to exchanging them again some day for the light and air which surround even the most squalid village hovels.  If there were reason to believe that improved housing conditions such as are now assured to Bombay by the huge city improvement schemes which, under Sir George Lloyd’s energetic impulse, are expanding the limits and transforming almost beyond recognition the appearance of the most congested quarters of the most congested of modern Indian cities, or even that increased wages would substantially affect the temper of Indian labour, one might look forward to the future in this respect with less apprehension.  But in Bombay labour troubles have been scarcely less rife in the best- than in the worst-conducted mills.  In Calcutta the British jute-mill owners have set a splendid example to Indian employers of labour, and the mill-hands, now largely imported from other provinces, not only work under the best possible conditions of light and air, but are housed in spacious quarters specially built for them, well ventilated and scientifically drained, with playing-fields and elementary schools for the swarms of children who certainly look healthy and well-fed and happy.  The Birmingham mills in Madras are recognised to be, from the same point of view, second to none in the world.  But the most humane and generous employers—­whether European or Indian—­are as liable as the most grasping and callous to see their workers suddenly carried away by a great wave of unreasoning discontent and passion.

The greater the general unrest amongst these excitable and terribly ignorant masses, the more urgent is the need for the establishment of some effective means of determining the social and economic justice of the claims of labour, as well as for the adjustment of actual conflicts by bringing employers and employed together in a friendly atmosphere.  A real organisation of labour in its own sphere of interests and the constitution of responsible trades unions would probably go far to prevent labour from turning for encouragement and support to agitators who have never been workers themselves, who have no personal knowledge of its processes or of its needs, and who exploit its discontent, reasonable or unreasonable, for purposes as disastrous, if fulfilled, to its permanent interests as to those of the employers and of the whole community.  A Congress which called itself the first “All-India Trades Union Congress” met this year in Bombay.  The present organisation of labour in India can hardly be said to justify the title it assumed, and in answer to a deputation which waited on the Governor, Sir George Lloyd expressed a legitimate desire for more information than was contained in its high-flown address as to the status of these unions, their method of formation, their constitution, their system of ballot and election, and the actual experience in the several trades of those who claimed to represent them.  That information was not and could not be furnished, because the ninety-two