SEASONAL FACTORIES. 
77 
India the season is at its height between December and March. 
Men and women are employed on ginning in about equal proportions. 
Boys are engaged on sweeping and odd jobs, but girls are only occasionally 
employed. The labour is predominatingly local ; it comes from surround- 
ing villages, returning home at night, and is employed directly by the 
owner or lessee of the ginnery. In some cases, however, particularly 
in the Punjab, a labour contractor is employed who takes on workers 
by the day. Many of these people move at will from ginnery to ginnery 
or from press to press throughout the season, even in districts where 
the wages are practically standardised. In other districts, notably 
in Madras, sometimes as many as three-quarters of the workers are in the 
employ, not of the owner or lessee, but of the ‘merchant or contractor 
whose cotton is being ginned. This position has been known to cause 
difficulties in the observance of the Act since factory owners, accused of 
breaking the regulation in respect of hours, plead that the persons properly 
responsible are the direct employers of the men, 
Tea Factories. 
In North India the work in the tea factories is seasonal ; the 
factories do not work in the cold weather, and, even in the season when 
they are open, the work is intermittent. In good weather the flush of 
leaf usually necessitates a period of heavy pressure with resultant over- 
time. In bad weather less leaf is plucked and manufacture accordingly 
decreases. Men are employed on general maintenance work, as boiler 
attendants, engine drivers, despatchers, etc., as well as on the manufac- 
turing processes of withering, rolling, drying and fermenting. Women 
are employed in small numbers, mostly in cleaning and picking over the 
manufactured tea after it has been graded. These factories are exempt from 
the rest period, the weekly holiday and adherence to specified hours, but, 
in order to allow of irregular rest periods, the number of workers employed 
must be 25 per cent. greater than the number necessary to do the work at 
any given time. No one may be required to work for more than 14 days 
at a time without a whole day’s leave. All workers are selected from the 
ordinary plantation population, with the exception of skilled men 
engaged on machinery. "In the case of the women, some plantations 
employ many who are either pregnant or have just returned to work after 
child-birth, or women who are convalescent after illness, in order to allow 
of their heing employed temporarily in a sedentary occupation. 
Rice Milling, 
Rice milling is mainly carried on in Burma, Madras and Bengal, 
In Burma it is the main factory industry and here the bulk of the mills 
are strictly seasonal. The number of factories working in 1929 was 608 
employing about 40,000 persons. In Madras and Bengal the number of 
persons employed in 1929 wag 16,500 and 12,500 respectively. In both 
Presidencies rice mills are not strictly seasonal, but they do not as a rule 
remain open throughout the year, their working being regulated by the 
demand for milled rice which varies according to trade fluctuations. 
Both raw or ¢ sunned ’ and parboiled rice milling are carried on, but the