[Mr. Freeman, a journalist, was in Delhi in 1946 and attended spinning classes started by Gandhiji. In an interview with Gandhiji at that time, he said:
"I propose to interpret the charkha to Americans as a `thinking machine'. I found while I was attending my spinning class that if I was alone with it, it made me think. If only Americans could get down to spin, they might be able to do some thinking
for which otherwise they get no time. It might make them forget the atom
bomb."51
After return to the United States, he sought Gandhiji's permission to use his name for the Gandhi Spinning Society of the United States and for the "Gandhi Spinning-Wheel" to be manufactured in the United States.52]
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Valmiki Mandir,
Reading Road,
New Delhi,
May 6, 1947
Dear Freeman,
I had your letter of the 28th April. I hope there are no ill effects left of the operation you had gone through. Is it not a mad idea to start a spinning society in America? Mad or wise, why do you want to connect my name with it? Hand-spinning has its own special universal function.
If I were you I would not mix up teachings with hand-spinning.
Your third object is to cultivate a friendly understanding between Americans and Indians. I claim that understanding not only with Indians but with the whole world is implied in voluntary spinning. And, if America is really interested in the hand-spinning-wheel it can beat all its previous records for inventive genius. Therefore I would say do not belittle a great thing by mixing it up with my name.
In your exposition you will have a perfect right to use my name freely and say quite correctly that you owe your enthusiasm for hand-spinning to mine in the
same connection in India. And, of course, I shall welcome all the hand-spun yarn that you can send to India. Only let me present you with a joke that will lie behind your sending a parcel of hand-spun yarn all the way to India for weaving. The postal charges for sending hand-spun yarn from America would be perhaps 50 times the value of the cotton used in hand-spinning. But America being a mammon- worshipping country you can afford such expensive jokes.
Yours sincerely,
M.K. GANDHI
Andrew A. Freeman, Esq.
325 West 57th Street
New York 19, New York
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