The stress
of the opposition to the plan came from a pleader who owed all he had to a
college education bestowed on him gratis by Government and missions. You would
have fancied some fine old crusted Tory squire of the last generation was
speaking. 'These people,' he said, 'want no education, for they learn their
trades from their fathers, and to teach a workman's son the elements of
mathematics and physical science would give him ideas above his business. They
must be kept in their place, and it was idle to imagine that there was any
science in wood or iron work.' And he carried his point. But the Indian
workman will rise in the social scale in spite of the new literary caste."
"In England we have scarcely begun to realize that there is an industrial
class in this country, yet, I suppose, the example of men, like Edwards for
instance, must tell," said Pagett, thoughtfully.
"That you shouldn't know much about it is natural enough, for there are but
few sources of information. India in this, as in other respects, is like a
badly kept ledger--not written up to date. And men like Edwards are, in
reality, missionaries, who by precept and example are teaching more lessons
than they know. Only a few, however, of their crowds of subordinates seem to
care to try to emulate them, and aim at individual advancement; the rest drop
into the ancient Indian caste groove.
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