LABOUR IN MADRAS 179 recess should be given to the worker (Chap. IV., para 21). This thirty minutes period is divided between three functions-going out of the mills, taking a meal and returning to the mills. Careful observations carried on in Madras where arrangements are better than in other Mills (I am referring to the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills.) showed that a man does not get more than twelve to thirteen minutes for his actual meal. The twelve hours day with its ridiculous thirty minutes recess has another side. The workmen in almost all cases live miles away from factories, and as was rightly pointed out by an I. C. S. officer recently, "from the standpoint of the worker, the time in going to and returning from the factory must be added to the length of his active day." In Bombay, where tram and train services are available, one hour at the least must be added, and I know instances, in Madras, where the distance has to be walked, that labourers have to leave home at 4-30 A. M. to be at the factory gate at 5-45, and do not reach home till 8 p. m. The result of this excessive long hours system is far reaching. It tells on the efficiency of the work; it produces the phenomenon peculiar to Indian factory labourviz., loitering; it leads to premature exhaustion; it drives the Indian labourer away from the factory, as "the opere ative becomes unable to stand the strain of work under present conditions at a comparatively early age." (Indian Factory Labour Commission Report, p. 27.) Dr. T. M. Nair, in his Minute of Dissent to the Commission Report characterises the system thus: “ A system more likely to bring about degradation of labour is impossible to conceive."
