Artisans and Industrialization: Indian Weaving in the Twentieth Century

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'5?lrtisans and :lndustrialization ~ndian CWeavi"f] in the 7wentieth Century

CJJeJlai

Oxford 1.lniversify :Press Oxford

,

~ 0.14

~

.., A

, , ' ' ....,_...,.____ _..... '

0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02

--.-----------------------------------------4 1936 1932 1928

0 ...... 1924

Year --Wage

_,. _,... Yam

• • Profits

Fig. 4. Real Wages, Handlooms and Milli; 160 150 140

130

120 110

100

90 80

Year - - Weavers, Pieces

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• • Mill Wage, Time

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Trends and Fluctuatio11s

39

.

data is unavailable. In the handloom reports, 'insecurity' commonly refers to weavers trying to sell cloth in an uncertain market, and not to short-term open unemployment for hired workers. But all wage-contracts here involved piecerates, and underemployment was endemic. It is possible that the trade-off here was between steady employment and less frequent negotiation on money-rates, but this is not proven. In level of wages, the two sectors were closer than one would suppose. Weavers' piece-rate per yard converted to a standard 7-8 yards a day would imply a monthly wage roughly ten per cent below the mill average wage. But then, as we shall see, a typical cotton weaver could be fully employed for something like two-thirds of the year. So far as wages and profits can be distinguished, Figure 3 suggests increasing inequality.10 But what happened to the large household sector? If profit-ratio rises in the rest of the economy, one would expect a polarizatio~ within the households. The family income for those more resourceful and with better access to markets would be closer to profits, whereas the incomes of others would be closer to wages. In contemporary descriptions the increasing distance between small and large households mirrors this process. The prototypical households were a depressed class whereas labour-hiring corporate family units, commonly called karkhanas, were prospering. The social and economic conditions for this process is another issue. 4 TECHNOLOGICAL BASE

Any good estimate of input substitution in handlooms is constrained by the absence of reliable time series on employ10 This should hold even when

the two components of value added are deflated by different prices, since all prices were moving in the same direction.

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Artisans and Industrialization

ment and capital stock, and imperfections in the capital stock data. The latter refers to total looms which seems to have been stable at about 1.9 to 2 millions for over two decades from 1920.11 But loomage as such coincides with weavers and the only way capital-labour substitution can be captured is by means of values of capital-stock that would include processing machines and labour. Processing was always more labour intensive and investments here could be directly labour saving. But again there is not much available to generate an elasticity. But we do have a time-point estimate of composition of looms in 1940, and rough measures of the ratio of productivities of different types of looms, pit throw shuttle, fly shuttle, a range of semi-automatics. This enables a simple growth-accounting. Assuming, not without some basis, that the composition was homogeneous until about 1920, outputgrowth is easily decomposed into one, work-intensity and two, technological components:1~ •

•

mo Ko W + Wo Ko m+ Wo mo K + g where K = looms m = capacity output per loom W = working days in a year x = ll x/x g being an 'interaction factor' difficult to interpret but negli-

gible for small values, say, !i ± 1/4. In the present case the factors are distributed in the percentages 11 The loom estimates are from

the 1921 and 1931 censuses, Tariff Board . surveys of 1927 and 1937 and the Fact Finding census of 1942. ·Each suffered from erroneous guesses and/ or exclusions. When adjustments are made the totals more or less coincide. 12 With estimates of maximum daily output per loom, conversion of yam to cloth and total looms, free yam intplies an average employment intensity. For derivation see Chapter 2.

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66 : 46: 0 : -12 • • ( W:m: K:g) The fir~t component, employment-intensity, can be variously interpreted. As capacity utilization it reflects recovery from a long stagnation and is more a cyclical than a trend phenomenon. Alternatively it can also imply more efficient (or exploitative) use of labour as hired labour substituted household. More important is the distribution between the second and the third components. If the physical stock of looms remained static, their capacity increased enormously. Capital accumulation took the form not of addition to stock but addition to capacity. With long period data and marginal instead of total increments the second element should dominate. The percentage of pit looms with fly shuttle attachments could not have exceeded 5 in 1920, was 35 in 1940 and over 75 in 1960. Accelerated rate of substitution makes choice of techniques an interesting area to be explored.

CONCLUSION Two tentative results, that there was increasing inequality and that funds for accumulation were available, are now combined with a third: a large part of output-growth must be attributed to technical change. Substitution of older looms by new types went with changes in processes. Better looms had their advantages, but improved processes, by substituting surplus family labour, weakened the household. Increasing inequality was both an effect of and a condition for this phenomenon. The speculative element in profit share should not obscure the fact that a part of the surplus was reinvested and that changing relations within the industry made it possible.

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CHAPTER 2

Output and :Jncome

e foregoing on growth took the reliability of the database too much for granted. In fact, free yarn can be a misleading source on size of artisan output even if long-run trend shifts show up in it. If so, an idea of industry-size which is not too dependent on proxies is needed and has often been tried. The practice is to convert total looms or total yarn into cloth, using certain assumed or estimated ratios. But this tends to produce a narrow and static picture of the industry. First, the assumptions can be rigid, unrealistic and reflect received ideas. Second, total loom or yarn does not identify the cloths made, and so does not help us test if weavers tried to diversify when threatened by the mills. What we need, then, are: statistically strong measures of the parameters connecting the benchmark and the estimate, and a disaggregated output. This is tried here. The source on parameters, Tariff Board data on costs of production, somewhat restricts the choice of period, but one can still generalize some of the structural or behavioural features. 1 THE DATA AND THEIR USES

The two basic macro-level statistics on weaving are free yarn and number of looms. The first constitutes an unbroken time series from about 1900, but loomage, or what is almost equivalent, the number of weavers employed, is discrete.

