Page:Krishnakanta's Will (Chatterjee, Roy).pdf/48

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OUR INDUSTRIALISM
127

lal's appearance he had slunk away unobserved among the trees on the banks and vanished into the darkness.

"There is no one here," said Gobindalal with a coolness which foreboded evil. "Come home with me."

(To be continued)
Translated by D. C. Roy




OUR INDUSTRIALISM[1]

By G. C. Sen, m.a., b.l., Dipl. Leeds University, Technical Chemist.

WE have met here this evening to celebrate the first anniversary of our Club. The club is only one year old and it is still the construction period we are passing through. The progress made during this time has been summarised in the Secretary's report. It is still a baby, but the baby can stand now. What a pleasuse it is for the parents to see their baby stand! Those that have become parents will fully realise it. The baby must be fed so that it may thrive. The baby must be fed well so that it may thrive well. The baby must be given healthy food so that it may become healthy and strong. No food is better for the baby than the natural food given by God in the mother's breast. The mother must be healthy to provide the baby with healthy milk. We have to provide this baby institution with healthy food if we want it to grow and flourish. We must be healthy ourselves. We must have a higher ideal before us, and must have our aims fixed. High ideal and high aspirations must be the food for our baby. Hopefulness and patriotism must be our guiding stars. Co-operation, sympathy and intellectual efficiency must be our stepping stones.

If we can not pursue an ideal our work here will end in eating, drinking, smoking and playing. But that is not the object of our club; our object is different. The name we have given to it is fully suggestive. Our object is to work for industrial progress by concerted action and co-operation. To ordinary thinkers our programme may seem to be ambitious. But do we not know that an atom of a good thing never dies? It is not the quantity that exercises influence, but the quality that does. Millions of hewers of wood and drawers of water would bow down to one single individual endowed with superior intellect. I wish that our club may be membered by men who can think and who by concrete example can put inspiration into those that are in despair. I wish this may be a place where many will look to for guidance. A congregation of representatives of so many different lines of thought is a force if the units of the congregation have intrinsic merit and energy in them.

Industry is not moneymaking. It is something higher than this. It is utilisation of the gift of God for the benefit of mankind. Moneymaking is an incidence of industry and not the industry itself. It is the intellect that gives the key with which "industry" is unfolded and it is the moneymakers that use this key for their own benefit. Intellect manifests a universal sympathy, selfless in its operations. Moneymaking apart from this "industrial intellectualism" is lifeless. It is stagnant in character and we become merely imitators. It is this "industrial intellectualism" we have to keep in view as our ideal, if we really want to be a force. Study and observation, knowledge based on experience are essential for the attainment of this "industrial intellectualism."

The conception of the law of limited liability enterprise is a boon to the world. It is mainly responsible for present industrial progress the world has come to. It has broken down the tyranny of

  1. Paper read by Mr. G. C. Sen, Personal Assistant to the Director General of Commercial Intelligence, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Calcutta Industrial Club.