Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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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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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. - Migration and the factory worker

Collection:: Economics Books

2 CHAPTER II. . not end here, In India the migration from the rural areas to the factories is not in the main a permanent exodus ; itis, in the minds of shose who undertake it and to a large extent in fact, a temporary trans- fer, and the recruit to industry continues to regard as his home the place from which he has come. A true understanding of this position is a necessary approachto nearly all the problems affecting this type of labour, and we must go on to examine in greater detail the character of the contact between the village and the factory. The Factory Worker not an Agriculturalist. Those anxious to emphasise the importance of this phenomenon are apt to suggest that the Indian factory worker is essentially an agri- culturalist, and the student unfamiliar with the facts is led to picture the main industries of India as manned by a mass of agricultural workers, temporarily forsaking the mattock and the plough to add to their income by a brief spell of industrial work in the city. It would not be unfair to say that this picture is in the minds of some employers, whose attention is focussed on the rapidity with which their own labour force changes. But it is not an accurate representation of the position, and has been responsible occasionally for a mistaken attitude to labour questions. [n the seasonal industries, dealing largely with the treatment of agricul- tural products in the raw state after they have been harvested, there is an intimate connection between industrial and agricultural work ; and in the collieries too there is a substantial class directly interested in agriculture. But in the regular factory industries which offer perma- nent work, the employer has generally got past the stage of being com- pelled to employ those who are prepared to work only for a few months of the vear. Connection with Agriculture. The truth behind the assertion of the agricultural character of the factory population—and it is a truth of primary importance—is that the great majority of those employed are at heart villagers ; they have had in most cases a village upbringing, they have village traditions and they retain some contact with the villages. This does not necessarily mean sven that they are all drawn from agricultural classes. There are in the villages important sections of the population whose occupation is not primarily agricultural and may not be agricultural at all ; the weaving sheds of textile factories, the tanneries, the railway workshops and other scenes of urban industry contain many who look back rather to village crafts than to village fields. But agriculture has naturally supplied the bulk of the recently established industrial population. Some factory workers, but far fewer than is frequently supposed, may have a direct interest in agriculture, in that they derive some pecuniary benefit from it ; more have indirect interests, in that members of that very variable group, the joint family, or other close relations have agricultural holdings. A larger number still have a home and members of their own family in the village and the latter may secure an income from agricultural work. Dccasionally members of the same family relieve each other by turns in

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