178

MINUTE BY SIR VICTOR SASSOON. '
Nor am I convinced that the end we all have in view may not
be achieved by methods other than those used in the West. A study
of the Guild System in Ahmedabad will show how, with no legislative
provisions but purely by the harnessing of social forces, the most
stringent restrictive regulations were evolved in the past; and there
may yet be other methods which have not even been thought of by this
Commission.

The ground we have had to cover has been vast, the time re-
stricted, the facts available exiguous and sometimes inconclusive, if not
positively inaccurate. Further detailed enquiries would absorb more
time and entail greater delay ; but it is surely better to proceed cau-
biously at the beginning than to build on insecure foundations and subse-
quently patch up mistakes that may have been made.
I should like this Report of ours to be used as a general starting
point to be followed by a series of ad hoc enquiries on the widely differ-
ing subjects with which we have dealt, such enquiries to be instituted after
more facts and accurate data have been collected. In the meantime,
except where our recommendations are based on fully established facts,
statutory measures should be ‘carried out on the most general lines.

Hours in Factories.

The majority of my colleagues have agreed that a reduction of
hours from 60 to 54 is practicable and desirable throughout the country,
and admit that such a reduction would primarily affect the cotton industry,
since this is by far the most important of the industries which still work
most of their operatives for 60 hours a week?2.
The argument adduced is that the present ten-hour day is not
in reality a day consisting of ten hours’ concentrated work. There is,
the Commission maintain, a considerable amount of loitering and “In
Bombay particularly, the visitor is struck by the large numbers of men
who can be found outside the factory building at almost any hour of
the dav >’ 2.
My colleagues therefore assert that a ten-hour day should not
be worked, ® cannot be worked, % and is not in fact actually worked.?
Their argument continues on the lines that a shorter and more disciplined
working day is preferable to a longer day containing the unauthorised
intervals for loitering referred to above.

After consideration of the reduction of the working day from 12
to 10 hours they continue, “ As hours are lessened, a point must be reached
at which, even if the industry can maintain production by employing
shifts, the operatives cannot face a further reduction of earning capacity.
But the evidence shows that this stage has not been reached and that.
L Page 4c.
2 Page 41,
3 Page 40,