Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:51:53.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Decline and Fall of the Jobber System in the Bombay Cotton Textile Industry, 1870–1955

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2008

RAJNARAYAN CHANDAVARKAR
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1981, on the eve of the general strike that convulsed the Bombay cotton textile industry, millowners, managers and workers alike acknowledged that the jobber was a thing of the past. The jobber system, they agreed, had been dismantled decades previously.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 117 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Interviews, January–March 1981.

2 V. B. Kulkarni, History of the Indian Cotton Textile Industry (Bombay: BMOA, 1979), p. 372. This book was commissioned by the Bombay Millowners’ Association.

3 van Wersch, H., Bombay Textile Strike, 1982–83 (Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 301.Google Scholar

4 Lall, S., ‘Organization of labour in the Indian cotton textile industry’ in Gandhi, M. P. (ed.), The Indian Cotton Textile Industry, 1851–1950: First Centenary Volume (Bombay, 1951), p. 145.Google Scholar

5 Rutnagur, S. M. (ed.), Bombay Industries: The Cotton Mills—A Review of the Progress of the Textile Industry in Bombay From 1850 to 1926 and the Present Constitution, Management and Financial Position of Spinning and Weaving Factories (Bombay, 1927), p. 319.Google Scholar

6 Burnett-Hurst, A. R., Labour and Housing in Bombay: A Study in the Economic Conditions of the Wage-Earning Classes in Bombay (London, 1925), p. 48.Google Scholar

7 Vinayak A. Talcherkar, ‘Our millhands and the factory labour agitation’ in Government of Bombay (henceforth, GB), General Department, Vol. 44 (Kolhapur: Maharashtra State Archives [henceforth, MSA], 1909), p. 9.

8 Morris D. Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854–1947 (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1965); C. A. Myers, Labour Problems in the Industrialization of India (Cambridge, MA, 1958); D. Mazumdar, ‘Labour supply in early industrialization: The case of the Bombay textile industry’ in Economic History Review, 2nd series, Vol. XXV, No. 3 (1973), pp. 477–96; R. Das Gupta, ‘Factory labour in Eastern India: Source of supply, 1855–1946: Some preliminary findings’ in Indian Economic and Social History Review [henceforth IESHR ], Vol. 13, No. 3 (1976), pp. 277–328; Colin Simmons, ‘Recruiting and organizing an industrial labour force in colonial India: the case of the coal mining industry, c.1880–1939’ in IESHR, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1976), pp. 455–85; B. Misra, ‘Factory labour during the early years of industrialization: An appraisal in the light of the Indian Factory Labour Commission, 1890’ in IESHR, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1975), pp. 203–28; D. Kooiman, ‘Jobbers and the emergence of trade unions in Bombay city’ in International Review of Social History, Vol. XXII, No. 3 (1977), pp. 313–28; R. Newman, ‘Social factors in the recruitment of the Bombay millhands’ in K. N. Chaudhuri and C. J. Dewey (eds.), Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History (Delhi, 1979), pp. 277–95; R. Newman, Workers and Unions in Bombay, 1918 –1929 (Canberra, 1981); C. Joshi, ‘Kanpur textile labour: Some structural features of formative years’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XVI, Nos. 44–46 (November 1981), pp. 1823–38; C. Joshi, ‘Bonds of community, ties of religion: Kanpur textile workers in the early twentieth century’ in E. D. Murphy (ed.), Unions in Conflict: A Comparative Study of Four South Indian Textile Centres, 1918–1939 (Delhi, 1981); D. Chakrabarty, ‘On deifying and defying authority: Managers and workers in the jute mills of Bengal, circa 1890–1940’ in Past and Present, No. 100 (1983), pp. 124–46; D. Chakrabarty, ‘Conditions for knowledge of working-class conditions: Employers, government and the jute workers of Calcutta, 1890—1940’ in R. Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Vol. 2 (Delhi, 1983), pp. 258–310; D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal, 1890–1940 (Delhi, 1989); I. Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850 to 1900 (Delhi, 1995); M. Carter, Servants, Settlers and Sirdars: Indians in Mauritius, 1834–1974 (Delhi, 1995); D. Simeon, The Politics of Labour Under Late Colonialism: Workers, Unions and the State in Chota Nagpur, 1928—1939 (New Delhi, 1995).

9 M. D. Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in India; Das Gupta, ‘Factory labour in Eastern India’. As Morris and others have shown, the assumption of labour scarcity was not always borne out by the evidence. Conversely, the extent of wage competition between mills, high rates of absenteeism and labour turnover and the continuing difficulties that employers encountered with work discipline casts doubt on the proposition that the recruitment, let alone the control, of labour was unproblematic. See R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp. 99–110, 295–307.

10 S. D. Mehta, The Indian Cotton Textile Industry: An Economic Analysis (Bombay: The Textile Association, 1953), p. 67; R. Newman, Social factors in the recruitment of the Bombay millhands, p. 278; D. Mazumdar, ‘Labour supply in early industrialization’.

