SWEATING IN INDIA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2355, 23 November 1908, Page 6

SWEATING IN INDIA.

REVELATIONS OF CHILD

SLAVERY. 14 nomtS’ WORKING DAY. RECOMMENDATIONS OF SPECIAL COMMISSION. Remarkable revelations oi factory evils in India are made in the report, issued in London recently, of tlie- Indian Factory Labor Commission. It will be remembered that at tlic end of 1906 a Departmental Committee was appointed by the Government ol India under the chairmanship of Sir Hamilton Freer-Smith to inquire into the conditions of factory labor in textile factories in India, with the provision that should abuses be discovered by them a representative Commission would be appointed to examine the whole subject comprehensively before any radical changes were made in the existing factory law.

The present Commission was accordingly appointed in October last. As a “representative” body the Commission consisted of Indian officials and Mr Beaumont, superintending inspector of factories in England, on the one hand, and of experts nominated by various Chambers of Commerce and the Bombay Millowners’ Association on the other. Factory operatives, however, were not represented on the Commission, though their evidence was taken on a number of occasions. The Commission had, no doubt, a difficult problem to tackle, but the conclusions it arrived at are pretty definite.

JUTE MILLS THE WORST. Defining the term of "excessive hours” as a working period of more than twelve hours a day, the Commission finds that in ' textile factories excessive hours are frequently worked in cotton, mills; in all jute mills weavers are employed lor excessive hours; while operatives in the preparing ginning departments do not, except in a tew unimportant cases, work long hours.” The report gives the following summary of the facts: In the mills fitted with electric light in Bombay island the hours worked vary from 13 to 13-j a day; in _Ahmedabad similar hours are worked, tendency being to prolong the time if possible, and in one mill which we visited the operatives are sometimes worked for over 14 hours a day. A case where the hours were extended to 14-J is on record. In Broach work occasionally goes up to 141 hours a day. The Agra hours are from 135 as a minimum to 15J as a maximum; in Hathras they are only one hour less. In Lucknow the actual working clay is 132. In the Calcutta jute mills the weavers are on duty for 15 hours, -and this is, in some cases, extended to lot or 16 hours. In Sholapur the hours range from 12f to 131 ; in Delhi they are from 13 jto 171 a clay. In Amrit-. sar and Lahore, the hours average 135 in the hot season, and in some cases amount to 13 hours throughout the cold weather. ... It is to he remembered that in. all these cases the mills were not worked on the shift system. The case of seasonal factories is, perhaps, still worse. The gaining mills, for instance, are generally of a primitive character, so far as internal arrangements are concerned, and the labor force, chiefly women, is provided by contractors. The usual run is 12 hours with one set of hands, or 24 hours with a double shift; but at busy moments the gins are worked for periods of 15 hours and even more with; one set of hands.

The fact is, as the Commission observes, that the existing law is frequently “ignored to an extent not hitherto imagined.” The- law, for instance, prescribing for adults half an hour’s interval in the middle of the clay, is not observed in the Calcutta ■ jute mills, in so far as the- weavers are concerned; it is not observed in the cotton mills there; and it is generally disregarded in rice mills, ginning factories, presses, and floor mills throughout India. Similarly with the Sunday holiday, and the restrictions imposed upon the employment of women. They are simply and generally ignored. But-, says the report: The most serious abuses which have arisen in connection with the neglect to- observe the provisions of the existing; law relate to the employment of children in. textile factories. In the United Provinces generally; except Agra, in the Punjab, in Southern Madras, and in the cotton mills of Bengal children have ,as a rule been habitually worked during the whole running hours of the factories, not on the excuse that they were over 14 years of age, but in pure disregard of the law.

EVADING THE LAW. The children are worked beyond tile legal hours, and beyond the legal time of the clay, children under 9 being used as half-timers, and children under 14 as full-timers. In order to facilitate the employment of halftimers in excess of their legal hours of

■work it is tlio practice to have a school for them inside the mill compound. In many mills tho children clo not even get the mid-day interval, ancl one manager, says the report,

“went so far as to claim that it was a .sufficient: compliance with the law if half an hour’s interval were given to the half-timers before they began work or after they finished it.” _ The Cmomission was unable, in the absence of adequate statistical data, to arrive at any exact opinion’ as to the effect which this total disregard of hygienic principles is having on-the physique of the women. The children, especially in Cotton factories, no doubt are of poor physique, thin, and vvearv looking. The Commission thinks that if the very long hours worked in many mills were generally adopted or persisted in for any length of time they would almost certainly result in the physical deterioration of the operatives. It therefore thinks that the present factory law must be strengthened and in various ways- supplemented, and made efficacious. The Commission is against a direct restriction upon the hours of work of adult male factory operatives, but moves the following recommendations, the effect of which will nlso react on the position of the adult male: (1) The formation of a “young persons” class, to comprise all young adults bet wend the ages of 14 and 17, with working hours limited to 42 in anv one day; (2) the reduction of the working hours of children from 7 hours to 6 hours; (3) the prohibition of the employment of “young persons,” women, and children before 5.30 a.in. or after 7 pan.; (■*) tlio substitution of a compulsory interval alter six hours’ work, m place of the present midday interval; and (5) the assimilation of the restrictions placed upon the employment ol women to those proposed tor tlie “young persons’’ class. -