LABOUR IN MADRAS 227 allow caste questions to affect their labour work, which is also true of politics.... Yes : and I have given as an instance one of the best cases of the interdining about which so much has been talked. You see that at a dinner of 200 people, including Brahmanas, and Panchamas, the left and right extremes, they come together, and as far as our Labour Union's works are concerned, they have found absolutely no difficulty. I thank you very much, and I want to say how deeply I agree with you in what you have just said. LORD S NHA Mr. Wadia, are your present proposals directed to enfranchise labour as such ?...Factory going labour as such. That is in towns I suppose ?... In towns mostly. Practically the biggest towns like Calcutta, Bombay Madras and Cawnpore ?...Yes, and also there may be a certain number of smaller towns in Madras and the Bombay Presidency, where there are factories and mills. Would not they come in under the Franchise laid down for big municipalities and towns by payment of municipal taxes ?... I do not think under the Franchise scheme of Lord Southborough's Committee for instance the labourers of Madras would come in. The payment is something very small is it not?... Yes, but when you come to think of it, when a weaver in Madras earns between 15 and 20 rupees a month, it is not likely that you will get people--as there are others earning still less in the carding and spinning departments,-to be able to pay municipal taxes to that extent. I sp ak there tentatively because I have not made enquiries into it.
