SEASONAL FACTORIES.

R1

been advocated, we consider that it would not be unreasonable to
maintain in seasonal factories the present maximum working day of 11
hours and the maximum working week of 60 hours.
Needs of Industries.
In the grant of exemptions it seems to have been occasionally
forgotten that the restrictions in hours laid ‘down in the Act refer
to the hours of work of the individual worker and not of those of
the factory machinery. There is reason to believe that, as a result
of the tendency to grant exemptions on too generous a scale,
few efforts have been made so to organise the work as to deal with
the crop in the time available with the least strain upon those engaged
in handling it. Workers have been called upon to work for excessive
hours when others were available to take their places if necessary,
and we have reason to believe that little regard has been paid to
the statutory requirement in respect of compensatory payment for
overtime. So far as the needs of the industry are concerned, exemptions
can only be strictly justified if it is not possible to secure extra labour, and
we are not satisfied that this is true of any important class of the factories
We are now considering. We cannot, therefore, regard the exigencies
of the industries as Justifying the employment of individual workers for
longer hours than the limits we have already suggested, namely, 11
hours a dav and 60 hours a week.

Pooling of Factories.

It is relevant to observe in this connection that the overworking
of operatives is specially associated with cotton-ginning factories, and in
this industry there are in several important areas more factories than are
required to dispose of the crop. The factory owners have combined to
form pools in most areas, in order to regulate the distribution of work and
of profits. To quote the Indian Cotton Committee of 1919 * the result
has frequently been that new ginning and pressing factories, which have
never worked and were never intended to work, have been erected in
places already over-supplied ”. A number of factories stand idle in all
but an exceptional year, while others may be used in rotation, and there
is a tendency to concentrate work in some areas into too few factories.
As a result, the exigencies of the industry may appear to require long
hours, when actually there is no such necessity. In one province where
this custom is prevalent, some employers have instituted an 18 hours’
day with two hours’ interval, a separate shift of workers being entered
against the extra 6 hours. There is, unfortunately, reason to believe that
in many factories the extra, shift is not engaged, detection being evaded
by false registers or the closing down of the factory on the news of the
impending visit of an inspector. The Cotton Committee recommended
that, in any district where factories were kept closed, no night work should
be allowed in any circumstances. We admit the force of this recommend-
ation, but we recognise that legitimate centralisation is in the best
interests of the industry and we do not wish to advocate any measures
calculated to prevent developments in this direction. For the abuses to