DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.6523#0094
to press upon them instances of the terrible poverty
of masses of the people around them. For instance,
in the sweating of women, one of the greatest evils
that there has to be faced, I found as to the wages of
the women who sewed on hooks-and-eyes, that a
woman had to sew on nearly 47,000 of these in order
to earn what here you would call fourteen annas and
a half.
Now you will have to remember in dealing with
prices, that the value of money is its purchasing
power, not its nominal value—what money buys
of the necessaries of life, of food, of shelter, and of
clothes. That is what you need to know in order to
estimate the value of any wage that is paid. I found
that women making shirts were paid first a shilling
per dozen, that is one anna per shirt, and those first
women let them out at 8d. a dozen to women still more
miserably poor than themselves. You may reckon
perhaps what it means, if I say to you that they
worked often for 20 hours out of the 24, in order to
earn bare subsistence for their children. And you
may find, if you will look into it closely, that where
wages are very low, you may have it said—as was
said by a foreman in the great match strike in
London, when complaint was made to Bryant and May
about the low wages they had paid to their girls :
"Well, women have another resource as well as their
wages." I do not think that we in India can ever
conceive of a statement like that, a woman selling her
of masses of the people around them. For instance,
in the sweating of women, one of the greatest evils
that there has to be faced, I found as to the wages of
the women who sewed on hooks-and-eyes, that a
woman had to sew on nearly 47,000 of these in order
to earn what here you would call fourteen annas and
a half.
Now you will have to remember in dealing with
prices, that the value of money is its purchasing
power, not its nominal value—what money buys
of the necessaries of life, of food, of shelter, and of
clothes. That is what you need to know in order to
estimate the value of any wage that is paid. I found
that women making shirts were paid first a shilling
per dozen, that is one anna per shirt, and those first
women let them out at 8d. a dozen to women still more
miserably poor than themselves. You may reckon
perhaps what it means, if I say to you that they
worked often for 20 hours out of the 24, in order to
earn bare subsistence for their children. And you
may find, if you will look into it closely, that where
wages are very low, you may have it said—as was
said by a foreman in the great match strike in
London, when complaint was made to Bryant and May
about the low wages they had paid to their girls :
"Well, women have another resource as well as their
wages." I do not think that we in India can ever
conceive of a statement like that, a woman selling her