THE INCOME .OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKER. 217 
collected, especially in Bombay by the Labour Office. With the excep- 
tion of Bombay, provincial Governments appear to have agreed-that there 
was no need for legislation. We have had at our disposal the results 
of the enquiries made at that time and received a considerable amount 
of further evidence bearing on the subject. It appears that fining is a 
fairly general practice in perennial factories and on railways. It is 
much less common in mines and other forms of industrial activity and is 
practically unknown on plantations. So far as factories are concerned, 
the practice appears to be most prevalent in cotton textile mills, and 
for this reason it probably attains greater dimensions in the Bombay 
Presidency than elsewhere. The aggregate loss of wages by fines is 
nowhere large, and in all but a few centres it is extremely small. When 
the Bombay Labour Office made its enquiries in 1926, it found that in 
the Ahmedabad textile mills which furnished returns the workers lost 
in fines no less than one per cent of the total wages bill. But this is 
altogether exceptional, as, we hope, is the practice also found in Ahmed- 
abad of permitting the individual who inflicts the fine to benefit by it. 
The average loss per worker, however, is little indication of the hard- 
ship involved in fines, and this can be serious in individual cases. It 
has to be remembered that numerous deductions of other kinds are 
also made by some employers. For example, medical attendance, educa- 
tion, reading rooms, interest on advances of their own wages, 
charities, religious purposes selected by the employer and various other 
benefits or causes are made the ground of compulsory deductions. A 
“0mmon practice in the cotton textile mills is the handing over to the 
weaver of cloth from his own loom spoilt in the course of manufacture 
and the deduction from his wages of the wholesale selling price. Another 
Practice followed in some mills is the deduction of two days’ pay for one 
1av’s absence 
Need for Legislation. 
Deductions from wages fall roughly into three classes, namely, 
fines which are imposed for disciplinary reasons, deductions on account 
of damage sustained by the employer and deductions for the use of 
Material and tools and for other benefits provided by the employer. In 
all three cases we consider that there are strong grounds for legislative 
‘egulation. In the first place, the worker is utterly helpless in the 
Matter. The employer, or more commonly his subordinate, deter- 
Mines when a deduction should be made and fixes its amount 
which is recovered from the wages due to the worker, Similar practices 
‘0 other countries have led in a number of cases to statutory 
regulation. Moreover in many of these countries organisation on 
the part of the workers gives some security against excessive and 
nexcusable deductions, In India both forms of protection are 
3enerally lacking. Further, the fact that in many cases the workers’ 
wages suffice for little more than the purchase of the primary neces- 
SIties of life makes even a small deduction a definite hardship, while 
the larger deductions may increase their indebtedness and even 
Cripple their resources for some time Even when actual hardship is not