During the war, Government, both in Delhi and in London, were constantly
pressing for an increased output, which meant a large extension of the
works; and as nothing could be obtained from England or brought out
except at extreme risk from submarines, large orders for new plant for
the extensions now in progress had therefore to be placed in America.
The total number of covenanted employees of the Company to-day is 137,
of whom ninety-three are English and forty-four American, and there are
in addition sixty locally employed Europeans. The number of Indians
employed is about 44,500. Nearly half the population of Jamsheedpur is
directly employed by the Company, and almost the whole owes its means of
livelihood to it in less direct forms. It comprises Indians of many
races and creeds and castes and tongues. There are Bengalees and
Madrasees of the educated classes, some of them Brahmans, who are
chiefly engaged in clerical, technical, and managerial work. There are
rougher Pathans and Punjabee Mahomedans, as well as Sikhs, who take more
readily to heavy skilled manual labour. There are artisans and small
traders and shopkeepers from all parts of India, and even a few picked
carpenters from China as pattern-makers. The bulk of the unskilled
labour is drawn from the Sonthal aboriginal population, industrious,
docile, and cheerful as a rule, but abysmally ignorant and credulous,
and liable to sudden gusts of emotion and passion.
The question of the employment of Indians on the actual processes of
manufacture is largely a question of technical and physical training,
and it has not been lost sight of in Jamsheedpur. Schools have been
started for the education of the Indian children, and though in a
community still largely composed of people who are themselves young, the
number of children of a school-going age is necessarily small, a
secondary school under a Bengalee graduate in science, who was himself
originally trained in Rabindranath Tagore's remarkable school at Bolpur,
already has over 140 boys, and a training institute for higher technical
studies is to follow in due course. Nor are the adult men and women
neglected, for social welfare in all its aspects plays an important part
in the life of Jamsheedpur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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