Everywhere it is the same story. An Indian economic writer, though a bitter enemy of Western industrialism, bemoans the fact that "the artisans are losing their occupations and are turning to agriculture. The cheap kerosene-oil from Baku or New York threatens the oilman's[208] existence. Brass and copper which have been used for vessels from time immemorial are threatened by cheap enamelled ironware imported from Europe.... There is also, _pari passu_, a transformation of the tastes of the consumers. They abandon _gur_ for crystal sugar. Home-woven cloths are now replaced by manufactured cloths for being too coarse. All local industries are attacked and many have been destroyed. Villages that for centuries followed customary practices are brought into contact with the world's markets all on a sudden. For steamships and railways which have established the connection have been built in so short an interval as hardly to allow breathing-time to the village which slumbered so long under the dominion of custom. Thus the sudden introduction of competition into an economic unit which had from time immemorial followed custom has wrought a mighty change."[209] This "mighty change" was due not merely to the influx of Western goods but also to an equally momentous influx of Western capital. The opportunities for profitable investment were so numerous that Western capital soon poured in streams into Eastern lands. Virtually devoid of fluid capital of its own, the Orient was bound to have recourse to Western capital for the initiation of all economic activity in the modern sense. Railways, mines, large-scale agriculture of the "plantation" type, and many other undertakings thus came into being. Most notable of all was the founding of numerous manufacturing establishments from North Africa to China and the consequent growth of genuine "factory towns" where the whir of machinery and the smoke of tall chimneys proclaimed that the East was adopting the industrial life of the West. The momentous social consequences of this industrialization of the Orient will be treated in subsequent chapters. In the present chapter we will confine ourselves to a consideration of its economic side. Furthermore, this book, limited as it is to the Near and Middle East, cannot deal with industrial developments in China and Japan. The reader should, however, always bear in mind Far Eastern developments, which, in the main, run parallel to those which we shall here discuss.