LABOUR IN MADRAS 239 mendation referred to above inspired hope in the minds of the working classes, and that has been unfortunately destroyed by the Draft Rules. Some arguments were put forward by me last year in support of the enfranchisement of the wage-earner. Those arguments remain true to-day, and if the principle is accepted as right in the cases of Bombay and Calcutta, it is also right in the case of the Southern capital, Madras, and such important centres as Ahmedabad and Cawnpore. In Madras labour is better organised than elsewhere in India. The first Labour Union was found. ed in Madras in April, 1918. That Union was of the textile workers of Madras, consisting of thousands of men and has showed its efficacy in several ways: it was the pioneer institution which decided that its representative should bring to the notice of the British public the very udsatisfactory conditions of Labour in India. It was principally on behalf of that Union that I came before your Lordship's Committee last year. As President of the Madias Labour Union, I beg to draw particular attention to the disadvantage to which that Union of textile work 18 is put, and with all the force that I can command rerequest that the Joint Select Committee over which your Lordship is now presiding should remove the disability imposed on the wage-earners of Madras textile industry by the Draft Rules. However small, a beginning has been made in Bombay and Calcutta, and it is not only desire able but necessary in the interests of fair-play that a similar beginning be made in the capital of the large Southern Presidency. In Madras, commerce and industry return no less than five members to the Provincial Legislative Council.
