ABSTRACT
To understand wages and the standard of living in the factory industry of any oriental country one must keep clearly in view the conditions in the districts from which the labor is recruited. Occidental writers have often thought factory wages unduly low in the Orient because they compared them not to other wages there but to wages in Europe or America. While industrial wages are not the same as agricultural wages in India, the two are closely related. With 90 per cent of the people living under rural conditions and nearly 75 per cent actually dependent upon agriculture and pasturage, the group of about four-fifths of one per cent 1 who work in concerns under factory organization must be very much influenced by agricultural conditions. There is, in fact, a considerable movement back and forth between farm and factory according to the season and the prosperity of these alternate employments. The opportunities to earn in agriculture have a very direct bearing upon what it is possible for workers to secure and necessary for employers to pay in factories and mines.
