A ROMANCE OF STEEL IN INDIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18294, 11 July 1921, Page 9

A ROMANCE OF STEEL IN INDIA

HOW A GREAT CITY OF 100,000 PEOPLE SPRANG UP IN INDIA.

“To-day, just 12 years after the first stake driven into the ground, Jamslieedpur Is already a town of close on IDO.OQO inhabitants, pleasantly situated on rising ground between a considerable river, the Subnrnarskha, which flows into the Bay of Bengal, and a minor affluent, whose waters mingle with it close by. A finely scarped range of hills, over 3,500 ft. high, provides within easy distance the making of a small hill station as a refuge, especially valuable for women and children, from the war.-t heat of the torid season. Sir Valentine Chirol tells a remarkable story of the rapid development of a great t-.tcei industry in India —one of the romance ■? of modern industry. “It is a somewhat chastening reflection that the creation of the one great metallurgical industry in India has been due not to British but to Indian capital and ontorpri^f l , assisted hi the earliest most critical stages not by British but bv American technical skill. ’ writes Sir Valentine in the ‘Times.' Had it not been created when it was, our Syrian and Mesopotamian campaign could never have been fought to their victorious issue, as that juncture Jamsheedpnr could alone supply the rails for the construction of the railways essential to the vapid success of these c-reat military operations. ‘•Eqiiallv'' chastening is the reflection that from its very inception, less than 20 years ago, its pioneers had constantly to reckon with the indifference and inertia of Anglo-Indian officialdom. \\ Bb the almost' solitary exceptions of Sir Thomas Holland, then at the bead of the Geological Survey and Sir Benjamin Robertson, afterwards Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces, where the first but unavailing explorations were made, they seldom received more than a minimum of official countenance and assistance. —The Tata Company.— “Not till Messrs Tata's American prospectors had explored this region did the Government of India realise that untold mineral wealth lay here, within 150 miles of Calcutta, almost on the surface of the soil; and not until the pressure of the Great War and the inability of India to draw any longer upon British mdustry for the ' most vital supplies compelled them to turn to Jamsheedpnr do they bcom to at all appreciated what the enterprise meant for the Empire. , “When the war was over Lord Chelmsford visited Jamsheedpnr and generously acknowledged that debt : T can hardly imagine (said the Viceroy) what we should have done if the Tata Company had not been able to give us steel rails, which have provided not only for Mesopotamia, but for Egypt, Palestine, and East Africa. —Converting the Jungle.— “In the short history of modern industrial enterprise in India nothing can compare in point of romance with the story of the iron and steel industry of Jamcheedpur. It may be very briefly recalled. In ISO2 Mr Jamsheedji Tata, a veteran of the Parsee community of Bombay and one of the founders of the Bombay cotton industry, visited the United States. In New York" he called, with a lev.ter ot introduction from Lord Avebury, on Mr C. l> a <r e Perin an eminent mining engineer, who was at once impressed with the schemes his visitor unfolded, though they were still quite visionary.' Mr Perrin, who is still the consulting engineer of the Tata Company, agreed to send a party of American prospectors, and followed them in 1904 to India. “l. ong was the search and many the hardships undergone, and Mr Jamsheedji Tata himself passed away before he could see the fulfilment of his dream. But Sir Dorab Tata proved himself not unworthy to follow in his footsteps. —Finding the Money.—.

“When an area hiterto almost unknown and unexplored had been definitely located, combining in an extraordinary degree the piimary requisites of adequate coalfields, vast ore deposits of great wealth, a sufficient water supply, a suitable site , for a large industrial town with good railway communication, and all within 150 miles of Calcutta, he and a small group of his Bombay friends tried to find in London the financial support which they imagined would hardly be denied to an enterprise of such immense importance for our Indian Empire. But they failed. “It was then that they appealed to their own fellow-countrymen for the capital needed. Never had such an appeal been made, but the response was immediate and ample. The ‘Tata Iron and Steel Works Company was launched as an Indian Company, and to the present day all the hard cash required has come out of Indian pockets.

—Clearing tTie Scrub for a City.— “In 1908 the first clearance was effected in what had hitherto been a barren stretch of scrub jungle sparsely inhabited by aboriginal Sonthals, one of the most primitive of Indian races, and in 1910 the first works, erected by an American firm, were completed and started. As far as the production of pig-iron was concerned success was immediate, but many difficulties had to be overcome in the manufacture of steel, which had never before been attempted in a tropical climate. These, too, had been surmounted by the end of 1913, in the nick of time to meet the heavy demands 4i rid immen.-.e strains of the Great War, towards the end of which Government took as much as 97 per cent, of the steel output, and obtained it from the company at less than a quarter of the price that it would have commanded in the Indian open market. —A’ Promising Future.— “The war stimulated the rapid expansion pf the works on a far Larger scale than had ever been anticipated. Instead of the one blast furnace originally contemplated, five are already in operation, to be shortly increased to ten. The old mills wore steam driven ; the new ones are electrically driven, and electricity is generated by the waste gases of the blast furnaces yielding about 20,000 h.p. No doubt is entertained as to the demand for the enormous output from such a plant. Nor is it contemplated that it will meet anything like the full needs of India, which are growing apace. Before the war India imported annually about 1,000,000 tons of steel products. . y “Equally little room is there to question the continued supply of either coal or ore. The life of the coal mines which the Tata Company possess within about 100 miles of their works is estimated at 2bv> years, and they form only a very small portion of the great carboniferous area known as the Gondwana measures.

“The Tatas aim at making Jnmeheedpur a model industrial town worthy of the high standard which they have reached in 1 heir works. It is to an Englishman. Mr dohn Temple, of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, and hitherto in the Public Works Department of the Government of India, that this work is now entrusted. The social weilfare of the humblest Indian classes is not being neglected, any more than the amenities of life for the well-to-do of both races.”