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Output and Income

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Converting free yarn even now remains a standard method for estimating how much cotton cloth is made outside the mills. Most pre-independence estimates used free yarn. More recent studies with historical data customarily reproduce the series without adjustments. 1 But free yam is an all-India statistics, and so in measuring local or regional production looms were needed. Recently, in calculating income from textiles, Sivasubramonian (1977) used employment. But neither yam nor employment gives us a reliable measure of output. The readymade nature of free yarn statistics obscured noncotton (and other-than-mill) yam used in handlooms. There is really no estimate of the quantity of silks, mulberry and wild, manmade fibres, silk wastes and handspun woven in handlooms. This omission matters because until well into the twentieth century handlooms were the users of noncotton yarns so that any estimate excluding this segment is bound ' to distort their market shares. If a good measure of the yam-to-cloth conversion ratio is available, free yam can simply be multiplied by this ratio to obtain quantity of cotton cloth woven. But it is in the selection of the ratio that strong, sometimes arbitrary, assumptions are made. The Fact Finding Committee (1942) quoted three earlier figures, none apparently based on any kind of survey, 4.17 yards to a pound (Robertson, 1904-5), 5.18 yards (Raoji Patel, 1906-7) and 4 yards (Bell, 1924). When applied to several hundred million pounds these ratios can produce results of very different implications. Equally random was the Tariff Board's 3-4 yards on the assumption that 'at least 80 per cent of the cloth is woven from the coarser counts'. 1

Except Twomey {1983) who develops a method based on per capita cloth consumption, for a period for which yam and loom data are weak. Guha {1990) provides a good review of methods. ·

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•

Artisans and Industrialization

The Fact Finding Committee's 4.57 yards for mill yarn and 3 for handspun were probably closer to reality, although still impressionistic. At present the ratio used is 4.54 yards to a lb, but this too is typically based on somewhat dated information on fineness. Conversion ratio was not only assumed, it was also assumed to be invariant over time, across different kinds of yam, and across different uses of the same yam. In f~ct cotton alone could be used to weave pure cotton cloth or used in mixtures with silk, synthetics and wool. Each had a different weight-to-area relationship. It seems to be taken for granted that the ratio actually used was some kind of a weighted average. But, in fact, not distinguishing between uses can produce a systematic downward bias. For, specific to a yam the extent of mixtures with other yams should raise the ratio, and fineness of cotton yam was neither static nor oriented to 'coarser' counts. Another error was implicit in the practice of quoting the ratio in terms of length of the cloth. This implies all cloths have the same width. The Fact Finding Committee correctly noted that 'the ratio has no definite meaning so long as one does not know the width of the cloth produced' but did not actually supply a standard width despite having collected the information. In fact the fabrics turned out in handlooms, being finished gar1nents for ready use, were broader than mill cloth which was woven in long sheets meant to be cut up and stitched. The same yardage, in other words, implied about 15 to 20 per cent more in area with handwoven cloth. With employment-based estimates, a well-known difficulty is the unreliability of the employment statistics itself. Already in 1918 the Industrial Commission had subjected the textile statistics of the first five censuses to careful scrutiny and come to depressing conclusions about their worth. Loom censuses, even when from the same source show random

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variations and, except perhaps for Madras or Bengal, cannot be used to infer a trend. The ratio used in Sivasubramonian, a counterpart of conversion ratio, is 'net product' (income) per loom. Here again, estimation involves assumptions that are far too general. A weaver usually has a diversified product-structure which rarely remains the same for any two consecutive seasons. While cost-structure for a specific item can be easily identified, that is, wages per piece accurately known, its conversion to wages per loom implies assumptions about products made and time spent on each product per typical loom. Neither is easy to calculate nor, at any rate, seriously tried. Usual sources on craftsman's wages2 refer to a typical weaver and not to a statistical average. This practice received sanction from some kind of an implicit idea that inequalities did not exist. Otherwise, a 'typical' weaver makes little sense, and even an unweighted average may not convey much in that case. The problem is worsened by inadequate data on the range of variation in wages. Whenever employment intensity was directly measured, the results varied widely. The Fact Finding Committee, seeking a one-point estimate, assembled many local surveys and settled for 200 working days of 9 hours as 'a rough sort of average'. The statistics is confusing: seasons for cotton and silk, where they overlap, are not separated, weaving and marketing seasons are confused, idle looms are not included. There are also discrepancies between two tables in the report both dealing with the same data. These problems apart, the very difference between what the report thought was a good standard and the 247 days in Sivasubramonian renders all

'rough' calculations suspect. 2 Sivasubramonian assumes, questionably, equivalence between wages

and incomes.

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Some of these problems can be avoided by bringing the two aggregates (yarn and looms) together into such a relation that simultaneous determination of the magnitudes becomes possible. By that means the final estimates are made to depend less on the reliability of any one index in particular. The results thus derived can be strengthened if the ratios which bring these indices into relation are themselves directly measured rather than assumed. We have used the identity

R = k. E. y. p where R = yarn available, E = number of looms p = inverse of conversion ratio or lbs of yarn per yard of cloth y = full employment output per loom k = employment intensity or ratio of actual to full employment output There are two operations to be perfor1ned with this. First, to derive R/p or total yardage directly where reliable data are already available for both R and p. In this case the formula is superfluous unless we happen to know any two of the other elements so that the third can be derived as a by-product. And second, when R itself is unknown, as when we do not know the proportions of free yam going to different types of uses, R/ p' s can be derived by solving a set of simultaneous equations provided k, E, y are separately given. In either case the final yardage has to be converted into values by means of two more ratios, value added and price per yard. The ratios come from description on cloth samples collected by the four Tariff Board enquiries on cotton (1927 and 1934) and silk (1935 and 1940). The Fact Finding Committee is also a source for technical data. The cloth samples statistics are rich in content but not uniform in presentation. This

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necessitated some adjustments described in the appendix to this chapter. Readers wishing to skip the data-base details that follow can look at the table below and go straight to the concluding section. The table summarizes sources of data and steps involved in drawing up fibre and cloth-wise output. The conclusion, of course, discusses the cloth market tendencies related to these results. TABLE ON METHOD

Steps 1. Ratios

Fibre cotton, mixed, silk, manmade and wilds handspun

conversion (p) [ unit-values [ productivity (y) [

Tariff Board cloth samples ] Tariff Board and FFC samples Tariff Board evidence and FFC

2. Aggregates

cotton mixed silk

yam {R)

free yam

manmade

]

1

wilds handspun

Tariff Bombay derived Board Customs from Officer waste [Tariff Board, silk] -

-

/

looms (E)

FFC

AISA

-

3. Output and cotton, mixed and silk manmade wilds handspun Incomes, 1937-8 cloth (R/p) [solved for 3 Customs R/p Rip

workintensity (k)

uses by a set of Officer equations, one for each yarn ] [ follows from assumed above]

-

assumed same as mill yam

cloth multiplied by unit-values

]

• incomes

NOTES:

all fibres FFC stands for the Fact Finding Committee's report, and AISA for All India Spinners' Association.

