18 
CHAPTER II, 
those who, for individual reasons, find it better to leave the village, for 
a time at any rate. The new world of industry offers a refuge to those 
who are anxious to escape from family conditions that have become 
intolerable, or from the penalties of the law, or from the more severe 
penalties with which the village visits offences against its social and moral 
sodes. 
Causes of Retention of Village Connection. 
These causes serve to explain the move from the village to the 
factory, and by applying them to conditions in different rural areas it is 
sasy to account for the main streams of migration. But they do not 
axplain the most striking element in this migration, which is the retention 
of the village connection. The reasons for this feature are complex 
and raise psychological issues. But, in our opinion, the chief cause is to 
be found in the fact that the driving force in migration comes almost 
entirely from one end of the channel, z.e., the village end. The industrial 
recruit is not prompted by the lure of city life or by any great ambition. 
The city, as such, has no attraction for him and, when he leaves the 
village, he has seldom an ambition beyond that of securing the necessi- 
ties of life. Few industrial workers would remain in industry if they 
could secure sufficient food and clothing in the village ; they are pushed, 
aot pulled, to the city. 
The Family and the Village. 
A contributory cause is the joint family system which, by link: 
ing the emigrant to the village and even to its soil, serves to keep con- 
nections alive in many cases. Moreover, the comparative scarcity of 
smployment for women and children in factories encourages the practice 
of leaving the family in the village, where their maintenance is more 
simple and less costly. In the perennial factories as a whole more than 
three-quarters of the workers are males over 15 years ; and the children 
form a small proportion of the remainder. On the other hand the village 
offers at least intermittent work for everyone, even for small children. 
Further, where migration has resulted less from the lack of land than from 
the precarious character of its yield, there are obvious economic advan- 
tages in retaining interests in it. Even where relatives have not been 
left in the village, the ties of generations are strong. To a large extent, 
[ndian life is a community life and the more individualistic existence 
inseparable from a city is strange and unattractive to the villager. o 
Contrast of Environment. 
Finally, an important cause of the desire of the factory workers 
so maintain village connections is to be found in the environment in which 
shey must live while employed in the factories. We deal with this later 
and merely observe here that no one who is familiar both with village 
sonditions and with the factory areas can be surprised that so few work- 
ars are ready to establish in the latter a permanent home. We do not 
Jesire to suggest that the village is always, or even generally, an idyllic 
slace ; but the average factory worker, contrasting the scenes in which 
he has to live with his memories of his native place, must welcome