TRADE UNIONS, 
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with which industries are confronted. In our opinion it would be well 
if every organisation set up a special committee for the purpose of 
giving continuous consideration to the improvement of the well-being 
and the efficiency of the workers in the establishments controlled by 
its members. 
Beginnings of Labour Unions. 
On the labour side, trade unions in India have a short history. 
Attempts were made as early as the “eighties ” to organise the mill- 
hands of Bombay in support of proposals for labour legislation, and a 
Millhands’ Association was formed. But thisdid not survive and, prior 
to the war, organisation scarcely extended beyond the better paid railway 
employees and some classes of Government servants. The two or three 
years following the close of the war saw the formation of a large number 
of organisations, owing their origin mainly to the grave economic diffi 
culties of industrial labour. The leading industries were yielding 
phenomenal profits, but wages lagged behind prices, and labour, so far 
from participating in the unprecedented prosperity, often found condi- 
tions harder than before. The world-wide uprising of labour con- 
sciousness extended to India, where for the first time the mass of 
industrial workers awoke to their disabilities, particularly in the 
matter of wages and hours and to the possibility of combination. 
The effect of this surge was enhanced by political turmoil which added 
to the prevailing feeling of unrest and assisted to provide willing 
leaders of a trade union movement. The influence of nationalist 
politics on the movement had mixed results. It added intensity, but 
it also tended to increase bitterness and to introducein the minds of 
many employers a hostile bias against the movement. This, in its turn, 
tended to obscure the justice of many of the demands made and the 
fact that the movement was based on genuine and pressing needs. 
The “¢ Outsider >’ Controversy. 
During this period, controversy was largely occupied with the 
question of the outsider, 4.e., the labour leader drawn from outside the 
ranks of labour. Employers frequently announced their readiness to 
treat with unions led by their own workmen, but refused to recognise 
any outsiders. This claim had some support in the attitude of Govern- 
ment prior to 1920 towards unions of their own servants ; but the official 
position had been defined with a view to the pre-war organisations which 
catered mainly for the upper ranks of Government service, and in 1920 
the Government of India conceded the principle of the right to employ 
outsiders. In many cases the objection to outsiders was in essence 
objection to particular individuals, e.g., dismissed employees or politi 
cians. At a later date the legislative recognition of the right of registered 
unions to employ such persons and to include them in their executive, 
did much to diminish these objections. Controversy between employers 
and trade unions, though it has not concluded on this question, has tended 
latterly to become centred on another matter, namely, that of recognition. 
We shall revert to both these questions later.