11 M. D. Morris, The Emergence of An Industrial Labour Force in India, p. 131. Morris who characterised jobbers as a ‘middle management cadre’ nonetheless argued that they ‘contributed to the ramshackle discipline within individual mills and within the industry as a whole’ and further that ‘the jobber had no interest in the long-run efficiency of the mill’. Ibid., p. 129. Indeed, another historian of the Bombay textile industry argued that far from simply ensuring an abundant supply of cheap labour, the jobber orchestrated a supply of casual labour that was undisciplined, inefficient and relatively expensive. The jobber's interventions ensured that the extensive use of casual labour did not drag down the wages of permanent workers while they helped to maintain a significant differential between the wages of both ‘permanent’ and badli labour and more substantially, between urban and rural wages. By abolishing the jobber system, the millowners might have removed important constraints upon the free play of the labour market and forced the creation of a more efficient labour force. D. Mazumdar, ‘Labour supply in early industrialization’. However, see the critique of Mazumdar's findings in R. Newman, ‘Social factors in the recruitment of the Bombay millhands’, pp. 284–87; and Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp. 307–9.

12 D. Chakrabarty, ‘Conditions for knowledge of working-class conditions’, p. 308. In this view, seeking to revive the notion that the jobber system was an indigenous institution, the jobber was an expression of the culture that modern industry inherited, an archaic pre-industrial survival that became increasingly irrational and dysfunctional to capitalist interests. This orthodoxy has also been recently re-stated in D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History. For a measured statement of this orientalist argument, see R. Newman, Workers and Unions in Bombay, 1918–1929, pp. 54–55. Newman depicted the jobber's gang as a microcosm of Indian society or perceived his position as analogous to the ‘village headman’ and traced its origins to ‘the many subtle variations of culture and custom which hampered effective understanding and control of the workforce’. See R. Newman, ‘Social factors in the recruitment of the Bombay millhands’, pp. 277–81; D. Mazumdar, ‘Labour supply in early industrialization’. Dipesh Chakrabarty sought to take this argument a step further towards the cultural essence that colonial discourse had sought to distil. The jobber system was, he argued, adapted to the cultural imperatives of the workers and their society. To suggest that it was shaped by ‘the needs of capital’, he argued, may be ‘fine and important, but it does not go far enough’ (D. Chakrabarty, ‘Conditions for knowledge of working-class conditions’, p. 305). For, the sardar's authority was not only incompatible with bourgeois codes of discipline but also constituted an integral part of ‘the culture’ to which both the sardar and the worker belonged. This culture was described in terms that were of course mimetic of the venerable orientalist tradition that had long identified caste as the central social fact about India and taken the strength of the society's emphasis upon the ‘primordial loyalties’ of ‘religion, community, kinship and language’ for granted. For a different analysis of the sirdar in the jute mills, A. R. Cox, Paternal Despotism and Workers’ Resistance in the Bengal Jute Industry, 1920–1940, PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999.

13 D. Chakrabarty, ‘Conditions for knowledge of working-class conditions’, p. 308.

14 Indeed, as the cultural and linguistic gulf between managers and workers was bridged, employers showed little enthusiasm for abolishing the jobber system. Not even in Bombay where the overwhelming majority of mills were owned by Indians and the proportion of Europeans among the senior mill staff had declined substantially by the 1920s. The proportion of Europeans among the senior mill staff declined from a significant 42% in 1895 to about 28% in 1925. S. M. Rutnagur (ed.), Bombay Industries, p. 294ff. Industrial centres, such as Ahmedabad or Coimbatore, where Indians predominated in the managerial ranks, continued to use jobbers.

15 Chandavarkar, R., Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State, 1850–1950 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 21–26.Google Scholar

16 H. S. Maine, Village Communities in the East and West (London, 1871); B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community (London, 1896); on colonial constructions of the village community, see C. Dewey, ‘Images of the village community: a study in Anglo-Indian ideology’ in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1972), pp. 291–328; on its Relationship to an Orientalist Discourse, see R. Inden, Imagining India (Oxford, 1991).

17 These characterisations were sometimes combined with the notion that, as peasants in the city, workers were also highly quiescent and even passive. See, for instance, Report of the Indian Factory Labour Commission (henceforth, IFLC), Vol. 1 (Simla, 1908), p. 19; Royal Commission on Labour in India (henceforth, RCLI), Bombay Presidency, Evidence, Government of Bombay, Vol. 1, Part 1 (London, 1931), p. 7.

18 For representations of the volatility of workers and their propensity to violence, see R. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, chapter 5.

19 Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, pp. 14–17; Report of the RCLI, pp. 12–17.

20 B. Shiva Rao, The Industrial Worker in India (London, 1939), p. 90; A. R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing in Bombay, p. 47; J. H. Kelman, Labour in India (London, 1923).

