FACTORIES (AMENDMENT) BILL 329
both in seasonal and non-seasonal factories comes to 25,20,251. These are the latest figures for 1945. Those that were employed in factories working at 48 to 54 comes to 9,47,000 which is
37 per cent, of the total. It will therefore be seen that there are already a great number of factories both perennial and seasonal which have practically adopted the maximum which is now fixed in the Bill and from that point of view it cannot be said that the Bill is making any very great radical change in the situation as it exists today.
There is one other point which has been raised by the critics of the Bill to which I would like to give a reply. It has been said that this Bill will affect production, and that it will reduce production and this point has been emphasized, if I may say so, by the cotton textile mills. They have contended that from their point of view and from the point of view of the country this is an inopportune measure. There is a great deal of shortage of cloth in the country. In fact there is a cloth famine and they say that if anything was necessary in the circumstances of the day, the mills, particularly the Cotton mills, ought to have greater latitude in the matter of hours of employment, so that the deficiency in the matter of cloth production might be made up. Now, I had an examination made of the effect of the reduction in the hours of labour on production, particularly with regard to the cotton mills by the Labour Department and I have here some very interesting figures. I have a great lot of figures but I do not want to weary the House with them but I will just refer to the consumption of cotton, increase of loom, spindles and so on, so that the house may get an idea. Now, I take the figure for the year 1934, the year in which the change in the hours of work was made last time. They were brought down from 60 to 54. Now, in 1934, the position was as follows. There were 352 mills. There were
9,613,174 spindles, 194,388 looms, 384,938 hands employed and the number of cotton bales consumed was 2,703,994. Take the next year, 1935, when the provisions of the Act became effective. The number of mills had increased to 365. Spindles had increased to 9,685,175, looms had increased to 1,98,867. The number of hands increased to 4,14,884. The bales consumed increased to
3,123,418. I will take the last year available to me, that is 1938. The total number of mills had increased to 380. The number of spindles had increased to 1,020,275.