The cotton-mills of Bombay, the jute-mills of Calcutta, the goldfields
of Mysore each contribute their own remarkable chapter to the story of
British industrial enterprise in India, but none can compare in point of
romance with the story of the iron and steel industry of Jamsheedpur. It
need only be very briefly recalled. In 1902 Mr. Jamsheedji Tata, a
veteran of the great Parsee community of Bombay and one of the founders
of the Bombay cotton industry, visited the United States. His active
mind had already for some time been busy with the idea of starting a
metallurgic industry in India, and he had received in the course of
conversation with Lord George Hamilton, then Secretary of State for
India, about the only encouragement he ever did receive in England. He
fared better in America. In New York he called with a letter of
introduction from Lord Avebury on Mr. C. Page Perin, an eminent mining
engineer, who was at once impressed both with his visitor and with the
schemes which he unfolded, though they were still quite visionary. Mr.
Perin, who is still the consulting engineer of the Tata Company, agreed
to send a party of American prospectors, and followed them in 1904 to
India. Long was the search and many the hardships undergone, and Mr.
Jamsheedji Tata himself passed away before he could see the fulfilment
of his dream. But Sir Dorab Tata proved himself not unworthy to follow
in his footsteps, and when an area hitherto almost unknown and
unexplored had been definitely located, combining in an extraordinary
degree the primary requisites of adequate coalfields, vast ore deposits
of great wealth, a sufficient water supply, a suitable site for a large
industrial town with good railway communication though still badly
needing development, he and a small group of his Bombay friends tried to
find in London the financial support which they imagined would hardly be
denied to an enterprise of such immense importance for our Indian
Empire. But they failed. It was then that, largely on the advice of Sir
George Clarke, now Lord Sydenham, who was then Governor of
Bombay--whose great services to the economic advancement of India and to
Indian technical education latter-day politicians are too apt to
forget--they appealed to their own fellow-countrymen for the capital
needed. 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
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