21 Report of the Census of India, 1921, p. 88, para 67; p. 92, para 74.

22 R. N. Gilchrist, Indian Labour and Land (Calcutta, 1932), pp. 6–7.

23 Report of the RCLI, pp. 23–24.

24 Ibid.

25 RCLI, Evidence (Bengal: Government of Bengal), Vol. 5, Part 1, p. 153.

26 Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island (henceforth, Gazetteer), Vol. 1 (Bombay, 1909), pp. 493–94.

27 Burnett-Hurst, A. R., Labour and Housing in Bombay: A Study in the Economic Conditions of the Wage-Earning Classes in Bombay (London, 1925), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 48.

29 RCLI, Evidence, Bombay Presidency, Government of Bombay, Vol. 1, part 1, p. 5.

30 Indian Textile Journal, Vol. 3, No. 35 (1893), pp. 224–25; A. R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing in Bombay, pp. 46–47; Report of the RCLI, p. 23.

31 Indian Tariff Board (henceforth, ITB), Evidence, Vol. II (Bombay: BMOA, 1927), pp. 347–52.

32 Historians have often followed the tramlines of colonial discourse. Often, scholars have speculated on the origins of the jobber system in search of an explanation for its operations. Moreover, the explanation is presented in terms of its economic value to employers or the cultural imperatives of the workers; sometimes as a choice between the two alternatives.

33 Report of the RCLI, p. 23.

34 Significantly, from the earliest days of the industry in Bombay, managers were consistently more willing than millowners to criticize the workings of the jobber system. In Bombay, the number of Indian managers was considerable and it increased steadily from the late nineteenth century onwards. They may have from the outset been reluctant to accept the characterisation of this cultural chasm and, in any case, concerned to stamp their authority on the mills. See Indian Textile Journal, Vol. III, No. 35 (1893), pp. 224–25; Ibid., Vol. VIII, No. 88 (1898), p. 102; Ibid., Vol. XX, No. 229 (1909), p. 2.

35 B. Shiva Rao, The Industrial Worker, p. 91.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., p. 92.

38 S. M. Rutnagur (ed.), Bombay Industries, p. 292. It may have been the case that the mills in Bombay, largely owned and managed by Indians, and where Indian elites retained considerable political influence, were less marked by brutality and violence than the railways, the coal mines of Raniganj and Jharia or the jute mills of Bengal. On the railways, see D. Arnold, ‘Industrial violence in colonial India’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 2 (1980), pp. 234–55; on steel and coal mining, see D. Simeon, The Politics of Labour under Late Colonialism: Workers, Unions and the State in Chota Nagpur, 1928–39 (Delhi, 1995); on Kanpur, see C. Joshi, Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten Histories (Delhi, 2003), pp. 142–55; on Bengal, see D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, chapter 5; and A. R. Cox, ‘Paternal Despotism and Workers’ Resistance’, especially chapter 2.

39 S. M. Rutnagur (ed.), Bombay Industries, p. 292.

40 Ibid., p. 326.

41 Mehta, S. D., The Cotton Mills of India, 1854–1954 (Bombay: The Textile Association, 1954), p. 107.Google Scholar

42 R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 7.

43 S. D. Mehta, The Cotton Mills of India, p. 108.

44 Ibid., p. 109; R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 7.

45 S. D. Mehta, The Cotton Mills of India, p. 110; R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp. 295–307.

46 Thus, the Indian Textile Journal, which was broadly sympathetic to the interests of mill managers and officials, remained critical of the jobber system since the 1890s. See M. D. Morris, Industrial Labour Force, pp. 145–48.

47 Yolland, Z., Boxwallahs: the British in Cawnpore, 1857–1901 (Norwich, 1994), pp. 249–51.Google Scholar

48 D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, especially chapter 5.

49 The Dundee Year Book, 1894 (Dundee, 1895), p. 95, cited by D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, p. 164.

50 D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History, pp. 165–66. Thus, presenting the managerial view of themselves, and their paternalism, Chakrabarty observed that the manager had ‘an overpowering presence’ and workers were ‘made to feel it’, and that while the manager appropriated ‘absolute authority to himself’, workers saw him ‘as absolutely powerful’. His analysis of how the workers saw their managers was shaped largely by his reliance upon the latter's representation of themselves. For a sustained critique of this supposed paternalism in the jute industry, see A. R. Cox, ‘Paternal Despotism and Workers’ Resistance’, chapter 2, passim.

51 ITB, Cotton Textile Industry Enquiry, Evidence, Bombay Millowners’ Association, Vol. II (Calcutta, 1927), pp. 347–52.

52 FC, 1885, p. 79; RCL, 1892, p. 124; IFLC, Vol. I, 1908, pp. 14–17; IFLC, Vol. II, 1908, pp. 49–50, 52, 56, 72, 84–85, 116; Report of the IIC, p. 152.