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Artisans and Industrialization

2 THE RATIOS Estimating conversion ratios involves standardization of both area and weight of cloth. The samples are generally finished garments of unequal width. To make them comparable with mill doth we have converted the width into a standard 36". That is, one yard means one square yard exactly. The samples, moreover, refer sometimes to weight of doth and sometimes to weight of yam. The difference is positive in cotton, yam gains weight by size retained, and negative in silk, yam loses weight by degumming. We have used the Fact Finding Committee percentage for cotton and the percentage suggested by Tariff Board experiments for silk.3 The results are shown in Table 1. TABLE . 1 CONVERSION RATIOS AND PRODUCTIVIlY

Conversion: yards Maximum Daily Outper lb (sample size) put, yards (sample size) Pure cotton Mixed: yard/lb of silk

5.16 (63)

5.28 (11)

31.41 (12)

cotton/ silk

3.71 ( 8)

3.10 ( 3)

Silk 6.30 (45) 1.46 (23) Manmades 4.91 (22) 6.54 (22) Wild silks 4.99 ( 7) 2.51 ( 7) Handspun cotton 3.70 6.00 NOTES: Productivity in a nine-hour day. Handspun estimates are from the Fact Finding Committee. See Appendix to Chapter 2 for explanation on products. 3 In cotton the cloth-yam ratio is 1.02: 1. Percentage of degumming loss

is 17. In fact the range varies from 16-17 per cent for most varieties of Chinese whites to 23-24 per cent for Indian yellows and charka-reeled silks. We settled for a low figure because, except for the special fabrics in which maximum lustre was insisted upon, partial or semi-degumming was quite common.

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Productivity measures are less reliable. The number of observations is smaller and stands for special experiments the results of which do not necessarily coincide. Also, in cotton several types of looms were at work but maximum daily output is available for throw shuttles alone. The Fact Finding Committee supplied a ratio of productivities between loom-types and their weights in total looms. These two suggest a weighted average which is used here. The final figures reflect expected ranking. Productivity depended, inversely, on fineness of yam, on skill-intensity and on whether the cloth was a piecegood or a finished gar1nent. Silks and mixed fabrics were usually decorated garments. Manmade fibres, mainly rayon and'art silk', included piecegoods which could be mass-produced. Cotton could be either. TABLE 2 PRICES AND INCOMES

(Rs per yard) --

Weaver's Middleman's Value Price • • earnings earnings Added Cotton (9) Mixed (14) Silk (45) Manmade (22) Wilds (7)

0.12 0.27 0.70 0.10 0.40

0.02 0.00 0.30 0.11 0.05

0.14 0.27 1.00 0.21 0.45

0.30 0.75 2.70 0.68 1.03

Value Added/ Price(%) 47 36 37 31 43

The same rankings reappear in the value ratios (Table 2).4 4 The

Fact Finding Committee also supplies value of output by fabrics. Sources are provincial governments as usual and no.details are available on the status of these estimates. The implicit unit-value of cotton is about Rs 0.26 per yard which is close to the corresponding figure in Table 2. The other fabrics are imperfectly defined in the report and not comparable.

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'

It is noteworthy that a small but rapidly expanding class in the thirties, manmades, had a higher share of profits in income. However, the division of income into wages and profits may not always have a simple interpretation. For instance, weavers' incomes here do not quite coincide with the wages of Chapter 1, and, unlike wages, they were not necessarily depressed. What it might mean is as follows. While middleman's ·earnings are income arising in trade, weavers earnings do not necessarily mean income arising in production. Weavers included many weaver-traders, 'master-weavers' as they were called, who subcontracted work while working themselves. Weavers' earnings, in other words, were composite in nature. It is then quite possible that wages were stationary but weavers' earnings did not confor1n. 3 OUTPUT AND VALUE ADDED, 1937-38 To begin with we try out these ratios for a year for which independent estimates exist of most parameters and benchmarks. The ratios refer to cloths. But yams used are available as yarns and not by kinds of cloth. For example, free yarn includes raw material for pure cotton, for mixed silk and cotton, and for mixed synthetics and cotton. The proportion going to each of these uses can be separated easily by applying the formula R - kEyp provided loomage is available by the kinds of cloth woven on them.5 5

In that case the task reduces to finding the k's in, say ~•I;k;R;

when Re =cotton yarn available, ki =employment intensity in i-th usage and Ri • Ei Yi Pi• Ei is given by a fabric-based classification, y;, Pi are given by the ratios, Re is known. If the expressions for all the yarns are written out, e g Rs • Ij kj Rj for silk, etc, then the k's can be found by solving the equations simultaneously provided number of yarns and number of uses are the same. For details see Appendix to Chapter 2.

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The only loom-census which does give such a classification is that of the Tariff Board, silk, 1940. As with other censuses this too suffers from imperfect coverage, though the classification of looms, by fabric and not by yam, is more scientific. Coverage can be improved by using Fact Finding Committee figures for nonresponding regions, but there still remains a gap between the two. We have ignored this discrepancy since what is of interest is not so much the overall size as its break-up between usage. This break-up, after necessary adjustments, reads (in millions) total mill yam cotton silk mixed synthetics handspun cotton

1.800 1.238 0.083 0.159 0.155 0.163

The totals of yam available are derived next. The entire import of manmades art silk, staple fibre, and we include spun silk-increased from 9.56 million lbs in 1931-32 to 36.59 million lbs in 1937-38. This quantity was shared by handlooms and powerlooms in 1937-38. A large quantity of cotton yam was also woven in mixtures with these. The Fact Finding Committee supplied an estimate of powerloom consumption of cotton yam but it was based only on offtake of Madura mill yam. An alternative source is the Collector of Customs, Bombay, who submitted a statement to Tariff Board, silk, on distribution of art silk imports by users and by fabric types (raw data in Appendix to Chapter 2). Adapting this we get the required break-up in Table 3 below.

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Artisa11s and Industrialization TABLE 3 YARN CONSUMED IN MANMADE FIBRE WEAVING

(m lbs) Yam: manmade cotton

total Fabric: pure manmade 50% manmade mainly cotton

total

Powerlooms

Handlooms

9.40 11.60 21.00 6.24 3.16 11.60 21.00

26.87 41.35 68.22

8.24 31.58

28.60 68.22

How much wild silk was produced and woven in India is almost impossible to find out. Mulberry wor1ns were reared in plantations by settled fa1·1ners whereas wild wor111s were reared in forests by unknown tribals as part-time work. Wilds were the only silks that could be, and usually were, woven by men of nonweaving castes. The\ period in question, or a little earlier, saw great expansion as well as shifts in the areas where wild worms were reared. Tariff Board, silk (1940) did not collect any data, but repeated certain figures cited by its predecessor. These were the quantities of tasar, muga and eri produced in eastern and central India, the total being 0.55 million lbs. Adjusting for exclusion of other tasar growing regions and certain minor yarns, 0.6 million can be taken as a fair estimate. For 1937-38 there is no statistics on production, but export of wild silk waste is known. From 0.04 million lbs in 1932 it increased to 0.23 million in 1937.6 Production must have gone up by at least as much ignoring wastes that were not exported and possible changes in waste-to-spun ratio. Applying this rate of expansion, production in 1937-38 could be 3.3 million lbs. 6

Average of two years, 193&-37 and 1937-38. The figure fluctuates between years.

