“It is reported that on account of the demand for country-made cloths, weavers working with the fly-shuttle can make as much as Rs 20 (£1 6_s._ 8_d._) a month” (about double the average earnings of the class) “and that the demand for their services is daily increasing ... some prospect of improvement in their material condition is held out by the present Swadeshi movement, in so far as it may induce the younger generation to devote themselves to a technical rather than a literary profession.” In the “Report on the Administration of Eastern Bengal, 1905-6,” we find that eleven factories had been added in the year to the seventy-one already existing, the foreign imports showed a decrease of 16 per cent., and “Liverpool” salt had declined by 6000 tons. It has been the same with “imported liquors,” though apparently the great decrease in them does not mean a decline in drinking, but an increase in “country” or Swadeshi spirits. The Collector of Dacca, a strong opponent of Swadeshi, or at all events of the boycott, remarked in his Report for 1906-7— “Even the public women of Dacca and Narainganj took the so-called Swadeshi vow and joined the general movement against the use of foreign articles. People formerly addicted to imported liquor took to country spirit.”[41] Such facts prove how widely the movement prevails among the common people. It is necessarily a woman’s movement, because women wear most of the cotton and do most of the housekeeping. They are the thrifty sex, because they and the children are generally the first to suffer from want. If they sacrifice cheapness to political conviction, it shows the conviction is strong; and though now the coarse hand-woven _sari_ or woman’s garment of the greater part of India (at two to three shillings a pair) is almost as cheap as Manchester stuff, and much more durable, the sacrifice has been something. I will add only two further proofs of the movement’s strength. In reviewing the English exports in cotton piece-goods for May, 1907, the _Times_ remarked: “India took less by 42,492,500 yards;”[42] and sitting by her mother, a child of Eastern Bengal was heard to ask, “Mother, is this an English or a Swadeshi mosquito?” “Swadeshi,” the mother answered. “Then I won’t kill it,” said the child. Such was the movement which I had found speeding up the eighty or ninety cotton mills in Bombay, because, work as they might, they could not keep pace with the demand from Bengal. It is true that English manufacturers were said to be adopting the simple device of stamping their Manchester stuff with the Swadeshi mark, but I did not discover how far their deceit was successful.