As to the actual employment of Indians, nowhere has the principle been more carefully applied that Europeans—­a term which in this connection must be taken to include Americans—­are only to be employed when and so long as no Indian can be found competent to perform the particular work required.  The proportion of Europeans to Indians works out to-day approximately as 1 to 230, but this figure is in itself somewhat misleading.  Out of the total of 197 Europeans, no fewer than seventy-five are the highly skilled mechanics who are still absolutely indispensable as supervisors at the steel-smelting furnaces and the rolling-mills.  Work of this kind requires a powerful physique, long experience, and plenty of pluck.  One has only to look at the muscular, hard-bitten Americans and Englishmen who stand round the furnaces to see that they represent a type of humanity which in India is still extremely rare.  The Company have tried eighteen Indians, carefully selected, but only three have stayed.  The up-country races, physically more promising, lack the training.  It will take, it is believed, twenty-five years to bring on Indians who can be trusted to replace Europeans in these arduous jobs.

Nevertheless, in the steel-smelting furnaces there are only forty European supervisors to 2000 Indian workmen, and in the rolling-mills only thirty-five to 2200.  In other departments much more rapid progress has been achieved, and the results are already remarkable.  Indians do excellent work as machinists, cranemen, electricians, etc., and even in the rolling-mills they do all the manual work.  The best of them make reliable gangers and foremen.  In the blast furnaces there are only eight Europeans to 1600 Indians, in the mechanical department only six to 3000, and in the traffic department only one to 1500.  In two other important departments it has been already found possible to place an Indian in full charge.  One of these is the electrical department, which requires unquestionably high scientific capacity.  Another is the coke ovens, on which 2000 Indians are employed under the sole charge of an Indian who seemed to me to represent an almost new and very interesting type—­a young Bengalee of good family, nephew to Sir Krishna Gupta, who was recently a member of the Secretary of State’s Council in Whitehall.  He had studied at Harvard, had worked afterwards right through the mill, and had acquired the habit of organised command, which is still rare amongst Indians.  If Jamsheedpur may be not inaptly regarded as a microcosm of India, in which the capacity of Indians for self-government in a wider sense than any merely political experiment connotes is being subjected to the closest and most severe test, it assuredly holds forth high promise for the future.