e all over the country ginning-mills, which employ
casual labour to prepare raw cotton for export during four or five
months of the year. The wages were low, from 7-1/2_d._ to 10_d._ (15 to
20 cents) a day for an adult, and 6_d._ (12 cents) for a child. Children
and adults alike worked sometimes for twelve, usually for fifteen, and
on occasion even for sixteen or eighteen hours a day. In the height of
the season even the children were put on night shifts of twelve
hours."[218]

In India conditions are about the same. The first thorough investigation
of Indian industry was made in 1907 by a factory labour commission, and
the following are some of the data published in its report: In the
cotton-mills of Bombay the hours regularly worked ran from thirteen to
fourteen hours. In the jute-mills of Calcutta the operatives usually
worked fifteen hours. Cotton-ginning factories required their employees
to work seventeen and eighteen hours a day, rice and flour mills twenty
to twenty-two hours, and an extreme case was found in a printing works
where the men had to work twenty-two hours a day for seven consecutive
days. As to wages, an adult male operative, working from thirteen to
fifteen hours a day, received from 15 to 20 rupees a month ($5 to
$6.35). Child labour was very prevalent, children six and seven years
old working "half-time"--in many cases eight hours a day. As a result of
this report legislation was passed by the Indian Government bettering
working conditions somewhat, especially for women and children. But in
1914 the French economist Albert Metin, after a careful study, reported
factory conditions not greatly changed, the Factory Acts systematically
evaded, hours very long, and wages extremely low. In Bombay men were
earning from 10 cents to 20 cents per day, the highest wages being 30
cents. For women and children the maximum was 10 cents per day.[219]

With such extraordinarily low wages and long hours of labour it might at
first sight seem as though, given adequate capital and up-to-date
machinery, the Orient could not only drive Occidental products from
Eastern markets but might invade Western markets as well. This, indeed,
has been the fear of many Western writers. Nearly three-quarters of a
century ago Gobineau prophesied an industrial invasion of Europe from
Asia,[220] and of late years economists like H. N. Brailsford have
warned against an emigration of Western capital to the tempting lure of
factory con