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For handspun we have used the Fact Finding Committee's number, 54.4 million lbs, based on figures supplied by provincial governments and the All India Spinners' Associa tion. This is only consumption by known users and, as the Committee observed, 'total production is bound to be somewhat greater'. About 70 per cent was spun in Punjab which, even in mid-century, was a commercial producer of handspun. This suggests rather surprisingly that politics had a relatively minor role in the survival of handspun. Raw silk available for consumption measured by tariff board was {in m lbs):

Indian production 1931-32 raw waste 1937-38 raw waste

2.07 1.04 1.52 0.93

Export Import Re-export Available by sea by sea 0.01 0.29 0.01 0.25

1.56 0.00 2.34 0.02

4.43 0.03 4.71 0.02

This quantity was used both in pure silk and in mixed cotton and silk. Free yam in this year was 319.3 million lbs. Of this an estimated 41.35 million was used in mixtures with manmades. The rest, 277.95 million, was used in pure cotton weaving and mixed. These break-ups, derived by solving a set of equations, are {in million lbs) silk used in pure silk silk used in mixed cotton used in pure cotton cotton used in mixed

2.09 2.69 268.23 9.72

The employment intensities implicit in these figures are: about 210 days in a year for cotton, 172 days for mixed and 110 days for silk. These imply full-time work for roughly eight and a half months {cotton), seven months {mixed) and

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five .months (silk) respectively. While the ranking conforms well to expectations, the actual level for silk would seem low by the sort of capacity utilization nor1ns to which we are used. In general, weaving capacity at any time might appear underutilized for the simple reason that weavers often accumulate more looms than are strictly needed, as they are cheap, and keep some idle. What needs explanation here is the much lower ratio for silk which could be due to two things. First, consumers switching from silk to manmades could, in the short term, result in unutilized capacity rather than the scrapping of looms. The very commission of two successive Tariff Board enquiries was partly in response to this crisis. Secondly, in many places silk looms freely combined other yarns or shifted to fine cotton depending on relative prices. A diversified product-structure extending over several quite distinct markets would not greatly affect our estimates of yam consumption but bring the employment intensities closer to each other. Having thus derived total yarn used by types of cloth we apply the conversion ratios on these. Two sets of results follow, output and income in 1937-38 (Table 4) and market shares in volume and value (Table 5). The only way of testing what our incomes mean is to compare them with Sivasubramonian's estimate of income from small industries. Roughly 17 per cent of the people working in small industry were accounted for by those branches of textiles covered here. Daily average wage by kinds of craftsmen suggest that textile workers were probably earning an income below the average. Their share in small industry income then should be less than this percentage. But our value added represents about 20 per cent of total sectoral income adjusted for employment intensity differences. This might suggest an underestimation in Sivasubramonian. If so, the discrepancy is largely due to inclusion of profits in our

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YARN CONSUMED,

TABLE 4 OUTPur AND INCOME, 1937-38

Yarn (m lbs)

Cloth (m yards)

Cotton Mixed Silk Manmades Wild silks Handspun

268.23 12.34 2.09 68.22 3.30 54.40

Total

408.58

NOTES:

55

Income (m Rs)

Output (m Rs)

1384.07 82.29 13.17 335.10 16.49 201.46

193.77 22.22 13.17 70.39 7.42 15.11

415.22 61.72 35.56 227.93 17.01 37.80

2032.67

322.08

795.24

For handspun, price of a cotton cloth coarser than 20s was used; on this, cotton value-added to price-ratio is applied.

TABLE 5 MARKET SHARES IN TEXTILES, 1937-38

Cotton Others Total quantity value quantity value quantity value (m lbs) Cm Rs) (m lbs) (m Rs) (m lbs) (m Rs) 415.22 648.60 380.02 2032.67 795.24 (36.5) (72.4) (75.7) (30.6) (48.5) 606.11 1 3788.20 606.11 (37.0) (53.3) (56.9) 87.11 Power128.102 87.113 128.10 (1.9) (5.3) looms (14.3) (17.4) Imports 579.00 116.41 119.60 34.59 698.60 151.00 (10.1) (10.2) (6.9) (10.6) (9.2) (13.3) Total 5751.27 1137.74 896.30 501.72 6647.50 1639.46 (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) (100.0) Handlooms Mills

1384.07 (24.1) 3788.20 (65.8)

NOTES:

1. To be derived; 2. Conversion ratio in powerlooms 6.1 yards, source Tariff Board, silk, 1940; 3. Calculated at handloom manmade unit-value.

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estimates, and that should make a difference to artisan's share in national income over time as well. The bias implicit in conventional market shares c.an be shown by comparing Fact Finding Committee's handloom shares, 25.S per cent, with ours, 30.6. In value terms, which is better as it reflects actual consumer expenditure, the difference is much larger. In value of handloom output, inclusion of noncotton and handspun adds about SO per cent to the original total based on mill yam alone. More than that, noncotton makes a difference to growth rates as well.

4 TIME SERIES Time series can be constructed with fair accuracy for 1931-32 to 1937-38. From the Tariff Board surveys direct estimates are available for the more important yams, cotton and synthetics, while the period is short enough to assume constancy . in the technical ratios. We do not know, however, the proportions in which different yams were being mixed, and assume invariance of the structure observed for 1937-38. This implies a certain uniformity in relative price movements which is likely to hold good for the inter-tariff years. The only other assumption relates to quantitatively minor classes, pure and wild silks, size of the powerloom sector, etc. Firm ideas on these are available for the initial and terminal years, the years in between are extrapolated. Table 6 gives consumption of silk and manmades by handlooms. The quantity of cotton yam used in mixtures with these is in the ratio 1.47:1, the same as in 1937-38. The free yam series itself was revised by the Fact Finding Committee incorporating fresh estimates of nonhandloom uses. Of these other uses, powerloom consumption has been recalculated here, and the net balance further adjusted for mixtures (Table 7).

