046
CHAPTER X1V.
“home ” is no more than a place in which to cook food and to store
possessions. Kven where the employer provides housing, he is able to
do so only for a proportion of his workers, and in certain cases has
confined construction to barrack rooms suitable only for “ single ” men.
There is thus one outstanding and unhealthy characteristic peculiar to the
industrial areas, namely a marked disparity in the proportion of the
sexes. The number of women per 1,000 males in the more important
industrial cities in 1921 and 1931 was as follows ——
Rangoon 2
Calcutta and Suburbs ..
Bombay aT
Karachi - 4%
Cawnpore .o Co
1921. 1931.
# 47¢
506
524 553
629 697
RB7 GAR
Delhi i
Ahmedabad
Nagpur .
Sholapur ..
Madras ..
1921. 1931.
672 674
6° 0
852
894 880
OORk KAR
*Not available
If it were possible to analyse the figures for the industrial classes separate-
ly, the numbers would show an even greater disparity.
Effects of Sex Disparity.
This inequality gives rise to a number of grave social problems.
In the first place, it leads to an increase of prostitution and a subse-
quent spread of venereal disease first in the city and later to the
village, with the return of the migratory worker to his home. In
the second place, the effect on home life is often disastrous since a pre-
mium is put upon the formation of irregular unions. The very know-
ledge of this too often completes the vicious circle, many men hesitating
bo bring their wives into the industrial cities, where the atmosphere is so
alien to that of the village with its code of moral restraints. We have
advocated in an earlier chapter that no endeavour should be made to
break the thread that still binds the Indian factory worker to the soil.
By this, however, we should not be taken to mean that we favour the
present tendency of industry to divorce the factory worker from the
ordinary amenities of home life. Indeed, we believe that every effort
should be made to overcome these difficulties and to bring about a health-
ler sex proportion in the industrial cities. One of the most important
factors affecting this problem is the housing conditions in those areas,
with which we deal in the next chapter.
Cotton Mill Workers. ;
Even amongst the more or less permanent industrial workers,
physique is frequently unsatisfactory, and the standard is perhaps lowest
of all in the large organised industries. Inthe Bombay Presidency where
over 80 per cent of the workers are employed in the cotton mills, their
physical condition is admitted on all hands to be poor. An investiga-
tion carried out a few years ago showed that these mill workers have a
noticeably low average weight as compared with other classes of labour,
the average being highest in Sholapur, lowest in Bombay and midway in
