Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/384

 and cleaning cotton; and each loom employed in making chequered muslins, has a profit of 108-1/2 rupees a year (£10. 16s.), that is, 1s. 4d. a week for each of the three persons who work the loom. The average earnings of a journeyman weaver, therefore, appear to be from 1s. to 1s. 4d. per week. At Bangalore, and in some other parts of southern India, this author states that weavers earn from 3d. to 8d. a day, according as they are employed on coarse or fine goods ; but this is so much above the usual remuneration for labor in India, that, if the statement is not erroneous, it must be of extremely limited application. On the same authority, a woman spinning coarse yarn can earn 1-2/3d. per day.

A fact is mentioned by Dr. Hamilton, in his unpublished account of Patna, which affords a striking indication as to the national character of the Hindoos—"All Indian weavers, who work for the common market, make the woof of one end of the cloth coarser than that of the other, and attempt to sell to the unwary by the fine end, although every one almost, who deals with them, is perfectly aware of the circumstance, and although in the course of his life any weaver may not ever have an opportunity of gaining by this means, yet he continues the practice, with the hope of being able at some time or other to take advantage of the purchaser of his goods."

The East India Company has a factory at Dacca, and also in other parts of India,—not, as the American use of the word "factory" might seem to imply, a mill, for the manufacture is entirely domestic—but a commercial establishment in a manufacturing district, where the spinners, weavers, and other workmen are chiefly employed in providing the goods which the Company export to Europe. This establishment is under the management of a commercial resident, who agrees for the kinds of goods that may be required, and superintends the execution of the orders received from the presidencies. Such is the poverty of the workmen, and even of the manufacturers who employ them, that the resident has to advance beforehand