53 Gazetteer, Vol. I, p. 494.

54 A. R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing in Bombay, pp. 46–48.

55 As B. Shiva Rao noted, ‘The jobber is not the only one to be satisfied; there is the time-keeper, an important functionary in many mills, and the muster clerk’, quoted in Shiva Rao, The Industrial Worker, p. 90.

56 A boarding house where single migrants in the city could arrange to take their meals.

57 See R. Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 5, especially pp. 195–200; and R. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, chapter 4.

58 J. H. Kelman, Labour in India (London, 1923), pp. 106–7; M. C. Matheson, Indian Industry, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (London, 1930), pp. 132–33.

59 Report of the RCLI, p. 24.

60 See, for instance, Report of the Commissioners Appointed by the Governor of Bombay -in-Council to Inquire into the Conditions of the Operatives in the Bombay Presidency, 1875, p. 30.

61 Report of the Indian Tariff Board, Vol. 1, 1927; Report of the RCLI, Vol. IX, 1930–1931.

62 Report of the RCLI, p. 26.

63 However, while the association addressed issues of jobber reform, their members did not readily follow its lead. Individual mills valued jobber networks and were reluctant to surrender their local methods and mechanisms of labour control so easily to the scrutiny of their rivals or officials.

64 Labour Gazette, Vol. XIII (October 1933), p. 122.

65 M. D. Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in India, p. 129. For, Morris reasoned, ‘coming from the same social and economic strata as the workers whom he tyrannised, typically illiterate, with no hope of promotion into managerial ranks, the jobber had no interest in the long-run efficiency of the mill’.

66 S. M. Edwardes, Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, Vol. I, pp. 493–94.

67 ITB, Evidence, Vol. IV, 1927, p. 204.

68 Just as the jobber's powers were sometimes liable to exaggeration in colonial discourse, historians have sometimes moved from an emphasis on his role as a cultural intermediary characterising him as an agent of social control. See, for instance, R. Newman, Workers and Unions in Bombay, 1918–1929; D. Kooiman, ‘Jobbers and the emergence of trade unions in Bombay city’; D. Chakrabarty, ‘On defying and deifying authority’ and Rethinking Working Class History, chapter 5; C. Joshi, ‘Bonds of community, ties of religion: Kanpur textile workers in the early twentieth century’.

69 A retired mill manager, The Bombay Cotton Mills: the Spinning of 10’s, 20's and 30's Counts (Bombay, 1907); Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. I (MSA), pp. 670, 678–79, and Vol. II, p. 695; and Report of the BSEC, Vol. 1, pp. 130–34.

70 A. R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing, pp. 44–47; RCLI, Bombay Presidency, Evidence, Seth Ambalal Sarabhai, Vol. I, Part i, p. 277; Proceedings of the Bombay Disturbances Enquiry Committee, Oral Evidence, Mahadev Naik, in GOB, Home (Special) File 550 (25) III B of 1938, pp. 52–55.

71 ‘The Kamgar Hitwardhak Sabha: A brief sketch’ in Indian Textile Journal, Vol. 29 (July 1919), pp. 177–79 and Ibid., Vol. 29 (August 1919), pp. 209–10; Minute Books of the Bombay Textile Labour Union, N. M. Joshi Papers File (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library); Interview, B. T. Ranadive, April 1979, V. B. Karnik, March 1979.

72 Extracts from Girni Kamgar Union Minute Book on Public Meetings, in Proceedings of the Meerut Conspiracy Case Vol. 10, Marathi Exhibits, pp. 16–17.

73 Report of the BSEC, Vol. 1, pp. 130–34; Labour Office, Report on an Enquiry into the Deductions from Wages or Payments in Respect of Fines (Bombay, 1928); Report of the Textile Labour Inquiry Committee, Vol. II, Final Report (Bombay, 1953), pp. 37–44.

74 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, p. 304.

75 RCLI, Bombay Presidency, Evidence, Seth Ambalal Sarabhai, Vol. 1, Part ii, p. 114; Annual Report of the BMOA, 1938, p. 53; Proceedings of the TLIC, Main Inquiry, Oral Evidence, Mr. A. W. Pryde (Bombay: Government Labour Officer), File 66, p. 2334, MSA.

76 Clearly, there were controls on this system: in some cases, they had to be accounted for or sanctioned by the supervisory staff. But these were precisely the areas of labour management in which millowners and managers intervened as little as possible. See Report on . . . Deductions from Wage (Bombay: Government Labour Office).

77 Interview, P. K. Sawant, 17 March 1979.

78 A retired mill manager, Bombay Cotton Mills; RCLI, Bombay Presidency, Evidence, Mr. M. S. Bhumgara, Vol. 1, Part I, p. 503; Ibid., Social Service League, Vol. 1, Part 1, p. 432.

79 B. Shiva Rao, The Industrial Worker, p. 90.

80 R. Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp. 305–7.

81 Ibid., chapter 5; R. Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, chapter 4.

82 ITB, Evidence, Vol. II (Bombay: BMOA, 1927), pp. 347–52; RCLI, Bombay Presidency, Evidence, Vol. I, Part I (Bombay: BMOA), p. 386.

