CHAPTER II,
inspiration than a reality. But in most cases the contact has begun at
birth ; the proportion of industrial workers whose birthplace is the city
is small. Many workers leave their wives in the country, and of those
wives who come to the city, all who can do so return to the village for
their confinement. The steady expansion of Indian industry year by
year and the higher mortality in cities increase still further the
numbers that have to be supplied from rural areas. Generally, too, child-
hood is spent in the villages ; the raising of the minimum age for industrial
smployment has strengthened this tendency. After industrial employ-
ment has commenced, the worker returns to the village as often as he
can. Financial considerations form the principal obstacle to frequent
returns : the man who succeeds in the mills returns more regularly as his
income rises. In the Bengal jute mills and the Bombay cotton mills, a
number secure an annual holiday of anything from one to three months’
duration : others may go every second year. Yet others, owing to lack of
money or for various reasons, may not go back for many years. Butat
any time illness or urgent family affairs may compel a return, even when
it hasto be financed by borrowing. The returned industrial worker may
give assistance in agricultural operations, or he may prefer to remain
anoccupied. It is interesting to note, for example, that the holiday
exodus from the Bengal jute mills is at its height during a slack season
for agriculture in the workers’ villages. The duration of the holiday is
asually limited only by the money available ; more rarely it is determined
by the necessity of complying with the instructions of the employer in the
city. At other times, if close relatives remain in the villages, remit-
sances may be sent regularly to them and serve to maintain contact, but
apart from these, correspondence is usually infrequent. Nor are relatives
the only ones who look for money orders. The village money-lender
may have claims which have to be met, and occasionally his assistance is
sought to meet the initial expenses involved in the exodus to the
city. Finally, the worker looks forward to a time when his work in
she factory will be over, and he can return to the village for good.
(4) CAUSES OF MIGRATION,
Economic Pressure.
Emigration has always arisen mainly from the difficulty of finding
an adequate livelihood in one’s native place, and this is the predominant
force which impels the Indian villager to seek industrial employment,
Over large parts of India, the number of persons on the land is much
greater than the number required to cultivate it and appreciably in
pxcess of the number it can comfortably support. In most areas,
pressure on the land has been increasing steadily for a long time and a rise
in the general standard of living has made this pressure more acutely felt.
There has always been a substantial class of landless labourers, earning
3» meagre living in good seasons and apt to be reduced to penury in bad
ones. The loss of land through indebtedness, the need or desire of a land-
lord to increase his own cultivation, quarrels, the death of the title-holder
and other causes, bring fresh recruits to this class. Among those who