here at certain seasons of the year there is
little work to be done on the land. It became the custom for an
increasingly large number of rural districts to send their men into the
towns, where they worked for a few months. Then they went away after
they had put by a little money and came back again when they had
exhausted their hoard. These migrations became more and more regular and
on a larger scale as the demand for labour increased, and they
constitute to-day the feature which radically differentiates the problem
of Indian labour from that of British labour. There has not yet grown up
in India an industrial population permanently rooted in the towns. It is
still largely migratory, returning from time to time for more or less
lengthy periods to field-work in the villages, which remain the real
home. The Indian factory operative has not yet ceased to be a man of the
country rather than of the town. Hence perhaps the conditions under
which he is sometimes content to live whilst he is working in a town--in
Bombay, for instance, for the most part in huge overcrowded blocks,
known as _chawls_, ill lighted, ill ventilated, in a foul atmosphere and
unspeakable dirt--may seem to him less intolerable as he can look
forward to exchanging them again some day for the light and air which
surround even the most squalid village hovels. If there were reason to
believe that improved housing conditions such as are now assured to
Bombay by the huge city improvement schemes which, under Sir George
Lloyd's energetic impulse, are expanding the limits and transforming
almost beyond recognition the appearance of the most congested quarters
of the most congested of modern Indian cities, or even that increased
wages would substantially affect the temper of Indian labour, one might
look forward to the future in this respect with less apprehension. But
in Bombay labour troubles have been scarcely less rife in the best- than
in the worst-conducted mills. In Calcutta the British jute-mill owners
have set a splendid example to Indian employers of labour, and the
mill-hands, now largely imported from other provinces, not only work
under the best possible conditions of light and air, but are housed in
spacious quarters specially built for them, well ventilated and
scientifically drained, with playing-fields and elementary schools for
the swarms of children who certainly look healthy and well-fed and
happy. The Birmingham mills in Madras are recognise