HOMECROFTING IN INDIA [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] !Sin,—Following
your most encouraging article on p. 863 of the Spectator entitled " Homecrofting in India," may I be allowed to say that it is the main feature of Capt. Petavel's plan to educate the children to be " Homecrofters " ? That is why he called his original Society, founded many years ago, " Educational Colonies and Self-Supporting Schools Association "—a title which I personally have always thought should he modified by the addition of the words " more or• less " before " Self-Supporting." You will see from the names in the margin of my note-paper that this idea was influentially supported in England long ago ; but it never came to anything till Capt. Petavel went to India and, in co-operation with Rabindranath Tagore, succeeded in estab- lishing a Polytechnic Institute with the generous assistance of the Maharaja of Cossimbazar.
If I may further emphasize the point I would say that the 'fundamental note of Capt. Petavel's effort was the education of children in the co-operative production of food for use :not primarily for sale—which he had envisaged in The Coming :Triumph of Christian Civilization as the open door of escape from the evils of unemployment. Failing to get people in this country to organize and produce co-operatively the ;necessaries of life with their own hands, he thought he might at least educate the children to do it, giving them at the 'same time all that was necessary in the way of book-learning. The records of the Calcutta Polytechnic boys, in University and other examinations, have,- I believe, amply justified their Principal's faith. Surely, then, we have here a suggestion for the further development of the Homecrofting movement in this country. Capt. Petavel has always pressed on Professor Scott not to neglect in his enthusiasm to get the Homecroft Settlement started, the true line of approach, which lies through education. And I am tempted to go further and suggest, now that Dr. Clark and Mrs. Atherton-Smith, of the Friends' International Centre, in Vienna, have " weighed in " to the general Homecrofting movement with their mar- vellous experience of successful Homecrofting in Vienna behind them, the time seems more than ripe for a real drive for education on Homecrofting lines. It certainly seems strange that we should remain in our perilous position with regard to food when a perfectly ideal education is within our reach by training the children in our schools to be " self- feeders," whatever else we may make of them.—I am, Sir, &c., J. B. PENNINGTON,
Hon. Secretary.
Educational Colonies and Sef-Supporting Schools Association, 3 Victoria Street, S.W.
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