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APPENDIX I.
A.—TERMS OF REFERENCE AND LIST OF SUBJECTS WITH
COVERING LETTER TO PROSPECTIVE WITNESSES, -
(1) Letter to prospective witnesses.
The Chairman of the Royal Commission on Labour in India desires me to send
you the enclosed paper setting out the terms of reference to the Commission and a
Schedule of the subjects falling within them which appear likely to engage. the
Commissioners’ attention in the course of their enquiry.
I am to invite you/your organisation to submit, for the information of the
Commission, any written statement which is likely to contribute to the objects of the
inquiry.
The attached Schedule of subjects is not intended to be exhaustive, and the
Commission will welcome evidence on any matter falling within the scope of their
:nquiry, whether included in the Schedule or not. They also consider it unlikely
that you will feel called upon to deal with all the headings of the Schedule, and I am
bo suggest that you should select those in the subject-matter of which your expe-
rience mainly lies. They would be glad if in dealing with subjects mentioned in the
Schedule you would number the various parts of your reply to correspond with the
headings numbered in Arabic numerals in the Schedule (Nos. 1-—148). .
The Commission attach great importance to detailed evidence based on personal
sxperience of particular industries, localities or establishments, and they trust that
no possible witness will be deterred from proffering such evidence by its compara-
lively narrow field. Where information of a definitely statistical nature can be
given this will naturally be of the greatest value to the Commission.
In the case of witnesses giving evidence on behalf of industrial institutions it will
be of assistance if they will state in their evidence the nature of the firm’s business,
its output, period for which it has been operating, and particulars of number and
grading of its employees, male, female and juvenile. .
The Commission will find it of assistance if any memorandum of evidence you
may be willing to put forward may be sent as soon as possible, and in any case not
later than the , to the—
Joint Secretary to the Royal Commission on Labour in India,
Camp, India.
The Commission will of necessity have to limit the volume of oral evidence
taken by them, but they would bg obliged if you could state whether you wish to
give evidence in person before them and, if so, at what place it would be most
convenient for you to do so. They expect to visit all the leading industrial centres
and probably all the provincial capitals in the course of the cold weather of 1929-30.
(2) Terms of Reference.
“ To enquire into and report on the existing conditions of labour in industrial
andertakings and plantations in British India, on the health, efficiency and standard
of living of the workers, and on the relations hetween emolovers and emvloved. and
;0 make recommendations.”
Norz.—* Industrial undertaking” for the purpose of the Commission is interpreted asin Article 1
of the Washington Hours Convention, which is as follows :—
* For the purpose of this Convention, the term * industrial undertaking’ includes particularly :—
“ (a) Mines, quarries, and other works for the extraction of minerals from the earth,
* (b) Industries in which articles are manufactured, altered, cleaned, repaired, ornamented,
inished, adapted for sale, broken up or demolished, or in which materials are trans-
formed : including shipbuilding and the generation, transformation and transmission
sf electricity or motive nower of anv kind.
