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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

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

Collection:: Economics Books

MIGRATION AND THE FACTORY WORKER. 15 retain tenancies, various changes may operate to render a holding insufficient for those dependent on it. An increase in the number of mem- bers of the family, a rise in rent, the growth of debt, all contribute to force the agricultural worker to abandon his ancestral occupation. Moreover, there are always large areas where the soil can produce enough for the people in the ordinary year, but where periodic drought or floods make living precarious. A generation ago there was, in some of these areas, no alternative to facing the penury of the lean years; but the opening up of the country by the improvement of communications has offered a way of escape. Migration has, in fact, been dependent upon opportunity. It is noteworthy, for example, that where a connection was established between a factory and a particular village or group of villages, recruits would continue to come from these, while adjacent areas yielded none. Some of the minor currents in the streams of migration owe their force to little more than accident. Village Crafts. It must not be supposed that the economic pressure which drives the villager to the city is confined to those engaged in agriculture. The village craftsman, working formerly within an isolated economic unit, finds himself, by the improvement of communications and the growth of in- dustry, subjected to competition from the larger world. The textile mills have many weavers drawn from families that, for generations previously, worked at handlooms ; the village worker in hides and leather, the carpenter and the blacksmith are all being subjected to pressure from the: factory. In many cases the easiest, perhaps the only, way out of the difficulty is for the village craftsman to transfer his allegiance to the rival which is supplanting him. Disabilities. Poverty, though it is the most important, is not the only dis- ability which drives the villager to the factory. All over India there are strata of the population who suffer from serious social disabilities ; the lower castes and those who are regarded as outside the pale of Hindu society find that in the industrial areas caste disabilities lose much of their force. With the growing realisation of the humiliation of their position and of the freedom which industry offers, there is an increasing readiness 5 migrate to industrial centres. In addition to the bondage which caste may inflict, there are other bonds which, if they were not consciously felt to be hardships a generation ago, are steadily becoming more irksome fo those subjected to them. There are traces of feudalism to be found Many parts of the country ; and in a few areas there is still a system of bond-zervice which is not far removed from slavery. We deal with this factor in a later chapter for, although it is responsible for some migration, that migration is not, as a rule, to the factories. But it is obvious that every disability to which men are subjected in the village adds attrac- bions to the avenues of escape which industry offers. In. addition to. those who migrate to escape from. destitution. or disabilities. there are

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation