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

CHAPTER II, inspiration than a reality. But in most cases the contact has begun at birth ; the proportion of industrial workers whose birthplace is the city is small. Many workers leave their wives in the country, and of those wives who come to the city, all who can do so return to the village for their confinement. The steady expansion of Indian industry year by year and the higher mortality in cities increase still further the numbers that have to be supplied from rural areas. Generally, too, child- hood is spent in the villages ; the raising of the minimum age for industrial smployment has strengthened this tendency. After industrial employ- ment has commenced, the worker returns to the village as often as he can. Financial considerations form the principal obstacle to frequent returns : the man who succeeds in the mills returns more regularly as his income rises. In the Bengal jute mills and the Bombay cotton mills, a number secure an annual holiday of anything from one to three months’ duration : others may go every second year. Yet others, owing to lack of money or for various reasons, may not go back for many years. Butat any time illness or urgent family affairs may compel a return, even when it hasto be financed by borrowing. The returned industrial worker may give assistance in agricultural operations, or he may prefer to remain anoccupied. It is interesting to note, for example, that the holiday exodus from the Bengal jute mills is at its height during a slack season for agriculture in the workers’ villages. The duration of the holiday is asually limited only by the money available ; more rarely it is determined by the necessity of complying with the instructions of the employer in the city. At other times, if close relatives remain in the villages, remit- sances may be sent regularly to them and serve to maintain contact, but apart from these, correspondence is usually infrequent. Nor are relatives the only ones who look for money orders. The village money-lender may have claims which have to be met, and occasionally his assistance is sought to meet the initial expenses involved in the exodus to the city. Finally, the worker looks forward to a time when his work in she factory will be over, and he can return to the village for good. (4) CAUSES OF MIGRATION, Economic Pressure. Emigration has always arisen mainly from the difficulty of finding an adequate livelihood in one’s native place, and this is the predominant force which impels the Indian villager to seek industrial employment, Over large parts of India, the number of persons on the land is much greater than the number required to cultivate it and appreciably in pxcess of the number it can comfortably support. In most areas, pressure on the land has been increasing steadily for a long time and a rise in the general standard of living has made this pressure more acutely felt. There has always been a substantial class of landless labourers, earning 3» meagre living in good seasons and apt to be reduced to penury in bad ones. The loss of land through indebtedness, the need or desire of a land- lord to increase his own cultivation, quarrels, the death of the title-holder and other causes, bring fresh recruits to this class. Among those who

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