APPENDIX IIL. 
339 
B.—SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONNAIRE. 
Letter No. L. C. 5 (1), dated Simla, the 7th April 1920, from S. Lal, Esq., 
1.C.S., Joint Secretary, Royal Commission on Labour in India, to 
All Local Governments and Administrations excluding the North- 
West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. 
The Royal Commission on Labour is about to complete the first stage of its 
enquiry and the Chairman and Members feel that, while Local Governments and 
sthers have taken great care and trouble in the preparation of memoranda and 
written statements, which have proved invalusble, the information evoked by 
the lish of subjects circulated last year is in certain directions hardly sufficient 
to enable them adequately to discharge the terms of their reference. They would 
be greatly obliged, therefore, if the Local Government could supplement their evi- 
dence in two respects before the Commission completes its enouiry next cold weather 
and commences the writing of its report. 
9. The Commission is required by its terms of reference to enquire into and 
to report on the standard of living of the workers. A full discharge of this part 
of its reference would involve the collection and preparation of statistics based on 
family budget enquiries on a scale which has so far been attempted only ‘in a few 
centres such as Bombay, Sholapur, Ahmedabad and Rangoon. No adequate 
statistics of the kind are available in regard to other important centres. It has 
sherefore been decided to lay the position before Local Governments and to ask for 
such data as it may be possible to provide by the commencement of next cold weather. 
The decision as to the material which can be produced in the time must rest with 
the Governments concerned and this letter is to be regarded in the light of a supple- 
mentary questionnaire asking for information in regard to the standard of living of 
the workers. The Commission does not wish to prescribe any particular procedure 
for securing this information but it feels that it may be helpful if Local Governments 
are given some indication of the lines upon which, in the opinion of the Commis- 
sion, a useful enquiry, practicable within the time, could be undertaken bv Local 
Governments. 
3. The Commission fully appreciates the fact that a full enquiry on the lines 
of those recently conducted at Ahmedabad and Rangoon is out of the question 
within the time available, more especially as quch an enquiry would necessitate 
sonsiderable preliminary training of staff. Failing a comprehensive enquiry, whose 
results would be subject to scientific statistical treatment, the Commission would 
welcome the collection of particulars indicated by the schedule enclosed in regard 
to typical working class families, which would be useful for purposes of illustration 
when they come to report on matters referred to them. The object is to secure 
information regarding some poorer working families in order to supplement the in- 
formation that the Commission has gained as & result of its tour. “On a number of 
oceasions questions have been put to industrial workers designed to elicit informa- 
tion of the type contemplated in the schedule. But it is not easy in such matters 
for a large body like the Commission to obtain particulars of value or to test the in- 
formation supplied, and in any case the time at its disposal during this winter's 
tour has been insufficient to obtain all the information it would like to have in this 
direction. The Commission is therefore anxious to secure through the agency of the 
Local Governments evidence of the same character as it might itself have secured if it 
had had a much longer time at its disposal and had been able to obtain from a number 
of witnesses information of a somewhat intimate character regarding their manner 
of life. 
4. The value of this enquiry will depend on the accuracy of the information 
collected and the representative character of the families selected for investigation. 
The Commission, therefore, attaches greater importance to quality than to quantity 
provided care is exercised in obtaining representative samples. The method of 
sampling is of the greatest importance and the smaller the number of budgets collected 
the more dependent is the result on the judicious selestion of the sample. The