Manchester, Spring 1935
Manchester was not the city Chhotu Ram had expected.
He had imagined an empire of machinery: endless factories roaring with production, chimneys darkening the sky, locomotives carrying the finished wealth of Britain towards its ports. The chimneys were there, certainly, and the railway yards, and the vast brick buildings that seemed to have grown out of the earth rather than been constructed upon it. But between the smoke and the machinery were stretches of silence.
The motorcar passed a mill whose windows had been boarded from the inside. Outside another, a dozen men stood beneath a faded notice, their caps pulled low against the drizzle. A woman hurried past with a parcel beneath her coat. Two boys, hardly older than the apprentices recently recruited at Sandalbar, sat on a wall and watched the traffic with the peculiar indifference of those who had nowhere in particular to be.
Chhotu Ram followed them with his eyes.
"Your friend in the Governor's office was quite right," he said.
Jinnah looked up from the correspondence resting on his knees.
"About what?"
"The condition of British industry."
Jinnah glanced through the window.
"The depression has not treated every district equally."
"No. But these men understand unemployment."
There was something in his voice that made Jinnah put the papers aside.
Chhotu Ram had spent much of his political life among cultivators for whom a failed harvest could erase three years of careful living. He had seen debt turn a prosperous household into a tenant household, and tenants into landless labourers. Poverty in Punjab was often dispersed across villages, softened to the outsider's eye by open fields and the apparent generosity of the countryside. Here it stood in rows of brick houses, close enough to be counted.
"Look at them," he continued. "They possess the machinery, the engineers, the coal, the railways. Their workers know trades that would take us years to teach. Yet some of their factories cannot find enough work."
"Their markets have contracted."
"Then we shall offer them another market."
Jinnah regarded him with mild amusement.
"That is the purpose of our visit."
"Not quite. You are going to offer them an investment. I intend to offer them employment for their factories. The distinction may prove useful."
Bilal, who had spent the morning watching Manchester through Jinnah's eyes, stirred.
He's right, sir. They're thinking about keeping their own factories alive. Don't begin by asking them to build ours.
Jinnah suppressed a smile.
"I had not intended to."
You were rehearsing your securities argument all morning.
"I was examining it."
That's what you call rehearsing.
The car turned into Trafford Park.
Beyond the gates rose the immense workshops of Metropolitan-Vickers, where electrical machinery was designed and manufactured on a scale that made the modest productive establishments of Sandalbar seem almost domestic. Railway sidings entered the industrial grounds. Cranes moved above great metal assemblies. Even through the closed windows of the car, the sound of work reached them: steel upon steel, the hum of motors, the dull concussion of machinery too large to be hurried.
Chhotu Ram straightened.
"Now," he said, "this looks more promising."
The Governor's letter had accomplished what an ordinary request from two Indian politicians might not.
It had secured the attention of men who could make decisions.
His Excellency Sir Herbert Emerson had been careful in his wording. He had described the Sandalbar undertaking as a provincial industrial development programme of considerable potential importance. He had mentioned the successful rural production already established, the proposed employment expansion, and the prospect of substantial orders for British engineering firms. He had asked that Jinnah and Chhotu Ram be afforded every reasonable opportunity to present their plans.
There had been no promise of government money, no guarantee of contracts, and no endorsement of the investment arrangements Jinnah intended eventually to propose.
Jinnah had appreciated the distinction.
So, apparently, had Metropolitan-Vickers.
Mr. Edward Whitcombe, the fictional commercial director assigned to receive them, met the visitors in person. He was a heavily built man approaching fifty, with thinning hair and a manner suggesting that he had spent twenty years listening to extraordinary commercial propositions and had learned not to display surprise until the visitor had left the building.
He shook Jinnah's hand, then Chhotu Ram's, with equal courtesy.
"His Excellency speaks highly of the work being undertaken in Punjab. I confess I was surprised to discover that you were proposing so extensive a programme."
"We hope to make it extensive," Jinnah replied. "The precise extent remains a matter for your engineers."
Whitcombe seemed pleased by the qualification.
"Then you have brought the right sort of work for us."
He led them through the manufacturing halls before taking them upstairs.
The tour was intended as a courtesy. It became considerably longer than Whitcombe had planned.
Chhotu Ram stopped beside a large motor casing being prepared for assembly and asked how much of it could be manufactured locally from castings. Later he wanted to know how the company trained fitters, whether an experienced railway mechanic could learn to service the smaller generators, and why a particular machine required components whose replacements appeared unnecessarily difficult to manufacture.
The works manager answered patiently at first, then with increasing interest.
Jinnah, meanwhile, examined the dispatch arrangements and questioned the manager about export packing, shipping damage, spare parts, and the difficulties of maintaining equipment overseas.