83 Edwardes, S. M., The Rise of Bombay: A Retrospect (Bombay, 1901), p. 330.Google Scholar

84 Report of the Indian Factory Labour Commission (henceforth IFLC), Vol. 1 (1908), pp. lxxiv, pp. 6–8.

85 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1905, p. 8; see also Annual Report of the BMOA, 1906, pp. ii–xv, Annual General Meeting (AGM); Annual Report of the BMOA, 1907, pp. xiv–svi, AGM; IFLC, Evidence, Vol. II, pp. 85, 109, 182; L. Fraser, India Under Curzon and After (London, 1911), pp. 34–35.

86 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1906, p. 18.

87 IFLC, Evidence, Vol. II, 1908, p. 113. Indicative of the ‘exceptionalism’ with which official ideology was imbued was the fact that the commission reported that labour instability was due to the fact that ‘the Indian operative is fond of change; he prefers to wander from mill to mill rather than remain settled’.

88 Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, pp. 6–8.

89 Calculated from Annual Report of the BMOA, 1913–1927.

90 Shah, M. M., Labour Recruitment and Labour Turnover in the Textile Industry of the Bombay Presidency, PhD dissertation (Bombay: Bombay University, 1941), p. 143.Google Scholar

91 Proceedings of the TLIC, Main Enquiry, Oral Evidence, BMOA, File 58-A, p. 358, MSA.

92 Ibid., Main Enquiry, Oral Evidence, BMOA, File 57-A, p. 169, MSA.

93 Ibid., Main Inquiry, Oral Evidence, BMOA, File 57-A, p. 193, MSA.

94 Calculated from Industrial Disputes in the Bombay Presidency, Labour Gazette, 1922–1934, passim. In Ahmedabad, too, it was the weavers who provided much of the opposition to the Textile Labour Union, and it was on the basis of their support that the Mill Kamdar Union, influenced by communism, operated in the later 1930s.

95 Meade-King, W. O., Report on the Working of the Indian Factories Act in Bombay, together with certain suggestions and proposals (Bombay, 1882), p. 4.Google Scholar

96 Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, 1908, p. 27.

97 Report of the IFC, p. 8.

98 Report of the Indian Factory Commission, 1890, pp. 8–9; see also evidence of Khoosia, p. 28

99 Report of the IFC, p. 11.

100 S. D. Mehta, Cotton Mills; Report of the Indian Factory Commission, September 1890; also Vol. LIX (1890–1891), pp. 6–8.

101 Significantly, however, the legislation did not protect labour in general. No attempt was made to reform the burdens that adult male labour might bear. For such ‘interference’, it was noted, ‘would be repugnant to the great majority of capitalists both in India and abroad, who have invested or are considering the question of investing, money in India’. Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1 (London, 1908), pp. 32, lxxiv.

102 Report . . . on the Working of the Indian Factories Act in Bombay, p. 7; see also Report of the IFC, p. 9.

103 Report of the IFC, 1890, p. 8.

104 Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, p. 17.

105 Report . . . on the Working of the Indian Factories Act in Bombay; Report of the IFC, p. 8; Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, pp. 14–16.

106 Report . . . on the Working of the Indian Factories Act in Bombay, p. 4; Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, p. 14.

107 Report of the IFLC, Vol. 1, p. 17.

108 Report . . . on the Working of the Indian Factories Act in Bombay, p. 4.

109 Report of the IFC, p. 8.

110 Report of the IFLC, 1908, Vol. 1, pp. 14, 17.

111 Report of the Indian Factory Commission, Vol. IX (1890–1891), pp. 8–11; Report of the Indian Factory Labour Commission, Vol. i (1908), pp. 14–18, xxiv; Indian Factory Labour Commission, Evidence, Vol. II (1908), pp. 85–115.

112 Annual Factory Reports, 1922–1927.

113 Report of the Indian Factory Labour Commission, Vol. 1 1908, pp. 15, 17.

114 Report . . . on the Working of the Indian Factories Act in Bombay, p. 8.

115 Ibid. ‘In one case, for example’, it added, ‘a teacher entirely ignorant of English was supposed to be giving instruction in that language’.

116 Report of the IFC, p. 7.

117 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1920, p. 1.

118 Calculated from Annual Reports of the BMOA, passim. The average number of workers employed daily understates the total number that depended upon the industry for their livelihood and thus also does not indicate the real magnitude of increase in the size of the labour force.

