Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/322

SALE weaving industry, each weaving community would have a central establishment under its own control, which would arrange the purchase of material at wholesale rates, prepare warps for the weavers' looms, and organise the sale of the finished products. The actual weaving would be carried on as at present in the weavers' houses by the master weavers and their apprentices. If a system of this kind would retain the economic advantages of the factory system, and eliminate its many evils, it is obvious that a factory, owned and controlled by the weavers themselves, and worked only for their advantage, is a very different thing to a factory controlled by capitalists only for the purpose of exploiting the labour of their employees,"

As bearing on the general condition of the weaving community, the following extract from the Report of the Famine in the Madras Presidency, 1896-97, may be quoted. "Among the people who felt the distress at the beginning were the weavers. It is a well-known fact that the people of the weaver castes, as well as Mussalman weavers, are generally improvident, and consequently poor. In favourable times, the weavers generally earn fair wages. They, however, spend all they earn without caring to lay by anything, so that very few of their caste are in well-to-do circumstances. The same is the case with the Mussalman weavers. All these weavers are entirely in the hands of the sowcars (money-lenders), who make advances to them, and get cloths in return. The cloths thus obtained by the sowcars are exported to other parts of the country. It may be taken as a general fact that most of the professional weavers are indebted to the sowcars, and are bound to weave for them. So long as the seasons are favourable, and sowcars get indents for cloths from their customers, they continue