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The Young Vanguard, The Militant, Vol. III No. 23, 14 June 1930, p. 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
It would be ridiculous to expect from the British (and their junior partners, the native) ruling classes that have made of India a huge welter of poverty, pestilence, superstition and ignorance anything but the most callous treatment of the young toilers in field and factory. But even we, none too pampered by Hooverian prosperity were deeply shocked to read of the terrible conditions the young workers and peasants are forced to live and work under. Speaking generally, an idea can be gained by noting the fact that infant morality reaches the rate of 206 per thousand all over the peninsula as compared with 91 in the United Kingdom. In the textile city of Bombay this reaches the sickening total of 667 on the average and 828 in the workers centers. Behind these figures can be glimpsed the terrible poverty, poor housing and poor food that grips the nation, the five acres of land that compromise the average holding, causing the terrible holocausts that sweep the country in the shape of epidemics and pestilences.
The margin between bare existence and non-existence is so slight that the child, when barely able to balance itself must go into the field to work. School is out of the question even if such facilities were present. The British Empire, that carrier of enlightenment, does not deem it necessary to spend more than 11 pence per head in India for education (local, district, national and from the empire) as against the two pounds spent in the British Isles, which has none too a high a standard. When Prince Albert Victor (the royal gentleman on the tins of tobacco) who was the grandson of Queen Victoria visited Poona in 1882, the following doggerel greeted him:
|
“Tell grandma we are a happy nation, |
Of the 269 millions in India today but 22 million know an alphabet. The huge profits, the great taxation, the usury is returned in no form whatever to the masses of India.
It the conditions of the ryots (peasants) are bad, they are infinitely above those of the factory workers. In 1926 there were 1,500,00 factory workers of whom 250 were women and 70,000 are children below 15 years of age. (These figures are a factory population of 2,650,000 with the percentage of women and children doubtless holding their own if not actually gaining.)
Textile is the chief industry in India. Nowhere has King Cotton been a benevolent monarch; his history is one of blood, particularly of women and children whether in England in 1844, in Gastonia or in India from 1919 on.
Read the section of Marx’s Capital dealing with conditions in the spinning mills darken the picture and an idea is gleaned of the conditions of the mill cities of India today.
There is a total of 374,380 workers in the cotton industry of India of whom 70,000 are women and over 15 thousand are children.
|
Wages in the Cotton Industry by Days [2] |
|||
|
Adults |
|||
|
|
Rupee |
Anna |
Pies |
|
Ahmedabad |
1 |
5 |
0 |
|
Bombay |
1 |
5 |
6 |
|
Sholapur |
|
15 |
11 |
|
Other Centers |
1 |
1 |
8 |
|
Big Lads and Children |
|||
|
Ahmedabad |
|
11 |
4 |
|
Bombay |
|
11 |
1 |
|
Sholapur |
|
9 |
1 |
|
Other Centers |
|
8 |
11 |
These wages allow the workers a diet on par with that of a Bombay criminal prisoner, a chawl (tenement room), each chawl containing on the average 4 persons.
It is said that conditions in the mills owned by native capitalists are worse than in those owned by the Britishers. (Although this comes from reliable sources it seems hardly likely – the conditions in the British-owned mills challenge worsening. In the jute mills of Calcutta and Bengal, where most of the jute in the world is produced the average wage for children is 9 pence per day. In 319,000 workers in 76 jute mills investigated 50,000 were women and 29,000 children.
And so it is in the entire country. On the plantations of Assam hundreds of thousands of farm laborers, entire families including babes toil for a few pence per day. Fabled spices of India!
Women and children even dig coal in India, bringing coal to the surface in baskets – human beings are cheaper than hoisting machinery. Of the 250,000 miners, 9 thousand are women and a similar number children.
As for social legislation for children and youth, the little that has been forced through is flagrantly disregarded. Twelve years is the minimum age at which children are permitted to work in factories employing more than 10 workers and using motive power. Between the age of 12 and 15 half time is allowed or 30 hours per week.
A far different side of the story is the profits of 200 and 300%. It was a bad year when only 125% was secured on capital investment.
1. A crore is 10,000,000.
2. A rupee is about 32.4 cents. An anna is one-sixteenth of a rupee or 2 cents and a pies is one-twelfth of an anna or about one-sixth of a cent.
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