UNREGULATED FACTORIES. 105
necessity for frequent visits, and to begin with at any rate, it will be suffi-
cient to cover only a proportion of the factories each year. Those which
do not use powér and which employ children in appreciable numbers
will require more attention, but even here visits can be brief, particularly
if they are made outside the hours within which the employment of
children is permissible. Here also the inspector would not require
any large amount of technical knowledge. Much of the inspection of
such places could be done by part-time inspectors, and we suggest
the empowering of municipal health officers, who are already con-
cerned with house to house visitation for the purposes of sanitary inspec-
tions, sub-divisional magistrates and other officers who may be available.
Their work should be co-ordinated by the Chief Inspector of Factories
acting in consultation with the medical authorities, and the qualified
inspectors maintained for the administration of the Factories Act might
inspect or re-inspect a small proportion of each class of factory. Where
the factories are so numerous as to necessitate the employment of a whole-
bime inspector, we suggest the use of the grade of assistant inspector
for the purpose. These should be selected, not so much on account of their
technical (e.g., engineering) qualifications as for character and address.
They should be remunerated on a scale which enables them effectively to
ignore the temptations to which they may be subjected at first by a certain
type of employer anxious to avoid compliance with the new requirements.
If filled by properly selected persons in the first instance, this grade
should prove a useful training ground for inspectors under the Factories
Act, to which senior grade there should be a free avenue of promotion
where this is warranted by individual ability.
Sympathetic Administration.
In conclusion, we suggest that the policy of gradualness which
underlies our proposals for legislation should also influence its en-
forcement. If our recommendations are adopted, the result will
be to bring a large number of establishments under control for the first
time. These will be owned in many cases by proprietors of limited edu-
cation. In matters other than those affecting child labour, the aim should
be the gradual raising of standards rather than the immediate enforcement
of any ideal, and it is important that the beginning of enforcement of con-
brol should be actuated by sympathetic understanding of the difficulties to
be encountered. To begin with there are bound to be many contraven-
bions of the law resulting from ignorance of its provisions, and until a know-
ledge of these has become fairly general, prosecutions should ordi-
narily be instituted only for an offence committed after a previous warn-
ing. We are convinced that, if the administration is animated from
the beginning by such a spirit, legislation on the lines advocated
will do much to improve the health and physical welfare of those who
are at present among the least protected and most helpless of the industrial
workers of India. Moreover, it will have been effected without the pos-
sibility of the ery being raised that the law has achieved the betterment
of the few at the expense of the livelihood of the many.
