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Jobbers and the Emergence of Trade Unions in Bombay City*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Dick Kooiman
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For the city of Bombay the establishment of British rule over Maharashtra (1818) inaugurated a period of extensive growth in trade, industry and banking. In search of wealth and power merchant communities and trading castes, mainly from the Northern province of Gujarat, settled in Bombay to exploit the economic opportunities that arose under the British raj. In the mid nineteenth century Indian entrepreneurs started a textile industry, which proved to be a new way to invest capital and to make profit. The management functions in their Bombay mills were filled by Europeans or Indians with an educated, middle-class background. The social and linguistic position of these people prevented their easy communication with the local labour-force of marathi-speaking peasant origin. Therefore, from the creation of the industry, mill-owners and management cadres delegated the task of labour recruitment to a special class of men, called jobbers.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , December 1977 , pp. 313 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1977

References

page 314 note 1 For a history of the Indian textile industry and its labour-force, see Mehta, S. D., The Indian Cotton Textile Industry: An Economic Analysis (Bombay, 1953);Google Scholar id., The Cotton Mills of India 1854–1954 (Bombay, 1954)Google Scholar; Morris, M. D., The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills 1854–1947 (Berkeley, 1965)Google Scholar; Jain, S. C., Personnel Management in India: Its Evolution and Present Status (Chapel Hill, 1968).Google Scholar

page 314 note 2 Hawkins, F. E., “The Selection and Supervision of Workpeople”, in: Indian Textile Journal, XLIII (1932–1933), p. 99.Google Scholar

page 315 note 1 Neale, W. C., “Reciprocity and Redistribution in the Indian Village: Sequel to Some Notable Discussions”, in: Trade, and Market, in the Early Empires, ed. by Polanyi, K., Arensberg, C. M. and Pearson, H. W. (Glencoe, 1957), pp. 218–36.Google Scholar For another example, see Orenstein, H., “Gaon, the Changing Political System of a Maharashtrian Village”, in: Change and Continuity in India's Villages, ed. by Ishwaran, K. (New York, 1970), pp. 219–40.Google Scholar

page 317 note 1 Interview with G. B. Mahashabde, who at that time was a journalist writing in favour of labour, Bombay, 9 November 1974.

page 317 note 2 Report of the Indian Tariff Board (Cotton Textile Industry Enquiry) (Calcutta, 1927), Vol. I, p. 124.Google Scholar

page 318 note 1 Ibid., pp. 133, 138–139.

page 318 note 2 Report of the Bombay Strike Enquiry Committee, 1928–1929 (Bombay, 1929) (hereafter Fawcett Committee), Vol. I, p. 159. It was Sir Victor Sassoon's deliberate policy to have “fewer, but more skilled and better-paid, operatives in Indian mills”, S. Jackson, The Sassoons (London, 1968), pp. 214–15.Google Scholar

page 319 note 1 Fawcett Committee. Vol. I, pp. 143, 165, 249. For standardisation, see below.

page 319 note 2 Royal Commission on Labour in India (hereafter Whitley Commission), Evidence (Calcutta, 1931), Vol. I, Pt 1, p. 386, and Pt 2, p. 320.

page 319 note 3 Trade Disputes Bill (1929), complete text in Labour Gazette (Bombay), VIII (1928–1929), pp. 774–81.Google Scholar

page 319 note 4 Integrity, personality and linguistic facility were mentioned among the main qualities required for the post, see Whitley Commission, Report, pp. 24–25.

page 319 note 5 This first labour officer was Mr Dalai, C. A., BA, BSc (London), who in a public lecture in September 1933 summarised his task as to take over the jobber's mediating role. Labour Gazette, XIII (1933–1934), pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

page 319 note 6 Complete text in Labour Gazette, XIV (1934–1935), pp. 37–43.Google Scholar

page 320 note 1 James, R. C., “Labor Mobility, Unemployment and Economic Change: An Indian Case”, in: The Journal of Political Economy, LXVII (1959), pp. 551–52.Google Scholar

page 320 note 2 Report of the Textile Labour Inquiry Committee (Bombay, 1940), Vol. II, Final Report, p. 341.Google Scholar

page 320 note 3 Cf. p. 318, note 2.

page 320 note 4 Fawcett Committee, Vol. I, pp. 21–58, 180–87. On jobbers and fining as a disciplinary measure, see Labour Gazette, VI (1926–27), pp. 1103–24.

page 320 note 5 See, for instance, Karnik, V. B., Indian Trade Unions: A Survey (Bombay, 1960), p. 63.Google Scholar

page 322 note 1 Article 22. Text of the act in Annual Report of the Bombay Millowners Association, 1927, pp. 372–80.

page 322 note 2 Whitley Commission, Evidence, Vol. I, Pt 1, p. 299, and Pt 2, p. 257.

page 322 note 3 Rutnagur, S. M., Bombay Industries: The Cotton Mills (Bombay, 1927), pp. 485–86, 488Google Scholar; Meher, B. G., “Early Labour Movement in Bombay City 1875–1918” (Master thesis, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, 1965), ch. VIGoogle Scholar; Newman, R. K., “Labour Organisation in the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1918–1929” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, 1970).Google Scholar The author is grateful to both Mr Meher and Dr Newman, who kindly permitted him to consult their unpublished theses.

page 323 note 1 Report of the Workers and Peasants Party of Bombay, signed by S. V. Ghate (n.d., the envelope is postmarked December 1928), Meerut Conspiracy Papers, National Archives of India, New Delhi; interview with Dr G. Adhikari, senior Communist leader, New Delhi, 3 December 1974.

page 323 note 2 Whitley Commission, Evidence, Vol. I, Pt 1, p. 298; cf. above, p. 319.

page 323 note 3 H. P. Mody, chairman of the BMOA, ibid., Pt 2, p. 330; see also p. 263.

page 324 note 1 Interview with N. S. Desai, former GKU leader, Bombay, 20 November 1974.

page 324 note 2 See, for instance, Fawcett Committee, Vol. I, p. 61.

page 324 note 3 Interview with C. B. Patil, senior textile worker, Bombay, 20 November 1974.

page 325 note 1 Whitley Commission, Evidence, Vol. I, Pt 1, pp. 108, 354.

page 326 note 1 Newman, “Labour Organisation in the Bombay Cotton Mills”, op. cit., pp. 196, 251, 278; Whitley Commission, Evidence, Vol. I, Pt 2, p. 271.

page 327 note 1 Bombay Chronicle, 1, 2 and 4 June 1934.