THE ECONOMIC TRANSITION IN INDIA.f IN this deeply interesting volume
Sir Theodore Morison sets himself to explain how the modern spirit of change is making itself felt in one at least of the regions where we have been taught to look for the traditional immobility of the " cycles of Cathay." To the economist, speculating as to what are the necessary elements of modern civilized society, the author's analysis of what seems to be the inevitable course of events in India is pregnant with meaning and has a much wider application. The analogy and the argument on which it is based are not, of course, unfamiliar to the students of Maine, for whose illuminating generalization, that all progress is from status to contract, the volume now before us supplies most suggestive examples and illustration. Sir Theodore, to use his own words, "aims only at showing that India is now following the beaten track of economic development other nations have trodden." It is surely something wonderful, even miraculous, that a motive has at length become apparent, stirring the immobile chaos of the Oriental mind. The impression which we had derived from Maine is that, in his view, the immobility of the East was a permanent, unalterable fact, suggesting indeed many comparisons with the mobility of Western civilizations, but never likely to be agitated by
• etagere'''. and Its People. By Frances X. Gostling. With eight Illustratior • in colour by Leopold Lek*, thirty-two other Illustrations, and a Map. London : Methuen and Co. pos. 6d. net.] t This Economic Transition in /edit'. By Sir Theodore Morison, London: J. Murray. [6s. net.]
those economic motives which are the organizing influences of Western industry. Yet we have Sir Theodore Morisontellingus that already there are signs of a new spirit moving on the face of the waters, and that India is now following the beaten track of economic development which has been trodden by other nations. This is a tribute to the permanent and inevitable influence of economic laws, most striking and most opportune. It is most important for us, in these days when the results of the economic motive, basing itself on the beneficent and equitable principle of exchange, are being called in question, to note that even the archaic communism of India is breaking up, partly because of the inherent inefficiency of the condition of status and also because of the obvious advantages that are being gained first by the tentative adoption, here and there, ‘• of new industries organized on capitalist lines," and secondly by the establishment of the Co-operative Credit Bank. This last is a subject on which, if space permitted, we should find it easy to dilate. It is surely remarkable that this beneficent institution, the invention of the German Raffeisen, and justly described as the highest achievement of personal initiative and personal rectitude, should become acclimatized in Bengal and give evidence that sound economic principles are valid all the world over.
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