CCXXIX 



(8) The Condition of the Laboring Classes. 



Note by H. Subbaraya Aiyar, Esq., Deputy Collector, 

 Coinibatore District. 



I have had ample opportunities of observing and judging of the 

 condition of the labouring classes daring the last three decades, and 

 can confidently say that it has materially improved in every way. 

 Agricultural labourers consist of two classes (1) the permanent form 

 servants, and (2) those employed temporarily on daily wages when 

 agricultural operations are carried on extensively. 



The farm labourer is paid monthly and in kind, and is also given, 

 to cidtivate on his own account, small plots of land belonging to his 

 master. He also receives small presents and loans on occasions of 

 festivals and marriages, besides a certain percentage of the produce 

 harvested. He is also permitted to work elsewhere during certain 

 months in the year when there is no work in the fields or on the thresh- 

 ing ground, and thereby earn what little he can additionally. The 

 temporary labourer is paid either in kind or in money or both. There 

 was a time, within my own memory, when the labouring classes chiefly 

 depended for work on agricultural operations in the year, and when 

 these were over, they found it very difficult to maintain themselves. 

 Now the demand for work, in the fields owing to increased cultivation, 

 in the Imperial and Local Fund departments, in the Railway depart- 

 ment, in the coffee, tea and cinchona estates, in the cotton presses, 

 weaving and spinning mills and in other various departments of trade 

 and agriculture, has become so great within the last thirty or forty years, 

 that the labouring classes do not find it difiicult to obtain employment 

 freely on increased wages during the prosperous years. The labourers, 

 especially in the maritime districts, have also begun to emigrate freely 

 in large numbers to foreign countries, where they find work on higher 

 wages, and thereby secure competence. 



The rise in the price of food grains and other necessaries of life, the 

 steady increasing demand for work, the development of trade, the large 

 scope now offered for emigration, the high mode of living suitable to 

 the period of advancement and civilization, and the fashion of the day 

 to naturalize whatever is foreign — all these have undoubtedly enhanced 

 the rate of wages, not only for the skilled, but also for the unskilled 

 labourer, to a considerable extent. In localities where low caste labour- 

 ers, owing to caste prejudices, are unable to compete with ca<=te labourers, 

 the latter^ as a rule, demand exorbitant rates of wages and are getting 

 themselves enriched more than the former. I have generally found a 

 harmonious, and on the whole, sympathetic relations existing between 

 the landholders and the labouring classes both in tlie districts in which 

 I have served and in those which I have seen. 



As far as I have seen and known of the condition of the labouring 

 classes, I may safely say it is not what it was thirty or forty yenrs ago, 

 but has materially improved in several respects, and is improving, and 

 will, 1 believe, improve steadily. Those who once formed the landless 

 class, the petty traders, the artizans and the weavers who have chosen 

 to work in the fields and elsewhere, have now acquired landed property 



