186 LABOUR IN MADRAS And at the present time, according to the very caroful calcuations made by Mr. Simpson, of Messrs. Binny and Co., of Madras, & cotton mill in Madras with 35,000 ring spindles, 800 looms, average count 168., working 677 hours a week, would employ 2,622 operatives all told. Whereas for a similar mill in Lancashire, working 541 hours a week, the total number of bands required would be 962, which works out & proportion of 2.62 Indian hands to 1 English hand. And if we also consider that the average monthly wage of a Lancashire operative will be about Rs. 60 (£4), and the average monthly wage of a Madras operative is Rs. 15 (£1), it is clear that for the same money the Indian millowner gets nearly double the work that an English millowner does... Before condemping the Indian operative as inefficient and incapable of improvement he ought to be given a fair hearing. In a memorial submitted to His Excellency the Marquis of Lansdowne, Viceroy and Governor-General of India in 1983, by the mill operatives of Bombay, it was stated that "it bas been said to the detriment of your petitioner that an Indiap mill operative is cot as hard. working as his brother workman in England, and that a mill operative in England does the work of three men employed on the same work in an Indian Mill. The real cause of this, your Lordship's petitioners submit, is the bad machinery and the bad raw materials used in the mills. The breakage in the thread is so continuous here on account of the bad quality of the cotton that mill owners are compelled to employ more men. As the effect of the long hours bas to be considered before judging of the idle habits of the Indian opera tives, 80 the quality of the raw material they have to handle has to be taken into consideration before the extent of their skilfulness or otherwise is determined. It is aiso very necessary to point out that the so-called inefficiency of the Indian workman is rooted in a diseased body, and on "the incessani strain on his nerves amidst the din and noise of machinery in the stuffy ato mosphere of the factory." Major F. Norman White, M.D., 1. M. S, Sanitary Commissioner with the Governo ment of India, writes: “A large part of the relative ineffi
