IRREGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 193 



Nadrai. An opening like this has given the field 

 labourer a chance of making his own terms with those 

 cultivators or landlords farming their own lands who 

 require labour.' 



The field labourer suffers considerably from irregu- 

 larity of employment, a cause of distress with which 

 almost all European wage-earners are familiar. Agri- 

 cultural employment is from the nature of the industry 

 irregular. At certain seasons, such as the time of 

 harvest, there is a greater demand for labour than the 

 village can supply, and the field labourer can com- 

 mand relatively high wages ; but in the slack season 

 before the rains there is practically no work to be 

 done in the fields, and the field labourer is in conse- 

 quence unemployed for one or two months in every 

 year. On the whole, however, there is a consensus of 

 opinion that the casual labourer, partly owing to the 

 fact that he is little restricted in the matter of diet and 

 employment by caste regulations, is better off than 

 many small cultivators. The growth in the village of 

 an agrarian proletariat is a symptom which from the 

 experience of Europe we are disposed to watch with 

 anxiety, but the evidence at present forthcoming does 

 not point to any deterioration in this class of the 

 population. The opinions put forth by Mr. Rose on 

 this point in 1888 are worth quoting at length.* 



1 I am inclined to think that day labourers and 

 servants are upon the whole in a far better position 

 than the less prosperous sections of the agricultural 

 community. Their resources are far more numerous 

 than those of the classes who occupy a higher position 

 in the social scale. 1 am referring here only to day 

 labourers and servants. I am not at all so sure that 

 artisans — weavers, for instance — occupy so favourable 

 a position. But with reference to day labourers and 

 servants, so long as they maintain their bodily 



* ' Inquiry into the Economic Condition,' etc. — evidence of 

 E. Rose, Esq., p. 137. 



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