MIGRATION AND THE FACTORY WORKER. 9
some importance, particularly in the Calcutta neighbourhood. Electrical
engineering and generating works are steadily expanding. Other engineer-
ing shops are maintained for the upkeep of tramways, telegraphs, motor
transport and shipping. Of establishments dealing with metals, by far
the most important is the Tata Iron and Steel Company’s works at
Jamshedpur, in the Singhbhum district of Bihar and Orissa, about 200
miles west of Calcutta. This was established as recently as 1907 on a
site practically uninhabited before that date and far from any town of
importance. It has now a large, complex and well-equipped plant,
and employs about 28,000 persons, of whom about two-thirds work in the
main factory. In association with several smaller factories of an allied
character, it has built up a township of 100,000 inhabitants. Other
metal works of some importance are maintained by the Army Depart-
ment and include the Metal and Steel Factory and the Rifle Factory at
Ishapore, north of Calcutta ; and there is one large iron and steel works
in the Bengal coalfield. The manufacture of the ubiquitous kerosene
bin employs an increasing number of persons in, or near, the three Pre~
sidency towns, and iron foundries, generally on a small scale, are fairly
widely distributed. The other metal-working factories are of a very
miscellaneous kind and few of them employ substantial numbers of
workers.
Other Factories.
The remaining factories cover a wide and constantly increasing
range of industries scattered over the whole of India, but naturally
concentrated chiefly in the larger towns. The large-scale factories include
paper mills (mainly in Bengal and Bombay), cigarette factories (especially
in Bihar and Bangalore), petroleum refineries (in Burma), woollen mills
{in Bombay, Cawnpore and the Punjab) and a few tanneries (in
Cawnpore and Madras). The most Important single industry in this
group is the printing industry, which employs 38,000 persons in 360
presses. This excludes a great number of very small establishments
working hand-presses. Match factories, with 16,000 operatives, are
widely scattered, and there are about 17,000 persons employed in saw-mills,
mainly in Burma. But the great majority of the factories in this group
are small establishments employing less than 50 persons. These were
not subject to the Factories Act before 1922.

Main Centres.

~ When the distribution of perennial factories is examined by
centres, the most striking feature is the predominance of the Hooghly
area surrounding Calcutta. In the city and the three districts next to it
(24 Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly), the factory population is well over
£50,000. Bombay City and Island (with the Bombay Suburban District),
which has the next biggest concentration of industry, has about
190,000, so that these two small areas account for more than half the opera-
tives. With the exception of Ahmedabad, which is virtually limited to a
single industry and has a little over 70,000 operatives, there 1s no centre
with as many as 30.000 permanent factorv workers. Of the secondary