Small Town Capitalism and The Living Standards of Artisans

5
Small Town Capitalism and the Living

Standards of Artisans
The subordinate place of western Indian artisans within the structures

of small town cloth manufacture left most of them poorly positioned to
negotiate payments adequate for their subsistence. Bound by debt and
client-patron ties as well as by the wage relationship, most small produc-
ers possessed little leverage in labour markets and were usually forced to
accept levels of compensation far below those paid to others in skilled
occupations. For much of the period before 1930, most weavers, dyers,
gold-thread makers, and printers lived under conditions of considerable
poverty and of extreme vulnerability to market luctuations. The mate-
rial circumstances of their lives appear to have been strikingly similar to
some of the poorest categories of people in the rural and urban economy
of western India.
Curiously, artisanal standards of living have occasioned little research.
Historians have traditionally assessed the well-being of small producers
in colonial India by measuring the level of “de-industrialisation,” that
is, the extent of decline in the number of weavers and other artisans
employed in cloth manufacture or in the amount of cloth they made. The
degree of de-industrialisation, however, actually tells us very little about
the circumstances of those families who continued to participate in small-
scale textile manufacture. Whatever the pressures of competition with
mill-made cloth, and however great the extent of weavers’ exploitation
by various kinds of capitalist actors, there remained an attraction to the
“lavour of independence and ease” in the artisan lifestyle as well as a cer-
tain status attached to it, especially for those belonging to communities
that regarded the making of cloth as their traditional occupation. As a
result, artisans often tried to resist being absorbed into the general labour
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160 Small Town Capitalism in Western India
market as landless workers in the countryside or as casual wage employ-

ees in the cities. When faced with dwindling demand for their cloth, they
frequently sought alternatives to leaving their profession, such as shifting
to the production of goods with more promising prospects, migrating to
regions with expanding markets, and leaving household-based produc-
tion for wage employment under larger karkhandars. Many struggled to
survive in familiar kinds of work, even when faced with extraordinarily
dificult circumstances. Changes in the number of artisans thus are a very
imperfect yardstick of their living standards.1
This chapter argues that, despite all the evidence of the expansion
of weaving in the small urban places of western India during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most cloth-producing artisans
experienced very harsh and deteriorating conditions. Large numbers of
small producers were close to, or even below, subsistence levels; indeed,
many must have died at young ages because of the inability to obtain
the minimum nutrition necessary to maintain their health over extended
periods. Artisans consistently received wages well below those earned by
others with comparable skills, often little above what casual labourers
were paid. The lives of small producers, moreover, were regularly sub-
ject to inancial trauma. Most artisans were exposed to serious seasonal
lulls that left them hard pressed to survive; these uncertainties were built
into the cyclical character of the local cloth market. On top of all this,
most small cloth producers regularly experienced severe collective crises
on average of about once a decade between 1875 and 1920. Although a
small set of more prosperous igures did emerge from the artisan commu-
nities of many small towns, the increased wealth and visibility of these
individual families was not representative of the general conditions faced
by craftspeople.
Artisanal Poverty and the Structure of the Economy

The precarious character of the artisans’ existence was strongly linked
to the larger structural developments in the western Indian economy dur-
ing the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries discussed in previous
chapters: the emergence of modern industry, the expansion of commer-
cial agriculture, and the consolidation of the economic power of sahukars
and karkhandars in the small towns of the region. At the most obvious
1
Even leaving the occupation of cloth production would not be an indication of economic
distress if artisans were motivated by higher levels of compensation in other ields.
The Living Standards of Artisans 161
level, the availability of cheap European imports and textiles manufac-