Whitcombe listened to both men and gradually abandoned the assumption that he was entertaining a political delegation seeking a distinguished English firm's patronage.
These visitors knew what they intended to purchase.
More importantly, they knew what they did not yet know.
As they passed an older section of the works, Chhotu Ram stopped beside several machines standing beneath protective covers.
"What are those?"
"Equipment awaiting disposal or refurbishment," the manager replied.
"Unserviceable?"
"Not necessarily. Some was replaced by newer machinery. Some came from cancelled or reduced orders. It varies."
Chhotu Ram pulled at the corner of a covering, revealing a heavy steel assembly beneath.
"Then this machinery still has value."
"Of course."
"But less value to its present owner than it once had."
Whitcombe understood where the conversation was moving.
"That would depend upon the buyer."
"Precisely," Chhotu Ram said. "And the buyer's circumstances."
He let the covering fall.
"In Punjab, there are villages where a machine with ten years of useful life remaining would represent an industrial revolution. Here it occupies warehouse space."
The works manager looked uncomfortable.
Whitcombe, however, was interested.
"You are proposing to purchase second-hand equipment?"
"Where it is suitable," Jinnah answered. "We are not proposing to purchase your scrap."
That settled the matter sufficiently for the moment.
But before they had reached the conference room, Whitcombe had already begun reconsidering the commercial possibilities of the visit.
The room upstairs had tall windows overlooking the factory yard. A coal fire burned in the grate despite the season, and the table had been prepared with maps, writing paper and a considerable quantity of tea.
Two other men joined them. Harold Bennett, a senior electrical engineer, possessed the narrow face and permanently distracted expression of someone who preferred machines to meetings. Arthur Bell, a hydraulic engineering specialist invited to consider the canal-fall proposals, carried a folder of notes and looked faintly irritated at having been summoned away from his technical work.
Whitcombe began with the Governor's letter.
"The reference naturally attracted our attention. His Excellency suggests that the development may involve considerable employment and a substantial programme of machinery purchases. I assume you have come to discuss the technical requirements."
"That is one reason," Jinnah said.
"And the others?"
"Commercial participation, if the technical case justifies it."
Whitcombe placed the letter aside.
"I see."
Chhotu Ram smiled.
"I doubt that you do yet, Mr. Whitcombe. We have travelled rather a long way to explain it."
Jinnah opened his leather case and withdrew a folded length of cream-coloured cloth.
Whitcombe watched him place it upon the table.
It was an unusual beginning to a meeting with an electrical engineering firm.
The cloth was fine, closely woven and remarkably soft. Its surface possessed the slight irregularity of hand production, but the finish was elegant. Whitcombe lifted it, examining the texture between his fingers.
"Indian cotton?"
"Produced and finished through our Sandalbar organisation," Jinnah replied.
"Handwoven?"
"Yes."
Whitcombe looked at the engineers, then back at Jinnah.
"If you have come to ask us to mechanize its production, I should warn you that preserving the qualities for which handwoven cloth is sold can become rather difficult."
"We have no intention of destroying its distinction," Jinnah said.
He opened another folder and slid it across the table.
"That is why the cloth is not our engineering problem."
The folder contained accounts: production costs, labour payments, finishing, transportation, selling prices, stock movements and realized profits.
Whitcombe turned the pages with increasing concentration.
"These are trading records?"
"Yes."
"Not estimates?"
"No."
"Your own enterprise?"
"An enterprise operating within our existing Sandalbar system."
Whitcombe examined another sheet, where sales had been arranged by destination.
Jinnah allowed him to read.
A barrister knew the value of silence when a witness had encountered something unexpected.
Eventually Whitcombe looked up.
"You have already established a market."
"We have."
"And you are making money."
"Enough to satisfy ourselves that the system can operate commercially. Not enough to finance the expansion we intend."
Whitcombe returned to the cloth.
"Then why begin by showing me something that does not need our machinery?"
Chhotu Ram leaned forward.
"Because we do not intend to build factories and then pray that somebody will purchase their products."
He took a pencil and drew a small circle upon the edge of the map.
"This is a village. It grows wheat and cotton. It already possesses people who know how to spin and weave. The surrounding villages possess blacksmiths, carpenters, grain merchants, oil pressers and men who repair agricultural tools. The trouble is that their work remains scattered. Much of the produce leaves the district before the district has earned what it might from processing it."
He drew another circle.
"Now establish a flour mill here. A properly equipped oil press there. A small ginning operation where cotton justifies it. A repair workshop serving several villages. Provide an efficient means of coordinating their output, a reliable market arrangement and accounts that allow the producers to understand whether they are earning money."
