ABSTRACT
It is not known when the first strike of the entire laboring force in an Indian factory occurred, but from the beginning there were loosely organized refusals to work. Just before his death in 1927, Sir Benzonji Mehta, long manager of the Empress Mills at Nagpur, told how his first weavers in 1877 struck in a body because of a misunderstanding about wage rates. Since that time, frequent disagreements have arisen, many of which have been marked more by such ill-temper as is expressed in the throwing of a weaver’s shuttle through a window than by considered demands. Such a strike usually involved only one jobber (foreman) and the dozen men under him, but occasionally it affected an entire department.