tured in the mills of Bombay and Ahmedabad exerted a downward pres-
sure on cloth prices during the course of the nineteenth century. At the
same time, the increased demand for agricultural commodities during the
same period made grain more expensive. Weavers were thus pressured
from two sides.
The price of cloth realised at the moment of sale to the actual con-
sumer, moreover, was a poor indicator of what artisans received. Most
lived far from their buyers and were unable to market goods directly. As
P. N. Mehta observed in 1909, weavers seeking to sell on their own had
“to leave work and spend some hours in inding a suitable customer;
and failing to ind one, they have to go to the local merchant who knows
too well how they are situated and invariably strikes a bargain . . . in his
favor.”2 In most cases, as we have seen, small producers in effect ceded
the function of selling cloth to local capitalists and out-of-town buyers.
Merchants and karkhandars who monopolised knowledge of market
conditions were in a position to squeeze those weavers who often needed
cash immediately to buy food or to purchase their next bundle of yarn.
The weakness of the artisans’ ability to negotiate adequate payments
for their work was compounded by the inherent instability of demand for
the things they made. There is strong reason to believe that this instability
was greater than it had been in pre-colonial times. Although handloom
production had managed to perpetuate itself through the late nineteenth
century, it was increasingly relegated to niches tied to the agricultural
cycle and to the quality of the harvest; international demand and the
consumption of Indian courts, which had previously provided more reg-
ular markets throughout the year, sharply declined. During the monsoon,
interest in buying cloth always slumped; it rose once peasants had been
able to sell their crops. The gendered character of consumption patterns,
moreover, accentuated the exposure of artisans to cyclical luctuations.
Peasants concentrated their purchases of handloom saris during the wed-
ding season, which lasted for a few months every year. The demand for
men’s clothing, which was more commonly made in textile factories, may
have been spread out more evenly over the seasons. Fluctuations in world
prices of the artisans’ raw materials, now coming mostly from outside
India or from the mill towns, could also serve as sources of uncertainty.
In a context of falling cloth prices and luctuating demand, small town
capitalists often tried to position themselves so that they could realise
2
Mehta, Report on Handloom Industry, p. 2.
the maximum returns during short periods of extensive activity with-

out exposing themselves to losses during slow seasons. This often meant
minimising any kind of extensive investment that would only be realised
over the long term. Many kept their commitments of capital conined
to consignments of small batches of textiles for which buyers could be
found. They felt little need to keep artisanal establishments operating at
full capacity when demand slumped, although they did often parcel out
small amounts of work or other payments during slow times; they calcu-
lated that by buying cheaply during the off-season and then selling when
market conditions improved, they would be able to increase their proits.3
By maintaining some kind of patronage relations and by negotiating
implicit or explicit agreements with producers when market conditions
were most dire, the bosses could hope to secure plentiful labour at low
rates when conditions improved.4 For their part, many weavers and other
artisans in western India, faced with the need to survive during the slack
season, effectively abdicated their ability to ask for better prices during
periods of peak demand, either by accepting advances that left them per-
petually indebted, or by making long-term agreements under unfavour-
able conditions.5 When crises of more serious proportions loomed, many
bosses had no hesitations about cutting their clients loose entirely, leav-
ing them to fend for themselves in environments where work was not
available. The inability or unwillingness of the colonial state to provide a
safety net to protect workers in these circumstances only heightened the
severity of these crises.
Qualitative Indications of Poverty

Qualitative evidence on the artisans’ living standards is not hard to come
by. Often it issued from colonial oficials most committed to improv-
ing weavers’ conditions, persons who found the prevalent levels of pov-
erty frustrating their efforts at reform. Their testimony provides some
indication of the circumstances facing small producers, although their
comments often relect the discourse of social and moral “improvement.”
3
Annual Report, Co-operative Credit Societies, Bombay Presidency, 1913–14, p. 18.
4
Similar practises have been discussed for eighteenth-century England in John Rule, The
Experience of Labour in Eighteenth Century Industry (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1981),
pp. 49–50, cited in Prasannan Parthasarathi, “Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in
the Eighteenth Century: Britain and South India,” Past and Present 159 (1998), p. 85.
5
Testimony of R. B. Ewbank, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Indian Industrial
Commission, vol. IV, pp. 545–6.
“The weavers as a class live from hand to mouth,” stated W. T. Pomfret,

head of the Textile Department at Victoria Jubilee Institute, “[and] they
have little or no capital and their credit is usually low. Owing to want
of capital and credit the weavers are unable to buy greater lengths of
yarn . . . they cannot procure a further supply of yarn without selling the
cloth made from the previous supply.”6 In his report on the handloom
industry, P. N. Mehta commented that “their [the weavers’] earnings
are poor in the best of times,” later noting that “the state of being con-
stantly in want or dependence, kills all enterprise and activity in them.”7
Collector Maconochie of Sholapur, who had been especially involved in
working with weavers of that city during the irst decade of the twentieth
century, observed as he moralised: “I found [the weavers] in a miserably
degraded condition, exploited by unscrupulous money-lenders, working
day and night for the merest pittance, living from hand to mouth, robbed
of their legitimate proits, trying to drown the thought of their miseries in
drink, unhappy slaves of cruel taskmasters and of the vice to which they
were driven by sheer despair.”8
There was also considerable discussion of artisanal living conditions
by administrators concerned with urban health during epidemics. Their
observations about the weavers’ circumstances were again coloured by
colonial discourse, especially by the theory that urban diseases were
caused by miasma pervading the atmosphere in residential quarters
where the circulation of air was constrained and plentiful sources of
light were absent.9 Nonetheless, their writings do relect an awareness
that most weavers lived in quarters where poverty was ubiquitous and
where unsanitary conditions were associated with high death rates. In a
report on plague conditions to health authorities in 1898, the collector
of Sholapur wrote:
[T]he dwellings of the poor [especially weavers] were usually found to

