UNREGULATED FACTORIES. 91 
regulation, here as in other countries, has been gradually to extend the 
area of protection afforded to the industrially employed worker. This 
principle has been effected in three ways—Dby regulation affecting specific 
classes of workers, by regulation affecting specific classes of estab- 
lishments and by powers given to local Governments to include under 
such regulation smaller places of a similar kind. The value of a policy 
of gradualness has been clearly demonstrated in the history of factory 
legislation in India in the past and ‘the dictates of common sense and 
practicability confirm us in the belief that the same policy should con- 
tinue to actuate future developments in factory legislation, : 
Utilisation of Local Governments’ Powers. 
The power granted to local Governments under Section 2 (3) (b) of 
the Act of 1922 to extend the Factories Act to smaller factories has been 
used by different Governments in very varying degrees. The following 
table shows the number of factories so notified in the veay 1929: 
Madras - .. 
Bombay .. » 
Bengal ve wi 
United Provinces .. 
Punjab ve ie 
Bihar and Orissa ve 
Central Provinces and Berar 
Assam .e wie .. 
North-West Frontier Province 
Ajmer-Merwara a 
Delhi .. % .. 
Coorg . “s “ 
Bangalore .. vs Hin 
Burma and Baluchistan Lo. 
9 
uJ 
1 
6 
* a 
A 
In some cases the power of notification has been used in respect 
of individual establishments which have tried to evade the law by a 
reduction in the number of operatives to the border line (i.e., 19 persons) 
or by dividing the operatives into shifts, In other cases the Act has 
been extended to groups of factories belonging to the same industry. 
Types of establishments in specific industries covered by such means 
in different provinces include saw-mills, type-casting foundries and yarn- 
dyeing premises. Most of these come under the category of those using 
power machinery. A few factories which do not use machinery have 
also been notified either on account of the large numbers employed or 
because of the danger of the processes or for other reasons. These 
include 13 hand match-making factories in the Bombay Presidency. 
The inaction in some provinces is explained mainly: by the fact that the 
burden of factory inspection could not be increased without adding to 
the existing staff. Some examination has been made of the conditions 
prevailing in specified trades hitherto industrially unregulated. In- 
stances in point are enquiries made by the Central Provinces in 1923 
in regard to small ginning factories, those of the Bombay and Bengal 
Presidencies in 1924 into the employment of children in match factories. 
Total 
184.