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TABLE 6

0 -·

2

UI

.....

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TABLE 7 COTTON YARN AVAILABLE FOR HANDLOOMS

(mlbs)

Free Uses Puwer- Balance Cotton Cotton • yarn excluding looms used in in pure mixtures cotton p_owerloams 1931-32 1932-33 1933-34 1934-35 1935-36 1936-37 1937-38

364 410 349 358 408 366 381

29.90 28.10 29.00 39.70 38.90 42.50 50.10

1.93 3.86 5.79 7.72 9.65 11.60

334.10 379.97 316.14 312.51 361.83 313.85 319.30

21.36 26.47 20.39 28.83 29.50 31.30 51.07

312.74 353.50 295.25 283.68 331.68 282.55 268.23

Wild silks and handspun cotton used are 1931

Wild silks Handspun

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

-32 -33 -34 -35 -36 -37 -38 0.60 0.60 1.14 1.68 2.22 2.76 3.30 63.10 71.40 59.70 57.40 67.30 57.40 54.40

In estimating the growth of handspun cotton we have imputed the rate of change in mill yarn cotton. Next, we calculate change in the ratios and unit-values. For all silks and synthetics we consolidate 1937-38 figures of output and yam to derive an average conversion ratio, 5.2 yards to a pound of yam. This is assumed constant. In cotton, however, the ratio can be estimated for 1931-32 as yam-count distribution is available over time. The ratio is 4.95 yards, assumed to have changed unifor1nly in the next seven years.7 Except for isolated years, prices of cloth, mill or handloom, are nowhere available. Since raw material and pro1 The weights are from Tariff Board, cotton {1934) and Hardy (1929).

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cessing costs explain 50 to 60 per cent of final price (Table 3), trends in yam price can be taken as a proxy for trends in product price. This is not quite valid since value-added-toprice-ratio was in fact changing (Chapter 1), but yam price was still a strong enough influence on price. Using yam price, then, handloom price series are calculated for the three main cloth-types (Table 8). The final output estimates follow from the yam totals, the ratios and these prices (Table 9). TABLE 8 AVERAGE PRICES OF HANDLOOM

CLOIB (Rs/yard)

1931-32 1932-33 1933-34 1934-35 1935-36 1936-37 1937-38

Cotton

Noncotton

Handse.un

0.273 0.291 0.285 0.285 0.300 0.285 0.300

0.909 0.870 0.809 0.747 0.678 0.747 0.770

0.170 0.180 0.180 0.180 0.190 0.180 0.190

For market shares, prices of mill and powerloom cloths are also needed. The price series for powerlooms is the handloom manmade cloth price for 1937-38, Rs 0.68 per yard, assumed to have changed at the same rate as imported art silk yarn price. These, and a constant conversion ratio result in the following 1932-33 1933-34 1934-35 1935-36 1936-37 1937-38 Price (Rs/yard) 0.877 Yards (m) 21.35 Value (m) 18.72

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0.741 64.00 47.42

0.585 0.680 0.585 85.40 106.82 128.10 49.96 62.49 87.11

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Mills were careful about disclosing value of output as it could be used to infer fineness of cloth which was usually a trade secret. Tariff Board, cotton (1934), collected data on cloth prices which can be consolidated into a price index but it would not go beyond 1931. Quantity of imported cloth by count is given in Hardy (1929). From this, implicit unit-values can be derived and used as proxy for mill prices. But the two count structures do not overlap except for finer yarns. Besides, the procedure is hardly justifiable in view of the persistent gap between the fob prices of imports and mill cloth, precisely what made the 1930s an unusual decade. The best source we found on prices came much later, in 1948. A Tariff Board report in that year estimated' fair realisation multipliers' of mill cloth by counts of yarn.8 The industry also fixed a parallel set of multipliers which is the one used here as proxy for prices. Adjusting for a 250 per cent price increase between 1937-38 and January 1948, we get a set of countwise prices. Weighted by quantity of yam in each count used up by the mills in 1937-38 (Fact Finding), an average of As 13.19 per lb of yam woven or Rs 0.16 per yard is obtained. The procedure is repeated for 1931. Prices are adjusted backwards with the help of the series of Table 8 and a fresh set of weights used (Hardy). The result is marginally lower at Rs 0.15 per yard. There is a large gap between handloom and mill unitvalues. Part of this is only apparent as the mill unit-value refers to ex-factory price of grey cloth and should be raised by value added in dyeing, printing, bleaching, and by retailer's margin, though some of these incomes do not accrue to the mills themselves. But this may not close the gap. Per yard manufacturing cost of comparable counts can be expected to be lower in mills for a variety of reasons: no margin 8

India (1948).

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is paid on yam used for weaving, intensity of work is higher, as is conversion ratio. Also, there were differences in skill intensity, and handloom cloth was finer on an average. Combining these prices, the yard and value of mill cloth

are 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 -32 -35 -36 -37 -38 -33 -34 Yard (m) 3056.2 3216.2 2989.5 3392.6 3495.3 3553.7 3788.2 Value

(m Rs)

458.4

482.4

448.4

508.9

559.2

568.6

606.1

TABLE 9 QUANTITY AND VALUE OF HANDLOOM OUTPUT

1931-32 1932-33 1933-34 1934-35 1935-36 1936-37 1937-38

Cotton q_'ti~ value 1548.1 422.6 1760.4 512.3 1482.2 422.4 1432.6 408.3 1689.3 506.8 1446.7 412.3 1384.1 415.2

Noncotton q'tity value 186.6 169.7 227.8 198.2 182.5 147.7 251.9 188.2 257.8 174.8 273.5 204.3 446.9 344.1

Handse,un q'ti~ value 233.5 39.7 264.2 47.6 220.9 39.8 212.4 38.2 249.0 45.3 212.4 38.2 201.3 38.2

Total q_'ti~ value 1968.2 632.0 2252.4 758.0 1885.6 609.8 1896.9 634.7 2196.0 528.9 1932.5 654.8 2032.3 797.6

Finally, we have the market shares (Table 10). These suggest that mills were encroaching on imports and power·looms on handlooms, but relative shares of the organized and the unorganized sectors hardly altered. This was possible because stagnation in cotton was offset by rapid expansion in noncotton within handloom weaving.9 In value the unorganized sector even increased its share. 9

Tariff Board (sericulture) evidence suggests that Japanese art silk piecegoods created a new and rapidly expanding demand for a class of fabrics in between fine cotton and pure silk.The powerlooms and hand-

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Quantity import power- handloom loom

