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205 management of industrial matters, including the most important item (g) welfare of labour? It is my considered opinion that Indian ministers will be better fitted to carry out adequate factory reforms than the official executive. Anyway, the past record of the administration does not inspire hope or confidence in their capacity or zeal for bettering the lot of the misused labourer. Therefore, with all the force I can command I respect fully urge that item No. 25 of the provincial subjects should not be reserved but should be transferred. This naturally brings us to the question of Indian Labour properly and adequately influencing the legislatures. So far back as 1911 Mr. E. S. Montagu, speaking on the Indian Budget in the House of Commons, said: - The leaders of Indian opinion must get their faces against the degradation of labour, and they need to be specially vigilant because India's working classes, besides being themselves anorganised, are not directly represented on the Legislative Coupois, wbose Indian members come almost exolusively from the landlord and oapitalistio olaeses. I have only quoted one sentence, but I beg to draw the attention of the Committee to the whole passage in Mr. Montagu's speech. It is true that in the past non-official members of Legisiative Councils bave been mostly landlords or capitalists or lawyers who did not familiarise themselves with the difficulties and complexities of the life and work of the 'adian labourer. I am not forgetting sucb men as Gopal Krishna Gokhale of the Imperial Council or Dewan Bahadur P. Kesava Pillai of the Provincial, who have on more than one occasion championed the cause of the poor. But how are we going to remedy the evils of the past?