Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VII. - Unregulated factories

Collection:: Economics Books

14 CHAPTER VII. seven or eight hundred. Here again the main difficulties, not all being necessarily present in any one industry, are the unsuitability or the dilapidated nature of the type of building used, the absence of adequate sanitation, poor lighting, defective ventilation, overcrowding, long hours and—above all—a preponderance in certain cases of the labour of under-age children, i.e., children well below the regulation age for such workers in factories coming under the Factories Act. In these industries, which are of varying sizes, some localised and others widely distributed throughout India, visits paid by us confirm the evidence submitted from various quarters as to the main defects. By way of illustration we cite in greater detail six industries together responsible for large numbers of places typical of this class—namely, mica cutting and splitting, wool leaning. shellac manufacture, bedi making, carpet weaving and tanning. Mica Factories. The industry of mica cutting and splitting is almost entirely un- regulated, only one out of 127 factories in the province of Bihar and Orissa coming under the Factories Act because of its use of power machinery. The units are often large and may go up to as many as 800 workers. Approximately 30 per cent of the workers are children. The buildings are for the most part adequate, but much of the work is done on over- crowded verandahs. In most cases the hours are not excessive in the case of the adults or of the older children but, taking the time of leaving home and of returning to it in the case of those living in villages several miles distant, they are too long for the smaller children. There is no exa- mination in the case of the young workers to ascertain age or fitness, and children of from 6 to 10 years of age are employed directly or with their parents on splitting and sometimes also on cutting, because * if started young they may become experts ”—a statement which will have a familiar ring to those who have studied the history of the regulation of child labour in other countries. But in fairness to the employers, we should add that the representatives of the Kodarma Mica Association, who appeared hefore us. were prepared to agree to the exclusion of such children. Wool Cleaning. Wool cleaning is done in the Punjab and one or two other provinces. In the Punjab, women and children from about 8 years of age are employed, seated on the earth floor of the open yards to which the loosely baled wool is brought. The initial process consists of tearing or beating out, with the hands and with iron rods, lumps of dry mud, coagulated blood and other extraneous matter from the unsorted wool. This is a foul process and, as no system of grids to remove the scoumulated dust is provided, the air, the person and the ground quickly become covered with powdered dirt and wool fluff. Very young children sleep alongside their mothers on piles of wool, their faces and clothes co- vered with a fine layer of this germ-laden dust. Other women are employ- ed, either indoors or out, effecting a rough colour grading of the partly cleaned wool, men being used on the more skilled second grading for both rolonr and quality, which is done indoors. Here also. as the wool is

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