119 Report of the Industrial Disputes Committee (Bombay, 1922), p. 2.

120 A. R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing, Appendix IV, pp. 146–47.

121 Labour Office, Report on Wages and Hours of Labour in the Cotton Mill Industry (Bombay: Government Labour Office, 1926), p. 13.Google Scholar

122 Bombay Confidential Proceedings, Judicial Department, vol. 46 (February 1919), pp. 19–36.

123 Report of the Industrial Disputes Committee (Bombay, 1922), p. 2.

124 See R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism.

125 The number of immigrants into Bombay city from Ahmednagar increased from 14,611 in 1911 to 48,501 in 1921; Nasik from 9,863 to 24,451; UP from 50,682 to 70,911; Punjab from 8,616 to 10,425. See RCLI, Vol. 1, Part 1 (Bombay: Bombay Presidency), written evidence Memorandum submitted by the Governor of Bombay, p. 5. For the causes of migration from each of these areas and its social characteristics, see R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 4.

126 W. D. Rowe, ‘Caste, kinship and association in urban India’ in A. Southall (ed.), Urban Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies of Urbanization (New York: ?, 1973), pp. 211–49. For the claim that working class life was dominated by Maratha culture, by ‘another outsider’, S. H. Jhabwala, the Parsi labour leader, see his examination in the Proceedings of the Meerut Conspiracy Case, Statements made by the Accused, Non-Communist Series, pp. 741, 756.

127 Sedgwick, L. J., ‘The composition of Bombay city population in relation to birthplace’, in Labour Gazette, Vol. 1, No. 7 (March 1922), pp. 15–19.Google Scholar

128 Ibid. The number of all Mahars in Bombay in 1921 had increased in that decade by 77%. Similarly, the number of Dheds and Holiyas in Bombay city had doubled since 1901, even though their the total strength had declined by 3% since 1911, suggesting more strongly that they had borne the brunt of the scarcities and famines of the decade. The number of Chambars increased by a similar proportion but having begun from a smaller base and their numbers in the city even in the early 1920s remained modest.

129 A. R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing in Bombay; S. M. Rutnagur (ed.), Bombay Industries.

130 Masselos, ‘Jobs and Jobbery’, Cambridge University Press.

131 This point is elaborated in R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism.

132 See Ibid..

133 Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, GOB Judicial, 29 January 1919, in Bombay Confidential Proceedings, Vol. 46 (London: Oriental and India Office Collection [henceforth, OIOC], The British Library, 1919), pp. 26–31.

134 Times of India, 13 January 1919.

135 Ibid., 16 January 1919.

136 Bombay Chronicle, 18 January 1919.

137 Times of India, 20 January 1919

138 On Mayekar, S. M. Rutnagur Bombay Industries, p. 486; R. Newman, Workers and Unions in Bombay, 1918–1929, p. 129. A few years earlier, in the 1914, Mayekar appears to have been a jobber at the Colaba Land Mill. Bombay Presidency Police, Secret Abstracts of Intelligence, 1914.

139 Minute Books of the Bombay Textile Labour Union (Marathi and Urdu), N. M. Joshi Papers, Files 28, 35 (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library).

140 S. M. Rutnagur, Bombay Industries, p. 319.

141 RCLI, Bombay Presidency, Evidence, Vol. I, Part i (Bombay: Bombay Textile Labour Union), pp. 296–97, 298–99.

142 BRIC, Oral Evidence, Sir Manmohandas Ranji, File 2, 1929, p. 367, MSA.

143 Report of the Industrial Disputes Committee (Bombay, 1922).

144 GOB Home (Special) File 543 (10) of 1928; File 543 (10) E Pt D of 1929, File 543 (10) E Pt D of 1930 on the 1928–1929 general strikes, Files 750 (76) of 1930, 750 (39)—II 800 (72) and 800 (4) of 1932 on Civil Disobedience Files 543 (10)—D Pt A of 1928, 543 (10) DC Pt A and 543 (10) DC Parts I–IV of 1930 on the GIP railway strike; Files 543 (48), 543 (48) K, 543 (48) L and 543 (48) J of 1934 on the general strike of that year; MSA.

145 For the context of the negotiations and discussions about rationalisation in the 1920s and 1930s, see R. Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 8.

146 Proceedings of the BSEC, p. 390.

147 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. III, pp. 797–98.

148 Quoted in Proceedings of the BSEC, p. 489.

149 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. III, p. 678.

150 Ibid., p. 395.

151 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. III, pp. 797–98.

152 Report of the BSEC, Vol. 1, p. 143.

153 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, p. 679.

154 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. III, p. 695.

155 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, pp. 705–6.

156 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, p. 732.

157 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. III, p. 760. However, it was in the weaving department that the brunt of the wage cuts would have to be borne.

158 Proceedings of the BSEC Vol. III, pp. 762–835.

159 Ibid., p. 395. The average wage for the Head Jobber in the blow room was said to be Rs. 3-10-9 in 1923 and Rs. 3-8-8 in 1926 for workers paid according to time. According to the standard list in 1928, they were expected to earn between Rs. 3-4-3 and Rs. 3-14-9, depending ‘on the number of lines attended to’. In other words, increased workloads were envisaged under the scheme. Wages for pieceworkers in 1923 and 1926 were considerably higher but ‘there are very few pieceworkers’.