1931-32 1932-33

51.4 47.0

15.2 19.7

0.4

32.9

1933-34

51.7

14.9

0.8

32.6

1934-35 1935-36

53.2 50.6

16.4 16.3

1936-37

54.9 56.9

13.6

1937-38

10.5

33.2

all 100.0

all

48.4

100.0

-::s "'t

r;;. i::a

en

100.0

16.5 17.9

1.2

49.4

100.0

::s

100.0

35.5

13.3

3.0

48.3

100.0

5r ~

29.6

100.0

1.3 1.6

31.8 29.8

100.0 100.0

30.7

handloom

~

35.1 31.5

1.0

1.9

mill

Value import powerloom

100.0

36.3 36.3

15.0 13.1

3.4 3.2

45.3 47.4

100.0 100.0

39.1

11.5

4.3

45.1

100.0

36.9

9.2

5.3

48.6

100.0

i::a

~

--· -~-::s-· i::

en

"'t

i::a

0

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Output and Income

To show what difference all this makes, we compare percentages in physical output from Fact Finding with shares in value by our method.

Fact Finding:

formal 1931-32 1937-38

informal 28.4 25.3

71.6 74.7

Our estimates:

fornral

informal

51.6 46.1

48.4 53.9

In the report, the formal sector (mills and imports) displaces, relatively, the informal (handloom and powerloom). This piece of statistics, which can be used to infer stagnation in crafts, is replaced by one that suggests status quo in physical shares and a decreasing share of the formal sector in value.

CONCLUSION Certain features of Tables 5, 9 and 10--one-point estimates, time series and market shares are worthy of comment. Together they clarify the nature of structural adjustments in textiles in this period. The point estimates here are different in two ways: they revise upward the size of noncotton thereby establishing the decentralised sector as dominant within a segment of the market which went through dramatic changes in the thirties; and, by introducing a balanced weight between fabrics of tmequal value, they yield better measures of output and market shares in textiles. These shares suggest status quo, which was in fact maintained by means of expansion and diversification. loom factories owea their origin to a great extent to this new demand. As we know now, replacing cotton by noncotton is a global movement, been happening_for a long time, but more recently has slowed down in the west and speeded up in India. In the mid-thirtie.s the handloom-powerloom complex was the main beneficiary.

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Trends in output (Table 9) make these processes dearer. To see trends, the two immediate post-tariff years (1932-33 and 1935-36) should be treated as mild outliers, in each year the indices jump up a little, then fall. These unusual features excluded, the data reveal some expansion in cotton and then a slow down, and in noncotton a steady and large expansion throughout. Combined with increasing weights of highervalued items within cotton, they point to a single process: diversification towards finer and costlier products, or a • 'deepening' of product-structure. The values show it better than yards. The mills too went through a similar expansion but restricted in cotton. To be able to explain the status quo in market shares we may again assume that mills and handlooms were moving parallelly rather than encroaching on one another's market. Handlooms' dominance in noncotton influenced this, but very likely market-segmentation held for the fine cotton as well though its precise basis remains vague. So do those conditions of the tPxtile market which made possible a deepening of product-structure. Relative price movements might explain it in part. The other part must refer to preferences. Contradictions, however, were present within the decentralized sector to which the rapid growth of powerlooms bears witness. There must have been other changes as well, like the conditions that made product-switching possible. These could be increased investments, entry in high-risk markets, technological changes. All combined, weaving as a whole was certainly not constrained either by a small surplus or by conditions restricting its re-employment in production. What institutions made weavers essentially dynamic?

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APPENDIX TO CHAPI'ER 2: DATA BASE

Sources The cloth samples data are stored in the evidences of the Tariff Board enquiries and appendices to the Fact Finding Committee which pose a couple of problems. The Tariff Board questionnaire, instead of defining the value ratios, left them to the discretion of the provincial governments who collected the data, causing some confusion. Thus, 'selling price' sometimes includes middleman's earnings and sometimes excludes it. This need not affect value added as profits in trade can be included under weaver's earnings. At any rate, no adjustment was possible on this score. The samples, moreover, consist of fabrics that entered long distance trade. This is far from a statistical sample. The problem of a possible bias can be ignored for silks and manmades a fair share of which did in fact go to distant markets, but not for cotton the coarser products of which may not have been adequately represented. We have partially corrected for it by breaking down the cotton ratios into count-groups and then averaging these ratios weighted by the shares of each count in free yarn. Products A description of the cloths is needed. Here' mixed' stands for cotton garments with silk borders. This is also what the Tariff Board called mixed. But in common parlance mixed could also mean fabrics containing different threads in warp and weft, the himroos and the mushroos. But these were more localized and less important than bordered cloth. Pure silk is a composite category. It includes the mass consumable sheeting of Punjab and Bengal, the gold lace bordered saris of Mysore and Hyderabad, and the intricately embroidered kinkhabs of Benares and Surat. Intensive use of gold thread tends to raise the conversion ratio in silk. The range of sample values, therefore, is very wide. Manmades consist of mainly

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viscose yarn. We have clubbed this with spun silk which is a natural product. In the market these yams, including wild silks, were demanded as cheaper substitutes of mulberry silk. They were also preferred because they did not require elaborate processing. This contributed to the higher productivity in manmades. The various subclasses were of unequal value. The manmade estimates, therefore, are weighted averages.

Productivity

Maximum daily output in throw shuttle, fly shuttle and semi-automatic looms are in the ratio 4 : 7 : 10. The Fact Finding Committee arrived at these proportions from data on standard fabrics supplied by major provinces and states. These proportions vary from one experiment to another and are also specific to the cloth woven. But the Committee's figure, being an average, can be used. For a more detailed treatment of the problem see Chapter 6. In calculating productivities daily working hours had to be standardized. The working day varies from 7-8 hours in households to 10 hours in factories. The standard day consi~ts of 9 hours. Daily output is unusually high in the factories, Kashmir silk or Sholapur cotton. Such observations have not been included. The raw data also suggest that between 1933 and 1940 productivity in throw-shuttles went up from 2.7 to 3.8 yards or so. There is no technological reason for this. Probably it reflects expansion of handloom factories and centralized processing units, dominant tendencies in urban weaving.

