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CHAPTER XII.

matters such as the slow growth of the spirit of compliance with the industrial
 law among the smaller and less well organised employers, the ignorance
 and illiteracy of the workers, the possibility of collusion and the
large areas to be covered in the case of scattered industries—all of which
tend to make a high annual percentage of inspection essential if enforcement
 is to be effective. It is likely that there are many trades in
which a minimum wage may be desirable but not immediately practicable.
 Here, as in other instances cited, the policy of gradualness should
not be lost sight of, if the desired end is to be achieved without disaster.
Industries Requiring Investigation.
At the present moment, there is, so far as we are aware, no trade
of the type to which the Convention refers in which sufficient preliminary
work has already been done to justify our recommending the immediate
establishment of minimum wage fixing machinery, with a view to raising
the earning capacity of a group of workers whose standard of living is depressed
 below that of their fellows. We believe, however, both from personal
 observation and from evidence submitted to us, that in certain
industries there is a prima facie case for a preliminary investigation of the
type we have outlined, such as is undertaken in Great Britain by the
Ministry of Labour before setting up a trade board. In indicating the
trades to which examination should be directed in the first instance, we
are hampered by the fact that the home-working trades, to which the
Convention particularly refers, except where also carried on in factories or
workshops, as in the case of bidi making and mica cutting and splitting,
have not come within our purview. We recommend, however, that, of the
industries which came within our terms of reference, those referred to in
the chapter dealing with unregulated factories be examined in the
first instance with a view to the need and possibility of instituting
minimum wage fixing machinery. We have reason to believe that
bids making is in some places a “sweated” industry, employing
purdah women and girls in their homes as well as young boys in numbers
of small workshops. Work in tanneries is undertaken almost entirely by the
depressed classes, and there are many small establishments paying very
low wages which are competing with the better organised factories paying
higher wages. In mica factories and other industries not using power,
which employ large numbers of children, there appears a possibility of
using the minimum wage to prevent the exploitation of juvenile labour
and the consequent undercutting of adult wages. If the results of investigation
 show the need for minimum wage fixing machinery in industries of
this kind, we recommend that the necessary legislation for setting up such
machinery should be undertaken, and that Government should then
ratify the Convention, if they ave in a position to do so.

Standardisation of Wage Rates.
Reference has already been made to the striking disparity in the
wage rates operating in an industry situated in the same locality, as indicated
 bv the Bombay Wage Census. In India in some indietries there are

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