consist of small low thatched mud walled hovels with loors below the
level of the ground, so crowded together that access and egress to even
foot passengers were matters of dificulty. In such houses large families
6
Testimony of W. T. Pomfret, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Indian Industrial
Commission, vol. IV, p. 340.
7
Mehta, Report on Handloom Industry, pp. 2, 7.
8
Letter from Collector Maconochie, 16 May 1906 in MSA, RD 1907, vol. 114, comp.
402, p. 52.
9
For the nature of such theories, see Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health,
Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1999), pp. 26–38, 61–80.
Image 9. “Weaver at Loom Over Pit, Sangamner Town, 1913”

Source: Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge University.
Macleod Collection, ref. 15.19.2. Published with Permission of the Centre of
South Asian Studies.
were usually found living. The conditions of these dwellings were in fact
entirely favourable to the propagation of epidemic disease. They were in
many cases quite incapable of improvement and there was no alterna-
tive but to condemn them as unit for human habitation.10
Maconochie reported in 1906 that half of the weavers in the Sholapur

Weavers Guild, a large organisation that would have been fairly represen-
tative of the artisanal population in the city, had either “died of plague or
were ruined by it”11 during the previous decade. Similarly, writing about
Bhiwandi, the collector of Thana reported:
[T]he houses of the poor found in every quarter are huddled together
as close as possible while all the lanes and roads away from the main
bazaar are extremely ilthy since the municipality is unable to main-
tain a suficient scavenging population . . . add to this that a very large
proportion of the population consists of Mohamedans [i.e., most of
whom were Momin weavers] whose purdah system makes evacuation
10
Report by J. W. A. Weir, Collector and District Magistrate, 10 Aug. 1898 in MSA, GD
(Plague) 1899, vol. 745, comp. 732, pp. 243–4.
11
Letter from Collector Maconochie, 16 May 1906 in MSA, RD 1907, vol. 114, comp.
402, p. 51.
and segregation extremely dificult, and it becomes clear that to check

plague in Bhiwandi is no easy matter.12
From Surat, an oficial reported during the plague:
We had to deal with the worst affected part of the city inhabited by a
poor and almost starving population. . . . The people consisted of weav-
ers, Gollas (or rice-beaters) and very poor Mahomedans. Their houses
were small and ill-ventilated and situated in some of the most insanitary
quarters of the city. . . . As these people were badly fed and had only one
front door to their houses in a majority of cases, which was the only
means of ingress and egress of it, they were most susceptible to the
disease.13
What is particularly striking in many of these accounts is the repeated

