2 
CHAPTER II. . 
not end here, In India the migration from the rural areas to the 
factories is not in the main a permanent exodus ; itis, in the minds of 
shose who undertake it and to a large extent in fact, a temporary trans- 
fer, and the recruit to industry continues to regard as his home the place 
from which he has come. A true understanding of this position is a 
necessary approachto nearly all the problems affecting this type of 
labour, and we must go on to examine in greater detail the character 
of the contact between the village and the factory. 
The Factory Worker not an Agriculturalist. 
Those anxious to emphasise the importance of this phenomenon 
are apt to suggest that the Indian factory worker is essentially an agri- 
culturalist, and the student unfamiliar with the facts is led to picture the 
main industries of India as manned by a mass of agricultural workers, 
temporarily forsaking the mattock and the plough to add to their income 
by a brief spell of industrial work in the city. It would not be unfair to 
say that this picture is in the minds of some employers, whose attention 
is focussed on the rapidity with which their own labour force changes. 
But it is not an accurate representation of the position, and has been 
responsible occasionally for a mistaken attitude to labour questions. 
[n the seasonal industries, dealing largely with the treatment of agricul- 
tural products in the raw state after they have been harvested, there is 
an intimate connection between industrial and agricultural work ; 
and in the collieries too there is a substantial class directly interested in 
agriculture. But in the regular factory industries which offer perma- 
nent work, the employer has generally got past the stage of being com- 
pelled to employ those who are prepared to work only for a few months 
of the vear. 
Connection with Agriculture. 
The truth behind the assertion of the agricultural character of the 
factory population—and it is a truth of primary importance—is that the 
great majority of those employed are at heart villagers ; they have had 
in most cases a village upbringing, they have village traditions and they 
retain some contact with the villages. This does not necessarily mean 
sven that they are all drawn from agricultural classes. There are in the 
villages important sections of the population whose occupation is not 
primarily agricultural and may not be agricultural at all ; the weaving 
sheds of textile factories, the tanneries, the railway workshops and other 
scenes of urban industry contain many who look back rather to village 
crafts than to village fields. But agriculture has naturally supplied the 
bulk of the recently established industrial population. Some factory 
workers, but far fewer than is frequently supposed, may have a direct 
interest in agriculture, in that they derive some pecuniary benefit from it ; 
more have indirect interests, in that members of that very variable group, 
the joint family, or other close relations have agricultural holdings. A 
larger number still have a home and members of their own family in the 
village and the latter may secure an income from agricultural work. 
Dccasionally members of the same family relieve each other by turns in