Never had such an appeal been made, but the response was immediate and ample.  The Tata Iron and Steel Works Company was launched as an Indian Company, and to the present day all the hard cash required has come out of Indian pockets.  In 1908 the first clearance was effected in what had hitherto been a barren stretch of scrub-jungle sparsely inhabited by aboriginal Sonthals, one of the most primitive of Indian races, and in 1910 the first works, erected by an American firm, were completed and started.  As far as the production of pig-iron was concerned success was immediate, but many difficulties had to be overcome in the manufacture of steel which had never before been attempted in a tropical climate.  These too, however, had been surmounted by the end of 1913 in the nick of time to meet the heavy demands and immense strain of the Great War, towards the end of which Government took as much as 97 per cent of the steel output and obtained it from the Company at less than a quarter of the price that it would have commanded in the Indian open market.

To-day, just twelve years after the first stake was driven into the ground, Jamsheedpur is already a town of close on 100,000 inhabitants, pleasantly situated on rising ground between a considerable river which flows down sometimes during the rainy season in a devastating torrent from the lofty plateau of Chota Nagpur into the Bay of Bengal and a minor affluent whose waters mingle with it close by.  The climate is dry and therefore healthy, though the shade temperature rises in hot weather to 116, and a finely scarped range of hills over 3500 feet high provides within easy distance the makings of a small hill station as a refuge, especially valuable for women and children, from the worst heat of the torrid season.  During the “cold” weather, when the thermometer falls to between 40 deg. and 50 deg. at night, there can be no more delightful climate in the world.  The war gave a tremendous impetus to the Company’s operations and stimulated the rapid expansion of the works on a far larger scale than had ever been anticipated, until they now need not fear comparison with some of the largest and best-equipped works of the same kind in the West.  No doubt is entertained as to the demand for the enormous output from such a plant.  Nor is it contemplated that it will meet anything like the full needs of India, which are growing apace.  Before the war India imported annually about 1,000,000 tons of steel products, of which Germany furnished a large and increasing percentage direct or through Belgium.  Equally little room is there to question the continued supply of either coal or ore.  The life of the coal mines which the Tata Company possess within one hundred miles of their works is estimated at two hundred years, and they form only a very small portion of the great carboniferous area known as the Gondwana measures.  They produce the best coking coal in India, and though much inferior as such to most British coal mines, against this disadvantage can be set off the much greater richness of the iron ore deposits, carrying between 60 and 67 per cent of metallic iron.  These non-titaniferous deposits are practically inexhaustible, and those at present used are within forty to fifty miles of Jamsheedpur.  This favoured region supplies also most of the fluxes required for the manufacture of steel, and even clays for firebricks.