ас TO THE SOCIAL AND AGRICULTURAL WORKERS B. L. Fisher Library Asbury Theological Seminary Wilmore. Kentucky 40390 100308 PREFACE My thanks are due to the Editor of the Young Men of India' for allowing me to publish in book form these chapters which have, with few exceptions, appeared as articles in that magazine. The latter part of the book contains new material, and the whole has been carefully revised and in a measure rewritten. It is my hope that the book, as it now stands, may be found useful for the purpose of social study circles, as well as by individual readers. The attempt has been made, in each chapter, to take a single subject and to give an outline rather than a complete picture. The illustrations used have been mainly gathered from India. As I have related in the book itself, at the beginning of the first chapter, much of the detail was collected at an earlier period of my life, while I was studying at Cambridge and also working among the English poor. The facts I then gathered were embodied in an essay, printed at my own cost, nearly twenty years ago. The essay has now been long out of print. Therefore I felt that I could freely use the historical data that it contained. I have ventured to dedicate this book to the social workers at Surul in Bengal who are endeavouring to ii find a solution of the problem of village agriculture and village economics in India. They form the social and agricultural section of our Visvabharati, or International University, at Santiniketan. Of all the labour problems in the East, whether in India or China, this problem of village agriculture and reconstruction appears to me to be the greatest. On its solution depends, in a very large measure, the peace of the world. SANTINIKETAN, July 4th, 1922. C. F. ANDREWS. |