He looked at Whitcombe.
"That is the system we have already begun to establish. Your machinery allows us to perform some of this work at a scale we cannot presently achieve."
Bennett had been studying the map.
"And you intend to obtain the power from canal falls?"
"Where suitable," Jinnah replied.
Bell was suddenly attentive.
He pulled the map towards him, scarcely noticing that he had interrupted the conversation.
For several minutes he said nothing, tracing the irrigation network with one finger.
Then he took out his spectacles.
"These are the principal canals?"
"Yes."
"And the marked locations?"
"Twenty priority sites examined during our preliminary fieldwork," Chhotu Ram said. "Some may require substantial modification before they are technically suitable. Others may be simpler."
Bell frowned.
"Do you have records of discharge and head?"
"We have preliminary measurements and the available canal records. You shall see them."
"Good. Because a canal fall is not automatically a useful power site."
Chhotu Ram nodded.
"We understand."
Bell was already making notes.
"One must consider seasonal variation, the head actually available, the quantity of water passing through the fall, sediment, maintenance closures—"
"And irrigation," Chhotu Ram interrupted.
Bell glanced up.
"Naturally."
"No, Mr. Bell. Not naturally. I would prefer that we make it explicit."
His voice had lost its earlier humour.
"The canals were constructed to distribute water to agriculture. No factory built under our programme will be permitted to turn a farmer's irrigation schedule into an inconvenience. You must design around the water that the canal system can properly make available. We shall not redesign cultivation around the convenience of your turbines."
Bell regarded him for a moment.
Then, with the frankness of a technical man encountering another who understood the governing constraint, he nodded.
"That will restrict your choice of sites."
"Then it will restrict our choice."
"And perhaps your generating capacity."
"Then we shall adjust the generating capacity."
Jinnah intervened before the conversation could become an argument between two men who, in substance, already agreed.
"Chhotu Ram has devoted much of his public life to the problems of Punjab's cultivators. I would advise you to regard his irrigation conditions as fixed requirements of the undertaking."
Bell considered the map again.
"Very well. In that case, I should like the original records, not merely the summarized estimates."
"You shall have them," Chhotu Ram said. "And if our figures prove unsuitable, tell us so before we purchase anything."
It was the first moment of genuine warmth between the engineers and their visitors.
Bennett pulled his chair closer.
The technical discussion occupied almost two hours.
The original proposal assumed that a typical Class I installation might provide approximately fifty kilowatts of generating capacity. Bennett quickly demonstrated the danger of treating the figure as a promise rather than a design target.
A flour mill, cotton-processing machinery, spinning equipment and a mechanical workshop could easily consume the available power if operated together. Seasonal reductions in water flow would complicate matters further. Long distribution lines would introduce additional losses. Machinery that might be well suited to a factory outside Manchester could prove troublesome in a Punjab village without a trained electrical mechanic within a day's journey.
Chhotu Ram listened without interruption until Bennett had filled half a sheet with estimated loads.
Then he reached across and rearranged the figures.
"You have assumed that every industry operates at the same time."
"That would represent a possible maximum load."
"It would represent a very foolish village."
Bennett looked offended.
Chhotu Ram continued before the engineer could respond.
"Wheat does not arrive in every month of the year. Mustard is not pressed whenever a man feels like pressing it. Cotton has its own season and its own rhythm. The workshop may be required throughout the year, but it will not consume the same power as a mill. Some equipment can operate in shifts. Other operations do not need electricity at all."
He turned the drawing towards Bennett.
"We are not constructing a single factory with six departments. We are constructing a place where several enterprises can share services intelligently."
Bennett studied the altered schedule.
After a moment he began correcting his calculations.
"That improves matters," he admitted. "Though we shall still need an allowance for simultaneous demand."
"Certainly."
"And proper load control."
"Of course."
"And some storage or auxiliary arrangements where production cannot tolerate an interruption."
"Then recommend them."
Bennett looked up, almost smiling.
"You are a difficult customer, Mr. Chhotu Ram."
"I have not yet become your customer, Mr. Bennett."
Whitcombe laughed, and even Bell allowed himself a smile.
For Jinnah, it was an encouraging development.
The engineers had ceased treating the project as an exotic colonial ambition. They were beginning to argue over how it could be made to work.
Bilal noticed it too.
See that, sir? Nobody has asked whether Indians can operate machinery. They're arguing about load factors and maintenance schedules.
"Quite."
This is where the real negotiations begin.
Jinnah watched Bennett erasing his earlier estimate.
The engineer was no longer trying to explain why the proposal might fail.
He was trying to discover under what conditions it might succeed.
Lunch was brought to the conference room.