160 Ibid.., p. 416.

161 Ibid..

162 The millowners’ representatives but the figures cited by Joshi suggest that there may, indeed, have been a small wage cut. Ibid.

163 Ibid., p. 489.

164 Ibid., p. 435. The increase in workloads was significant. Two line jobbers were required to mind more than 18,000 spindles in 1928. Under the scheme, they would have to attend up to 25,000 spindles. Their wages were to be more severely reduced from an average of Rs. 84-5-9 in 1926 to Rs. 68.

165 Ibid., p. 436.

166 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, p. 732. S. A. Dange's suggestion, speaking for ‘the other side’, that ‘their wings should be clipped and handed over to the workers’ was received with a deafening silence.

167 However, one of the complaints of workers placed on rationalised work was that higher count spinning or weaving See, for instance, the comment by N. M. Joshi, Proceedings of the BSEC, 1928; Proceedings of the Textile Labour Inquiry Committee, File 61, Oral evidence of cotton mill workers, (Bombay: MSA, 1937–1940).

168 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, p. 732.

169 See, for instance, the comment by N. M. Joshi, Proceedings of the BSEC, 1928; Proceedings of the Textile Labour Inquiry Committee, File 61, Oral evidence of cotton mill workers (Bombay: MSA, 1937–1940).

170 Proceedings of the BSEC, p. 454.

171 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, pp. 660–70. This gave Stones an opportunity to inveigh against the moral defects of the jobber system. See his comments on p. 670.

172 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, pp. 747–83. Asked why reeling was paid less in comparison with such superfluous occupations as ‘doffing’ for which young boys and later adolescents were employed, Mr. Stones replied, ‘It is female labour. It is also spasmodic work. . . . It is very casual work’. Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, p. 748. While technological change made such work dispensable, the millowners needed less to justify the retrenchment of an entire part of the process because unemployed women held fewer terrors in their minds than unemployed men. The attack on women's work was scarcely challenged by the labour leaders who negotiated the case. Furthermore, legislation that governed women's work, from the restriction of hours to provisions for maternity benefits, made them burdensome employees. Thus, impersonal technological changes fitted admirably into the millowners’ immediate, material interests.

173 Ibid., p. 476.

174 Ibid., pp. 479–80.

175 Proceedings of the BSEC, p. 477.

176 Proceedings of the BSEC, Vol. II, pp. 795–96. The last quotation was from the comment by the BMOA spokesman, Mr. F. Stones.

177 Ibid.

178 Proceedings of the BSEC, p. 473.

179 Ibid.

180 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1928, p. iii, Chairman's speech, AGM.

181 Ibid.

182 Report of the Bombay Strike Enquiry Committee, Vol. 1 (1928), p. 7.

183 See Labour Gazette, Vol. IX, No. 5 (January 1930), pp. 457–61; M. M. Shah, Labour Recruitment and Labour Turnover in the Textile Industry of the Bombay Presidency; R. G. Gohhale, The Bombay Cotton Mill Worker (Bombay: BMOA, 1957).

184 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1928, p. 71 and Appendix 48. Negotiations with R. G. Pradhan, President, Kurla Young Men's Non-Brahmin Association, in July 1928. E. D. Sassoon and Co. Ltd was said to have offered to employ the depressed classes in the blanket department—despite their general exclusion from all sections of weaving—and the Jacob Sassoon Mill was, as far as the BMOA was aware, ‘still prepared to grant requisite facilities to depressed classes’.

185 RCLI, Bombay Presidency Evidence, 1, i, including 2nd, written evidence (Bombay: BMOA), p. 386.

186 Labour Office, Wages and Unemployment in the Bombay Cotton Textile Industry (Bombay: Government Labour Office, 1934), pp. 56–59.Google Scholar

187 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1934, pp. ii–iii, Chairman's speech, AGM, see Appendix. Thus, in the early 1930s, Bombay witnessed ‘an indiscriminate resort to double-shift working’ as millowners, in anticipation of the first signs of recovery, tried to force their way into the market by squeezing their costs, until rising stocks forced them back on to the single shift or in some cases to accept rather a harsher discipline.

188 Labour Office, General Wages Census, Part I (Bombay: Government Labour Office), p. 21.

189 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1930, pp. 46–47.

190 The Government of Bombay had appointed a Labour Officer since the early 1920s and had been urging the Millowners’ Association to institute the office for at least a decade.

191 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1935, pp. 27–29.

192 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1936, p. 38.

193 Annual Reports of the BMOA, 1935, pp. 27–29; 1936, pp. 37–40.

194 On the working of the Bombay Trade Disputes Conciliation Act and on the work of the Labour Officer, see Annual Reports of the BMOA, 1935, pp. 27–29; 1936, pp. 37–40; 1937, pp. 33–41; 1938, pp. 53–59, 1939, pp. 27–32; 1940, pp. 34–37. The Labour Gazette for each of these years contained reports on the work of the Government Labour Officer.

