Page:Labour in Madras.djvu/263

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LABOUR IN MADRAS
237


237 cannot see its way to widen the Franchise so as to include factory hands, we should try to make one or two special constituencies in the towns where there are mills and to give a special franchise to the factory worker. That is your alternative. Would you suggest that that Franchise should form, as it were, another communal electorate, or do you wish them thrown in with the rest of the voters to vote as part of the general constituency ?...I would not mind at all their being thrown into the general electorate, provided that they had the vote, because they would be able to influence the election. Do you think it would be just as valuable to them to have votes for one of the ordinary politicians as it would be for them to have a definite representative of their own ?... Yes : because I am sure that the labourers will extract good terms from the ordinary politician before they send him into the Provincial Councils. Now for this experiment you suggest--that it should be applied in about five great towos?... Well, I have suggested a wage-earning capacity for large industrial establishments, and I think it would be more than five towns. About how many people would be enfranchised, do you think, in Calcutta ?...As I said, I have no data for that yet. CHAIRMAN If you get the further information you have referred to later, you will lirdly serd it in ?... I will do so my Lord.