Number of Looms

The Tariff Board, sil~ estimates are unifor1nly above the Fact Finding Committee's active looms by 3-8 per cent and below the latter's total by 20 per cent or so. The di£ference could ~e due to the size of idle loomage. Since both are from the same source, provincial departments, it is difficult to say which is more reliable. The following adjustments were made on Tariff Board looms. No data were

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available from Baroda, Gwalior, Jammu and Kashmir, Travancore and Cochin. LOOMS, 1940

(in '000)

cotton mixed Assam Madras Punjab

402.0 245.3 234.6 UP 122.3 Bengal 111.3 Bombay 54.5 Hyderabad 23.4 Bihar 89.8 Cent. Prov. 59.6 Orissa 36.1 Mysore 20.0 Baroda, etc 12.7 6.4 Jammu-I.f~MADUGU

GIJl)IY ATAM ,

!GAL_S""•

m.J.JCIIERll\Y'

CAUC111'

'lAJDAP£'T

• KANOIIPURAM

~O~:~~~SALEM • ARN! ~~• ;••RASIP\JRA . IM

RUCl(P.1'0000

, •

• I

COIMBATOR! '

NAMAKXAL • JAYM'ICONDAM MADURAI • ICUMBAKONAM .__., • ' TANlORf e • P~MAKUDl ARUPl'UKOTTAI

500 10 5000 looms

•

5000

•

10

I 0000 looms

more lhan 10000 looms

•

major weaving towns wilhoul reliable loom-count

0

TENXASI

.', M!U.PALAYAM

•

Map 2. Weaving Towns, 1950, Place Names

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Thurston's list also has problems. A casual reading suggests imperfect coverage, such as the exclusion of Malabar, and perhaps the inadequate representation of coastal Andhra. But in both areas, town size was very much smaller than in Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra. A break-up by town-~ize shows where the growth occurred (Table l). In number, share in loomage, and average size, the medium-sized towns with 1000 to 2500 looms were ahead. By a rough reckoning these would be towns with populations ranging from 15-20 thousand to about 40-50 thousand, that is, in census class III. TABLE 1 TOWN SIZE IN 1HE SoUTH

Looms

Number of Percentage of towns looms

Average • size

Common examl!..les

1899 1940 1899 1940 1899 1940 ~ 500 8 6 6.6 1.8 256 366 501-1000 7 10 16.2 6.3 716 761 1001-2500 4 22 16.5 30.4 1350 1674 2501-5000 7 19.5 3379 5001-10000 59.8 32.0 3 5 6190 7749 10000s 1 9.9 12000 51 100 100 Total 22 1434 2373

3 1 1

2

7

These were also places where typically weaving was one of the main occupations. But in very large concentrations such as Madura, Salem or Coimbatore, handlooms existed as part of a diversified industrial structure oriented to textiles. The average size figures suggest that smaller places were giving way to middle-sized towns. We cannot be certain if the same towns were growing as there are very few common instances. It is possible that at least some of the towns in Thurston's list suffered relative decline, but we shall also separate out the

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oommon instances to see how the older places themselves fared. Before that let us take a look at Table 2 on regional distribution which also shows the location of the new towns. There are four sub-regions in Table 2. A rough justification is offered by Maps 1 and 2 which show the tendency of handloom towns to cluster in four areas, Tamil Nadu, Malabar, coastal Andhra and southern Andhra. TABLE 2 SPREAD OF WEAVINC TOWNS IN 1liE SoUTH

Coastal Andhra

Southern Andhra

Tamil Nadu

Malabar

1899 1940 1899 1940 1899 1940 1940 No of towns 1 Average size 256 Looms ('000) 0.3 J of Presidency 0.8 Common insta.nces

15 6 10 15 25 1054 1660 2049 1423 3368 15.8 10.0 20.5 21.3 84.2 13.7 31.6 16.9 67.6 69.6 2 5

1

546 0.5 0.5

This clustering went along with systematic differences in structural characteristics and growth experiences. Each region, moreover, had its own history.2 Another feature of /

.

2

The industry along the coasts came under much greater outside influence, trade or entrepreneurship (the mission's interests in Malabar or Company trade on the Andhra coast). In the interior local factors were more important in the evolution. Compared to Tamil Nadu, Andhra product.structure was probably more inclined to specialized marlcets, carpets and blankets were major products of Bellary and Anantpur, or of Warangal somewhat north. With expansion of trade in the walce of railways and emergence of permanent markets (to be discussed below) migrant traders from north/ central India, outsiders to weaving, entered handlooms and came to control the industry. This happened in southern Andhra more than in Tamil Nadu where major weaver castes retaiPed control on trade.

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clustering suggested by Map 2 is the tendency for very large towns to draw many smaller ones, satellites as it were, around them. This becomes clear through the history of specific places. We may, for comparison, temporarily leave out the eastern and the western coastal regions, as there are very few examples. A contrast between Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra shows that the new towns and additional loomage were concentrated in Tamil Nadu, although in absolute scale there was growth everywhere. The average size figures suggest the magnitude of the relative shift. Southern Andhra towns were larger in size in 1899, but ranking reversed in 1940. In other words the region which suffered relative decline was southern Andhra. This decline went beyond urban looms, and showed up in looms in the whole area, in the population of weavers, and in technological progress or the response to new options in weaving and processing in which Tamil Nadu and Malabar towns were ahead of Andhra, while coastal Andhra towns were somewhat more progressive than those in southern Andhra.3 · Thurston quite possibly underestimated urbanization in coastal Andhra. But descriptions from the late nineteenth century suggest that the industry along the east coast was, in fact, spread more in groups of villages than in towns. Masulipatam is the only major place to receive frequent mention, but more in connection with dyeing and printing, and, of course, maritime trade, than with weaving. Ranga' s writings in the twenties confirm the rural character of coastal Andhra weaving, barring manufacture of export fabrics which was, however, controlled by wholesale merchants based in 3 The 1901 census reported an absolute decline in population of weavers

in southern Andhra districts while the number inc1eased generally in Tamil Nadu. See also Madras (1925), pp. 71-2 and p. 86.

