He had won this commendation from Him who rates i all th ngs at their true worth . Surely unless some r fa mer h ad saved seed and prepared his ground , so wn

a the seed at the right time , cultiv ted and protected the

a and i growing crop , h rvested stored the ripened gra n , which the miller took and ground and the baker took and

a his baked into bre d , the philosopher would not have leisure to philosophize . His time for thought and study ’ is purchas ed by somebody else s foresight and timely,

o wh o unremitting toil . So every ne is doing any helpful as s work in the world and doing it unto God, an expre

a sion of his f ith in Him who doeth all things well , who does it in faith as his share of the common task to sustain and maintain human life , need not fear in that day when all men shall be judged for what they have done . God made His world a good world , a world that gives man a chance for the fullest self-realization as he diligently obeys the commands of God with reverent spirit and JE SUS ’ EXAMPLE FOR SUCH WORK 143

hope in his heart . Blessed is he who does the common task unto God .

- III . In the prayer Jcsus taught His disciples there is one petition that for a long time I regarded as a lower in of o f e o f g the standard . On each side it , p titions

n a a highest ethical and Spiritual aspiratio , wh t an ppar “ ” “ e h o r ent come down in ton , Give us t is day u daily ” H s bread . o w materi al and mundane it e ems at ﬁrst . " et let us try to leave it out and ignore what it stands h see o w . e was a for, and w much e lose J sus f miliar with n farming operations . He so often in his co versation

e dr w upon His agricultural knowl edge for illustration . l “ So here again He ta ks as one having authority . Give

no t m e ea e o f us , , alone , but us " the gr t , wid family

nk " ew e an f ma ind , and G ntile , bond d free , people o every color and tongu e under heaven and all men every f where are included in my petition . I must think o

b e ff e e them when I pray . I cannot indi r nt to the famine f e n . a o e e cursed anywh re o earth If I he r hung r and ne d , if I really pray this prayer I will do all in my power to “ a n r nswer it , and help the hu g y everywhere . Our ” daily bread . We depend daily upon God for life . We recognize G od as the Giver of all good " but we are part

h e e . s ners with Him He gave t oil , the life in the se d ,

th e i the temperature , the rain , sunshine , the ncrease man prepared the ground , plowed , and harrowed it , sowed the seed , watched and protect ed it while growing , reaped and stored the harvest against the day men

o f needed it . If God had failed in any part His Share ,

a no harvest . Just as true , if man f ils in any part of

co - his, no harvest . We are therefore workers together

i s with God . Man is likest to God when he doing things 144 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

to support and improve human life . So many feel that to be a Christian means to throw aside ordinary foresight

or w r and care , that somehow other God ill p ovide , that irresponsibility is the right attitude . This petition teaches the opposite . The bread we are to eat two years " hence , where will it come from At this very time men are exercising foresight to see that good seed is being fﬁ e saved in su cient quantity, stored in prop r places, pro i tected against damp and weevil . They are plow ng the i groun d and getting it ready for the seed . They w ll ﬁ then throw away perfectly good seed , t to eat , into the

s cold , damp ground , to run the ri k of time and weather, and insect pest , and other enemies, there to die , to be lost to them , in order that there may be a harvest to As provide seed for the sewer and bread for the eater . l Isaiah says in this connection , This a so cometh forth is l from the Lord of hosts , which wonderfu in counsel l k ” i and excel ent in wor ing . It s a matter of historical record that those in dividuals and those nations that have prayed Give us this day our daily bread , have had this prayer more fully answered than those that have not n k own this prayer . There is that about the Truth that h “ . al frees men W en Jesus said , The Truth sh l make ” f you free , He was thinking in no narrow sense o truth ,

as l . h being on y spiritual truth He w o is The Truth , The f h Way , The Life, Himself The Author o all trut , is of l speaking all truth, spiritual , physical , social , politica , a i economic , in f ct , any truth to which the human m nd l can address itse f, and in subduing the earth , this great body of truth is uncovered for the blessing of men . A fter Jesus had fed the multitude there remained ready for distribution if any more were needed twelve

ﬁ s baskets of the ve barley loaves . Je us bade the disciples

1 46 THE GOSPEL AND THE PLOW

n hear His voice , gather up the fragments that remai that nothing of human life or of material that builds up v human life be wasted , but rather that it be conser ed to help to bless all men everywhere . When we save India from these incalculable losses we are helping to save one h e a . ﬁfth o f t hum n race A task great enough , and worth while enough to stretch to the limit the best America has and cause us to pray anew : The H arvest truly is plen e te ns , the laborers are few . Pray ye therefore the Lord

H e— — of the Harvest that God Almighty, Himself will

e and s nd forth the laborers, men women willing to work

o ut H is - will , properly equipped with all labor saving de a vices , tractors , plows, harrows , thrashing m chines , that India may be o ne of the brightest jewels that ennoble the glorious Crown of Him who once were the Crown

of Thorns .