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180 WAGES. I am in a position to give some detailed figures of payment received by workmen in textile factories, which go to prove the miserably low wages prevalent in India. It may be contended that living in India is cheap; but when the rise in the prices of foodstuffs and clothing material is taken into account (for this see Rise in Prices, a Government publication, the result of a careful study by K. B. Dutt, I. C. S.), when a personal inquiry into the lives of the workmen is made, and when we see the hovels they live in, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and remember that they are always in debt, which is ever-increasing, we cannot but come to the inevitahle conclusion that the scale of wages is scandalously low and is absolutely inadequate to meet the demands of sheer existence at the present time. It is said that the standard of living of the Indian workman is low. It is necessary to remember in this connection that the wage allowed him leads to malnutrition and that the latter has to be remedied before a better standard of living housing, clothing, &c., can be thought of. The Indian labourer may be addicted to living cheaply; but the most frugal temperament would not choose malnutrition and all its consequences, for the sake of cheap living; and further, what about the debt the labourer is constantly incurring? Low wages compel him to borrow at high rates of interest, and with the help of his miserable earnings plus his borrowed money he manages to exist. Life in dingy hovel on scanty food shows the courage and patience of the Indian labourer. Malnutrition is provable, and all I need to do is to copy the following table, which shows 1TMENT