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Madras. On the other hand, the general prosperity and growth on this part of the coast was also recorded around the same time, as in Theogaraya Chetty' s evidence before the Industrial Commission. This happened together with an improvement in economic conditions.4 The gro~ then, was connected with what could be called the 'beginning' of urbanization on the east coast but the average size remained small compared to other regions of the south. How much can be added by bringing in the experiences of older centres? Towards this we compare looms at different dates in some of the bigger towns. Large towns with 5 to 10 thousand looms are best seen case by case rather than as part of a hypothetical and arbitrary group. The obviously interesting cases in Table 3 are Adoni, Kumbakonam, Madura and Salem. Of these, Adoni, the premier town of southern Andhra, did not expand in forty years, Kumbakonam decayed, and Salem went through an extraordinary growth. The growth of Salem in the twentieth century is much written about. ·Thurston's estimate for 1899 is probably wrong, but loomage was in fact small here in the nineteenth century. In Le Fanu' s Salem Manual of 1883 weaving receives only passing mention. Salem does not appear in the Imperial Gazetteers, and the district as a whole, consisting of several weaving towns that later became prominent, had only 13 per cent of the looms in Tamil Nadu in 1921, whereas in 1960 the percentage had increased to 32. The various estimates of looms in Salem district read as follows:

1901 1921 1931 1940 1947 1951 1954 1955 1961 looms

16.3 10.8 23.9 36.5 71.9 151.3 113.7 117.7 185.7

('000)

% of state 4

16.3 12.8

19.9

31.5

Evidence of Theogaraya Chetty, Industrial Commission, vol. m.

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Artisans and Industrialization TABLE 3 LooMS IN 50MB Sot.rrHERN TOWNS 1897

Adoni Kumbakonam Kanchipuram Madura Salem NOTES:

7000 6300 5270 2000

1908

1918

1929

1940

1955 3000 6500

9500

7280 1766 4700 6580

8000

22300

2000. 7820

From Thurston (1897), Imperial Gazetteers, MaxwellLe&oy and A~rge {1916-18), Banking Enquiry Committee, Fact Finding Committee, Tariff Board, Textile Enquiry Committee (India, 1954), and 1961 census.

This growth was in fact not confined to the town. Between 1940 and 1961 town looms as a percentage of district looms fell from about 19 per cent to 12. Still, the overall scale of expansion in the town is significant given that the rest of it was spread over a number of smaller places. Also significant is the closely clustered nature of the towns in which much of this growth occurred. Salem really appears in the literature from about 1906 with the establishment of a government weaving factory and associated experiments in yam processing. By the twenties Salem had progressed far ahead of other places in the use of warping mills. This advance was attributed to the factory, though the latter was shut down in 1912 for want of government support and skilled workers. Chatterton, with whose name the factory is associated, was behind many practical experiments in processing, and wrote about Salem and the factory. Other than warping and winding, the experiments did not progress far. But importantly, in each place that became known for its adoption of new pre- or post-weaving processes, Madura in dyeing or Salem in warping, a connection could be seen between upgrading technology and the

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presence of large producers. Venkatraman's compilation of village records in Salem district shows a positive relation between density of population and concentration in loomage, and a tendency for weavers to migrate to urban and semiurban areas. This last he attributed to economy in processing, the presence of large producers, and greater specialization in trade, rendering secure employment of poorer weavers.5 As for weaving itself, Salem seems to serve as an example of two general principles. First, the speed of yam processing, as also its location, determines tendencies in weaving; specifically when processing is detached from the family and done in a shop weaving itself becomes more mobile, more footloose, tending to agglomerate. Secondly, technical experiments can be more effective when internalized within the industry rather than introduced from above, as was the tendency in most provinces. Both occurred in Salem, but the capitalists were more equipped to take up an innovation, and the government, Chatterton himself for instance, better infor1ned of specific requirements.6 It also appears that conditions in the Tamil Nadu towns were peculiarly favourable for a shift of resources from trade to weaving. In Salem and Madura, dominant capitalists were producers by caste. In Salem, the Devangas, Kaikolars and Salis owned the processing houses. Saurashtras enjoyed great control over yam and cloth trades and a practical monopoly in gold thread and dyes. 'The war ... did not merely do away altogether with the monopoly, but also ended the power of the Saurashtras and, incidentally, also the fortunes of most of the old-time distributing firms.' 7 The coincidence of 5 Venkatraman

(193~36), p. 269-77. 6 A comparable example is Madura where the large dyers themselves mooted the idea of a dyeing school and advised the government on the nature of its activities, Chatterton (1912). 7 Tariff Board, Gold Thread, p. 75.

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growth in loomage from about this time and the partial setback in material trade suggest that investments might have shifted from one to the other. Thurston himself wrote of the contrasting experiences of Madura and Kumbakonam, both silk centres and both known for their use of red dye. In a monograph remarkable for its vivid description of the visual effect of coal-tar dyes, Thurston attributed this difference to the greater success of Madura dyers in adapting to the new colours. The same reason was cited elsewhere for stagnation of loomage in Tanjore.8 It would be somewhat far-fetched to attribute the relative decline of a large town to dyes alone. At any rate each of these centres had a diversified product composition, and embroideries and mixed weaving continued to flourish. Yet Madura's advances in innovative dyeing remain undisputed. Later, the 1918 reports of the Industrial Commission described the peculiar organization in Madura dyeing. As we have seen, large dyehouses here, operated in many cases by specialists, perfor111ed what elsewhere weavers, ignorant of processes and recipes, did within the household. Madura was more open both to receiving new knowledge, as the demand for a dyeing school testified, and to disseminating knowledge. Thus at a time when craftsmanship was degenerating, this town had evolved a more efficient organization for quality control and innovation. Thurston added that poorer weavers were leaving Kumbakonam to work as coolies in the handloom factories of Madura. We have seen in Chapter 3 the background to a relative decline in the towns of southern Andhra. Here ordinary weavers were bound by what, in the twenties, appeared as an exploitative three-tier hierarchy involving yarn traders, 8 Thurston

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master-weavers and poorer weavers. Perpetual indebtedness secured a form of bondage extending over generations. Reports of physical oppression were not uncommon. Weavers were migrating, and were generally restless. This contrasts with the relative tranquility and progress enjoyed by Salem or Madura in the south or Sholapur in the west. Once again we may have an example of production relations contributing to either instability or growth. Southern Andhra has been studied very little, its relative remoteness in the thirties probably explains a certain marginal presence even in the standard sources on weaving. But evidently the economic power that weavers enjoyed in the deep south or Bombay-Deccan was absent here. Large producers were a distinct class but dependent on nonproducing traders many of.whom had entered the industry only recently, after the extension of the railways. In fact, the substantial cotton trade of this region might explain its developed commerce, immigrant merchants, and special relations. Southern Andhra is apparently the only place in the south where debts had become a major ingredient of exchange and production contracts. These are specific examples, but in general terms growth experiences such as Salem's or that of some of the mediumsized towns reappear in north, west and central India. These new examples, in Tables 4 and 5, both add to the lessons drawn from the history of the southern towns and also reinforce them. Table 4 shows that the larger towns in eastern UP and the Punjab-Benares, Ludhiana and possibly Tanda experienced significant growth. The somewhat later growth of I