inclusion of small cloth producers in the ranks of the poorest residents in
the small towns.
A similar pattern is noticeable in those occasional records where there
is some implicit comparison between weavers and other occupational cat-
egories. Reviewing the various classes in his district in 1887, the collector
of Khandesh indicated that the “ryot [peasant] speaking generally and
exempting Bhils is fairly well clad and well fed”; that there was no rea-
son “to suppose that artisans [excepting weavers] suffer this year”; and
that “unskilled labour is more dificult to obtain owing to the increased
demand by factories and gins [with resulting upward pressures in wages].”
He found, however, that “the only class of which I have any reason to
doubt is the Musalman weaver – ever living from hand to mouth, ever
squalid and underfed, and apparently ever working.”14 A report from the
following year pointed to increased land values, improvements in the liv-
ing standards for many cultivators, and even upward movement in the
wages of agricultural labourers. At the same time, it indicated that “In
Dhulia, Parola, and a few other towns, there are a considerable number
of Momins, Salis and Koshti weavers, and some Rangaris [dyers]; they
earn a livelihood, but few of them are well-to-do, and there are no signs
of improvement in their trade.”15 In 1929, an observer in Bijapur, which
12
Collector of Thana to Secty. to Govt., GD (Plague), 30 April 1898 in MSA, GD (Plague)
1898, vol. 317, comp. 198, no page given.
13
Evidence of Witnesses from Surat District, undated (late 1898) in MSA, GD (Plague)
1899, vol. 692, comp. 591, pp. 197–8.
14
Collector’s Report, Khandesh, 1886–7 in MSA 1888, RD, vol. 15, pp. 33–4.
15
Collector’s Report, Khandesh 1887–8 in MSA 1889, RD, vol. 31, comp. 1700,
pp. 56–7.
contained the growing weaving town of Ilkal, concluded: “But the weav-
ers are in a worse plight than agriculturalists. . . . They are entirely at the
mercy of sawkars and cloth dealers in the matter of inance and are eking
out a bare livelihood.”16
Quantitative Evidence
Unfortunately, it is dificult to move from these kinds of qualitative
assessments to quantitative ones. Wages of weavers are only sporadically
available until the 1920s, and they are often hard to interpret. The difi-
culties of constructing a baseline from which to observe trends in wages
from the late eighteenth century onwards and to compare these to trends
in grain prices in the same places also makes any straightforward delin-
eation of shifts in living standards nearly impossible.17 One case that can
be made from this data is that the earnings of weavers, which approx-
imated those of the most skilled craftspeople in western India around
1800, began to converge downwards with those of unskilled labourers
late in the century.
Data from Khandesh District is the most complete. There, the wages
of weavers and tailors at the beginning of the nineteenth century seem
to have been roughly equivalent to those of other skilled labourers, were
clearly higher than those of less skilled workers, and were double those
of “coolies.”
Immediately after the establishment of colonial rule in 1818, rates
for most kinds of skilled and unskilled workers rose signiicantly. The
wages of weavers and tailors, however, apparently remained stagnant. By
1820, payments to coolies, once half those of weavers, were now three
quarters of weavers’ wages, and rates paid to bearers had passed those
paid to weavers. The disruption of pre-colonial state systems, which had
furnished much of the demand for cloth, was a major reason for this
(Table 5.1).18
The level of wages earned by weavers relative to those earned by other
categories of workers continued to deteriorate in Khandesh after 1820.
The daily wage for unskilled labour in the 1870s (excepting the famine
period of 1876 and 1877), for instance, was generally around four
16
Memoranda of Witnesses in Bijapur: Rao Saheb P. G. Halkatti, in MSA, BPBEC iles,
1929–30, File 29/BJ/3, p. 7.
17
For a fascinating analysis of weavers’ standards of living in eighteenth-century south
India, see Parthasarathi, “Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness.”
18
This is discussed at more length in Chapter 1.
Table 5.1. Rates per Day of Work in British Currency

(Rupees-Annas-Pice)19
Occupation 1788–1797 1798–1817 1818–1820

Carpenter 0–4–0 0–5–0 0–7–0
Blacksmith 0–4–0 0–4–0 0–5–0
Bricklayer 0–3–6 0–4–0 0–6–0
Weaver 0–4–0 0–4–0 0–4–0
Tailor 0–4–0 0–4–0 0–5–0
Basketmaker 0–2–6 0–3–0 0–3–6
Cooly 0–2–0 0–2–0 0–3–0
Bearer 0–3–6 0–4–0 0–5–0
annas.20 Carpenters routinely earned from eight annas to one rupee per
day around 1880, and most other forms of skilled labour earned roughly
eight annas per day. Blacksmiths earned only four to eight annas, but
they were, according to one account, “seldom without work and are bet-
ter off than weavers, dyers and cotton-carders.”21 The District Gazetteer
reports that most weavers were earning two to six annas per day; at
another point, it states that “the margin of the wage left to the weaver
has within the last ten years fallen from about 4 and 1/2 d to 3d [that
is, from three to two annas].”22 The majority of weavers could not have
been earning more than the level of ordinary casual labourers, and some
were seemingly below this level. Because grain prices had risen substan-
tially between 1820 and 1880, real wages for weavers seem to have fallen
signiicantly.
There is also some wage information over time from the districts in
the northern Karnatak region, an area – in contrast to Khandesh – where
signiicant artisanal production of high-quality cloth persisted during the
19
District Administration Report, 1878–9, in MSA, RD 1880, vol. 17, comp. 1218, p. 26.
See also Khandesh District Gazetteer, p. 200. The original data came from a report by
Captain Briggs, the key administrator in the original colonisation of Khandesh.
20
District Administration Report 1879–80, Khandesh District, MSA, RD 1880, vol. 17,
comp. 1218, p. 25. The general level of wages in the countryside comes from the annual
administrative reports from these years. During the harvest season of 1879–80, unskilled
labourers earned as much as nine annas per day plus food, but this was unusually high.
21
Khandesh District Gazetteer, pp. 73 and 198. See also District Administration Report
1879–80, Khandesh District, RD 1880, vol. 17, comp. 1218, p. 25.
22
Khandesh District Gazetteer, p. 229. The term “margin of the wage” probably means
the earnings per piece of cloth (that is the difference between the cost of raw materials
and the inal payment the weaver received). Because saris, the most common form of
cloth, took at least one day to weave, this igure is a bit more than the daily earnings of
the family.
late nineteenth century. As we have seen in Chapter 1, Marshall reported