195 Report of the TLIC, Vol. II, Final Report, pp. 337–40, 344–46.

196 Proceedings of the TLIC, File L11 of 1939, MSA.

197 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1934, p. 23.

198 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1933, Chairman's speech, AGM.

199 Indian Textile Journal, Vol. XLIV, No. LL (August 1934), p. 380.

200 Pryde, A. W., ‘The work of the Labour Office’ in Manshardt, C. (ed.), Some Social Services of the Government of Bombay (Bombay, 1937).Google Scholar

201 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1935, p. 36.

202 Report of TLIC, Final Report, Vol. II, 1940, p. 341; Labour Investigation Committee, Report on an Inquiry Into Conditions of Labour in the Cotton Mill Industry (1946), pp. 7–8.

203 V. B. Kulkarni, History of the Indian Cotton Textile Industry.

204 Interim Report by the Industrial Conditions Enquiry Committee on the Cotton Textile Industry in Bombay City and Bombay Suburban District (Bombay, 1948), p. 31.

205 Interim Report by the Industrial Conditions Enquiry Committee.

206 Opportunities to manipulate materials and output increased under the Standard Cloth Scheme, which imposed on mills quotas of output for military demand. Its purpose was to ensure that a supply of cheap cloth for domestic consumption was maintained. Mills could boost their profits within the Standard Cloth Scheme by using cheaper mixings of cotton and making imperceptible reductions in the counts of yarn and density of cloth. Increased output under the Standard Cloth Scheme enabled them to place a larger volume of cloth on the unregulated market.

207 K. B. Wassodew, ‘Report of the court of inquiry in the trade dispute between the textile mills and its employees regarding the dismissal of certain workers’ in Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (October 1946), p. 111.

208 According to the Government of Bombay's Labour Office, the ‘working class cost of living index’, based on 1933–1934, had risen from 105 in 1939 to 279 in 1947 for all items, while for food alone, the price index rose steadily from 252 in 1943, a year of famine, to 344 in 1947. Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVII, No. 11 (July 1948), pp. 1397, 1400–1.

209 Ibid., p. 111.

210 GOB, Home (Special) File 550 (23) C (2) of 1940, pp. 76–77; MSA.

211 GOB, Home (Special) File 550 (23) C—I of 1940; MSA.

212 Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVII, No. 11 (July 1948), p. 1491.

213 R. Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 8.

214 Report of the Industrial Disputes Committee (Bombay, 1922).

215 R. Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism, chapter 8.

216 S. R. Deshpande, Report on an Enquiry into the Conditions of Labour in the Cotton Mill Industry in India, The Labour Investigation Committee (Simla: Government of India, 1946), p. 13; Annual Report of the BMOA, 1945.

217 Annual Report of the BMOA, 1940, p. iii.

218 ‘Proceedings of the industrial court’ in Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVI, No. 10 (June 1947), p. 781. The scheme did, however, incorporate some minor revisions.

219 ‘Proceedings of the industrial court’ in Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVI, No. 10 (June 1947), pp. 770–87.

220 Interim Report of the Industrial Conditions Committee, p. 31.

221 Ibid., pp. 25, 19; Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVI, No. 2 (August 1947), pp. 977–78.

222 Interim Report of the Industrial Conditions Enquiry Committee, p. 19.

223 Ibid., p. 25.

224 GOB, Home (Special) File 1110 (6)–A (1) of 1942; MSA.

225 Labour Gazette, Vol. XXV, No. 7 (March 1946), p. 489; P. D. Kulkarni, ‘Textile trade unionism in Bombay’ in Indian Journal of Social Work, Vol. VII, No. 3 (1946), pp. 224–38.

226 Labour Gazette, Vol. XXV, No. 9 (1946), pp. 670–71. The millowners had long shared this objective, but they did not welcome the measure. They suspected that it was simply an attempt to fabricate a place for the RMMS in the industry. In their interpretation, the Congress was simply attempting to usurp the position that communists had occupied in the industry. In 1947, on the eve of independence, the millowners were extremely reluctant to surrender their freedom to ‘manage’ their labour force to the Congress Raj. Annual Report of the BMOA, 1946, pp. iii–iv, Chairman's speech, AGM, 15 May 1947.

227 These sweeping powers were contained in clause 23(vi) of the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946. The text of the act was published in the Labour Gazette, Vol. XXVI, No. 9 (May 1947), pp. 681–713.

228 See M. D. Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labour Force in India, pp. 185–94.

229 Interim Report of the Industrial Conditions Enquiry Committee, p. 18.

230 M. P. Gandhi (ed.), The Cotton Textile Industry Annual, 1946–47, p. 32.

231 Adarkar, N. and Menon, M., One Years, One Hundred Voices: The Millworkers of Girangaon: An Oral History (Calcutta, 2004), p. 196.Google Scholar

232 James, R. C., ‘Labour mobility, unemployment and economic change: An Indian case’ in Journal of Political Economy, Vol. LXVII, No. 6 (1959), p. 549.Google Scholar