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 II. - Migration and the factory worker

Collection:: Economics Books

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

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