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CHAPTER XII. 
subject, and providing some check on other material. Limited 
enquiries of the kind suggested cannot hope to do more. Much of 
the information obtained, which has been of help to us, will not be 
without interest for students of the subject, and we hope that it may 
serve to point the way to the more thorough enquiries that are urgently 
required. Of the Government enquiries, that of the United Provinces is 
the best example of the type of report we hoped to secure. Among 
railways, the South Indian Railway, in which a committee was appointed 
to investigate the subject, and the East Indian Railway have both fur- 
nished reports of special interest. 
Inadequacy of Material. 
The collection of statistics bearing on labour is discussed in a 
later chapter. But we would stress here the great importance of en- 
quiries into the standard of living of the workers. We are by no 
means the first to find ourselves crippled by past neglect in this di- 
rection. We owe tothe efforts of the few scientific enquiries and to 
the labour of those who have supplied us with evidence the fact that the 
material is sufficient to indicate the main features of the economic life 
of the workers and to give us confidence in dealing with some of the ques- 
tions that have a close bearing upon that life. But it is inadequate as a 
basis of any complete treatment of the workers’ ills. We can realise the 
workers’ chief difficulties, we can distinguish the factors that create them, 
and we can point to directions along which much can be done to mitigate 
them. But a quantitative analysis is impossible. Even to such an 
elementary question as the extent to which the workers’ earnings suffice 
to provide for their necessities no precise answer can be given. 
Movements of Prices and Wages. 
Before discussing the position further in the light of such 
material as is available, we desire to offer some comments on the changes 
in the position in recent years. A sharp rise in prices took place towards 
and after the end of the war. Increases in wages were granted in the 
leading industries, but these did not as a rule meet the rise in prices, and 
by the middle of 1920 the level of real wages was generally lower than 
before the war. In 1920 and 1921 there was a general rise in wages ; 
prices reached their highest point in the autumn of 1920, and the general 
tendency thereafter was downwards, so that by 1923 the workers were 
generally better off than before the war. Since then prices have fallen 
substantially ; there have been some reductions of wages, but there has 
been no general fall in wages commensurate with that of prices, and the 
general level of real wages for industrial workersis probably higher at the 
moment than at any previous period. We are writing, however, at a 
time when a remarkably sharp fall in prices has produced an unusual 
position ; the Bombay working class cost of living index number, which 
stood at 40% over the 1914 level in July 1930, had fallen to 22% 
in December. As it would be dangerous to assume that the present 
position is stable we should make it clear that, in discussing facts 
bearing on the standard of life of the workers, we are dealing with the