times verified the overcrowding of rooms. In one room, on the second floor of a chawl, measuring some 15 feet by 12 feet, I found six families living. Six separate ovens on the floor proved this statement. On enquiry I ascertained that the actual number of adults and children living in this room was thirty. Three out of six women who lived in this room were shortly expecting to be delivered.

When I questioned the District Nurse, who accompanied me, as to how she would arrange for privacy in this room, I was shown a small space some 3 feet by 4 feet which was usually screened off for the purpose. The atmosphere at night of that room filled with smoke from the six ovens, and other impurities, would certainly physically handicap any woman and infant, both before and after delivery. This was one of many such rooms I saw.'

More than a fifth of the single rooms in Bombay contain from six to nine persons, over 13 per cent have ten or more persons in each room. The appalling death rate in these overcrowded, one-room tenements of Bombay, is shown by the returns of the Health Officer, Dr. J. Sandilands. In 1921, 666 of every 1,000 babies died during the first year of their lives in Bombay. During the same year, 1921, in England 83 infants per thousand died under one year of age. Let us notice the effect of overcrowding upon infant mortality during the first year of life in Bombay in 1921:

Allowance must be made for mothers whose children are born in the country and who return to the city after childbirth, thus decreasing the apparent birth and increasing the death rate.

That is, of every thousand babies born in England during that year 83 died and 917 lived. In the one-room tenements of Bombay, according to the necessarily incomplete returns, 172 lived and 828 died. In other words, several hundred of every thousand children in these tenements were sacrificed to existing conditions of life and labor. In Bombay 73 per cent of the workers' children were born in these one-room tenements, while only one per cent were born in families living in four or more rooms. It was in Bombay that the average profits of the mills were 170 per cent in 1921.1

Does it matter if a few hundred children "per thousand" live or die? What is it that really matters? Is it the profit of the few or the lives of the many? Here are five hundred and seventy millions of industrial and agricultural toilers in India, China and Japan living on a bare subsistence, often in illiteracy and ignorance, without culture or comfort, lacking almost all that makes life rich or abundant for us. Yet there are those who bitterly resent any such inquiry as this or any effort to alter or improve these conditions. To what depths of sordid selfishness and hypocrisy have we sunk if we fight to maintain such conditions and to prevent all efforts for amelioration or radical change because of our vested interests? On these great social and industrial issues we must take our stand with those who are for humanity or against it; with those who are for God or for mammon.

Living with such wages and under such conditions it is not surprising that labor in India is inefficient. The pro

1 Fortunately the Bombay Government has a housing scheme to provide for 50,000 tenants in eight years. The first ones completed which we inspected were, however, very far from satisfactory. The finest provisions we found in India for the housing of the workers were furnished by the Tata Iron and Steel Works at Tatanagar, which had invested over $2,300,000 on housing for 12,000 workers; the British India Corporation of Cawnpore; and the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills of Madras.

ductivity of the individual worker in textile and several other industries is estimated at about one-third that of British labor. The causes of this inefficiency seem to be the following: Physically, there is the enervation of a tropical climate, undernourishment, bad housing, often poor ventilation and bad working conditions in the factories, with the prevalence of hookworm, malaria and other debilitating diseases. Mentally, there is the illiteracy and find themselves in a new environment, under strange conditions sometimes result in the practice of drink, gambling and immorality. Many of the men are living in overcrowded tenements away from their families, with their natural instincts repressed. The migratory character of Indian labor also makes for inefficiency. The villagers find themselves in a new environment, under strange conditions, in a job that is galling and irksome. This, coupled with low wages, bad housing and labor unrest, accounts for the large turnover of labor in nearly all industries. Employers of long experience whom we consulted, however, agreed that Indian labor was capable of great improvement and had already advanced in efficiency in recent years.

The condition of women and children in labor in India calls for special consideration. Dr. Barnes in her report speaks of their state of fatigue when forced to work ten hours while standing, and then walking the long journey to their homes where they have all their own housework to do. Only a few mills provide maternity benefits before or after childbirth, and few have créches for the care of the children who must play about the floor of the factory, or in some sections of the country are given opium and left uncared for at home. The vast majority of the mills have no welfare work whatever and when the weekly wage is paid feel no further obligation for their employees. One of the deplorable features connected with the employment of

women in industry is the immorality which the system entails. The power of the foremen and middle-men in some mills enables them to make immoral overtures which if refused may lead to dismissal. The shortage of houses, overcrowding, poverty and the absence of so many of the workers from their village homes increase the moral problem.

The Report of the Mine Inspector in 1921 showed that there were 249,663 mine workers among whom there were 91,949 women and 8,548 children under 12 years of age. Some of the worst conditions we found in India were in the most backward mines of Bengal. One is reminded of recorded conditions of labor in England before 1842, when women were finally excluded from underground labor. It was then customary for women and children to drag tubs of coal by a girdle and chain, like horses, a total of from seven to nine miles daily. Even pregnant women had to work in dark, unventilated, undrained mines. The moral effect was degrading and dehumanizing.

Conditions have already been improved by Government legislation in India, but there are still tens of thousands of women in India, China and Japan who could re-echo the sentiments of Isabella Hogg of Scotland in 1841 when she said: "Tell Queen Victoria that we are quiet, loyal subjects; women-people here don't mind work; but they object to horse work."

After considering the profits of many employers and the wages and conditions of the workers, it is not to be wondered at that there is a growing evidence of labor unrest in India. Indeed what human being, except a profiteer, could wish them to be contented? Sir Thomas Holland, speaking in the Imperial Legislative Council, declared he would rather see the mill industry of Bombay wiped out than accept the perpetuation of the conditions which had goaded

the workers to their last great strike. Labor unrest is the first hope of improvement. During the typical years of 1921 there were 341 strikes and industrial disputes reported, or about the same number as in Japan. Of these 110 were won by the workers and 225 were unsuccessful or indefinite in their terms of settlement.

Before the war, conditions in many mills in Ahmedabad and elsewhere were intolerable. Abusive language and sometimes thrashing were resorted to. In 1917 the poor workers struck. Again in 1918 the Ahmedabad weavers and 10,000 workers under the leadership of their townsman, Mr. Gandhi, went on a long strike which was finally settled by arbitration. The great strike in the textile factories of Bombay in 1920, which began as a lockout, was entered into by over 150,000 workmen though ignorant and unorganized. India, like Japan and China, was feeling the influence of the universal upheaval in the labor world after the war. The employers failed to realize the new spirit of the workers. The men were driven by the goading sense of injustice, the pinch of hunger for many, the squalor and misery of their surroundings, exhausting drudgery and lack of personal touch between the employers and the employed. One mine superintendent said to the writer: "I can't beat the men as I once did. There is a new spirit among the workers since Gandhi appeared. For two years I have not dared lay hands on a man. If you beat one now, a hundred others will go for you. The workers have been quite spoiled by this new movement."

The year 1921 witnessed a remarkable growth of the Trade Union Movement throughout India and the world. Mr. N. M. Joshi of Bombay, the able labor representative in the Legislative Assembly, places the present number of Trade Unions in all India at about 150 and their membership at nearly 200,000. It is impossible to state numbers