popular substitute for spirits, one need not quarrel with the solemn
processions of mill-hands proceeding to a favourite shrine to break a
symbolical teapot in the presence of the deity as a pledge of
renunciation. But not all Mr. Gandhi's followers can be credited with
his earnest sympathies for labour, largely inspired by his detestation
of a "machine age," and he himself lapses into language that seems to
preach more rigid abstention from drink than from violence.
Factory legislation has never been neglected in India, though until
recently the chief impulse has had to proceed from Government itself. A
great increase of public interest has taken place in the last years, and
in India perhaps even more than anywhere else the activity in this
respect of the League of Nations and of the International Labour Office
has elicited prompt and vigorous response. The Secretary of State has
created at the India Office a new department for dealing with labour and
industry. India has had her own representation at international labour
conferences, and the Government of India is now engaged on a new Factory
Act in accordance with the draft covenants and recommendations of the
Washington Conference. Indeed in some directions the Bill is in advance
of Washington. The statutory definition of a child presents special
difficulties in India, where physical development is more precocious
than in Western countries, but, instead of making the general limit of
age for juvenile work lower, the Bill proposes to raise it not to
fourteen but to fifteen years, whilst still permitting the employment of
younger children on special and very stringent conditions. Provisions
are also made for securing longer daily intervals during the working
hours as well as a weekly holiday. Further legislation will be
introduced for the benefit of industrial workers, more particularly as
regards Trade Union rights and compensation for accidents. But however
excellent such measures may be, only the spread of education and the
better organisation with it of labour itself can be expected to give any
real stability to large struggling masses invested by the new economic
forces that have sprung so rapidly into existence with tremendous powers
for mischief, but with no individual or collective sense of
responsibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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