320 CHAPTER XVII, 
On a higher level come what may be described as the ad hoe unions, 7.e., 
organisations designed to secure some definite and immediate object. 
These, though they may be organised by independent persons, have 
their origin in the genuine need of the workers. The most common form 
is the strike committee, formed to carry on a strike and sometimes charged 
with the responsibility of formulating demands after the strike has 
begun. With the end of the dispute, particularly if the workers are 
unsuccessful, the “union” either disappears or enters a state of suspend- 
ed animation, from which it may be revived by a subsequent dispute. 
Unions of this type are frequently able to claim a very large membership 
for the time being, and they can be of distinct service to their members. 
But they do little in the way of educating their membership in trade 
unionism and may even create obstacles in the way of genuine trade 
unions. The majority of labour unions are now permanent and regular 
organisations. Transport is perhaps the best organised section of in- 
dustry ; the railway workers and seamen support a number of live unions, 
and dock workers have generally some organisation. Combination is fairly 
general among Government employees ; the stronger unions here are mainly 
those constituted of persons outside the ranks of labour, but there are 
unions of some strength within these ranks. Printers, with their educa- 
tional advantages and more settled conditions, find the formation of unions 
easy, but hitherto these have not proved very effective, being strongest 
in Government presses and weakest where the need is greatest. On the 
whole, the textile workers have been slow to organise. Up to 1926 there 
was no effective organisation of the cotton mill workers in Bombay, and 
even now very few of the jute mill workers in Bengal can be regarded 
as regularly organised. In Madras, on the other hand, the cotton mills, 
where organisation began, have remained as a focus of trade union acti- 
vity. In Ahmedabad, the workers, excluding the Musalman weavers, 
are organised in a group of craft unions which, participating in a common 
central federation, have a strength and cohesion probably greater than 
those of any other labour unions. This may have some connection 
with the survival, until a comparatively late date, of a strong 
guild tradition in Ahmedabad. This lateral method of organisation 
is comparatively rare in India, where the tendency has been to organise 
vertically, i.e., by industrial establishments. Even where more than 
one union is formed in the same industry and the same centre, the division 
is generally by factories and not by occupations. Mining workers are 
poorly organised in every field, and in the plantations genuine organisa- 
tion on the labour side is quite unknown. Measured geographically, 
trade unionism is strongest in Bombay Presidency, and weakest (having 
regard to the potentialities) in Bengal. 
Numerical Strength. 
As the foregoing remarks indicate, an accurate numerical esti- 
mate of the strength of trade unionism is almost impossible. In 
Bombay the Labour Office recorded the existence of 93 unions claiming 
120,000 members in September 1930, but this includes some unions 
which do not eater for industrial workers. For the rest of India no