ABSTRACT
As in most industrial countries, it has been the lowest and most unfortunate class of the people 1 who have provided labor for the Indian factories. People accustomed to simple agriculture, menial service or handicraft, find the discipline of a factory particularly irksome and only when very hard pressed will they give themselves up to it. Nearly all the factory hands of India have come from the agricultural villages but it is not correct to call them, as is sometimes done, “farmers and land-owners.” Most of them have had some fixed position in the village economic and social organization; some few actually own small tracts or are tenants with some degree of security, but the majority are from the laboring castes and landless. At most they may have the shadowy hereditary right to cultivate small plots in return for hereditary duties, usually of a menial character. Some have been village craftsmen who rank low in the social scale and are generally lacking in physical energy, education, ambition and efficiency. Even the meagre opportunities of pre-factory days became less with the disintegration of the village group after the building of the railways and many craftsmen turned to agriculture while others crowded into the towns. Some were drawn by the more attractive cash incomes but many came because this was the only alternative to slow starvation. Usually workers have come as temporary residents, leaving their families and other relatives behind. Since half their economic, and nearly all their family interest lies in the village, these workers never settle down to make the most of an urban occupation. They return to their villages every few months or at least every few years. Their children usually grow up in the country and when they come to the city are as ignorant and ill-adjusted to city and factory life as were their parents and grandparents before them.