that there had been a signiicant drop in weavers’ real earnings imme-
diately after the assumption of British power. Wages typically averaged
four to six annas depending on the quality of the cloth, slightly higher
than those for carpenters, bricklayers, and blacksmiths and perhaps triple
those of unskilled labourers (one to one and a half annas).23 Six decades
later, at the time of the Gazetteer’s observations during the early 1880s,
the wages of weavers in Belgaum District were reported to be ive to six
annas daily. In Bijapur District, the average earnings of a family of weav-
ers were four annas for coarse cloth and six to eight annas for waistcloths
(dhotis) and saris.24 In other words, there appears to have been no appre-
ciable increases in the actual level of payments in Belgaum and perhaps
a slight increase in Bijapur District. Price increases, however, clearly had
reduced the buying power of weavers in both places. In Belgaum, the
available price series (which began only in 1824) suggests increases of at
least 20 per cent in millet, more than 70 per cent in wheat and 100 per
cent in rice from the 1820s to the 1880s. In Bijapur, prices of grain had
increased on average around 20 per cent for millet and more than 100 per
cent for wheat and pulses.25 By contrast, wages for other kinds of skilled
labourers had increased signiicantly during this period, allowing them
to keep pace with inlation in food costs.26 Wages for unskilled labour in
agriculture had increased as well, to two to three and a half annas per
day in Belgaum, and to two and a half to four annas per day in Bijapur.
Many of the igures for weavers, moreover, were “family wages” (that is,
payments made for the contributions of an entire family), whereas those
for other workers were just for individual males. In short, much of the
gap that had once existed between the earnings of ordinary labourers and
those of skilled weavers had closed signiicantly.27
The British did not collect wages for weavers consistently at the outset
of colonialism. Yet we can see the same pattern in late-nineteenth-century
data: divergence of weavers’ earnings from those of other skilled artisans
23
See Chapter 1; Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Bijapur District, vol. XXIII [here-
after Bijapur District Gazetteer] (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), p. 350.
24
Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Belgaum District, vol. XXI [hereafter Belgaum
District Gazetteer] (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1884), p. 137; Bijapur District
Gazetteer, p. 370.
25
These igures are derived by comparing the average prices in the two districts during
the 1824–8 period to those during the 1880–2 period. Belgaum District Gazetteer,
pp. 299–300; Bijapur District Gazetteer, pp. 351–3.
26
Bijapur District Gazetteer, p. 350; Belgaum District Gazetteer, p. 298.
27
Bijapur District Gazetteer, p. 350; Belgaum District Gazetteer, p. 298.
12
S = Wages of Skilled Workers
10
U = Wages of Unskilled Workers
W = Wages of Weavers
8
Annas
0
S U W
Sholapur
18 S = Wages of Skilled Workers

16 U = Wages of Unskilled Workers
14
12
Annas
10
8
6
4
2
0
S U W
Poona
16 S = Wages of Skilled Workers

14
12
10
Annas
8
6
4
2
0
S U W
Nasik
CHART 1. Rates of Labour – Daily Wages for Male Workers in Annas Per Day,
Various Districts, 1882–5 (the lower end of the wage range is in black, the upper
end of the wage range is in grey).
12
10
8
Annas
0
S U W
Ahmednagar
16
12
Annas
10
8
6
4
2
0
S U W
Dharwar
16
12
10
Annas
8
6
4
2
0
S U W
Thana
CHART 1. (continued)
Table 5.2. Women’s Wages in General Labour and in Cloth

Production, 1882–1885 (in Annas)28
Unskilled Female Labour Wages to Women in Cloth Industry

Sholapur app. 2 As, ield labour 1 to 1 1/4 As
Poona NA Among Salis (involved in silk)
2 and 1/3 As-6As
Nasik 2 As Warpers and reelers ½ As to 1 As
Thana 2 2/3 As Reelers 1 As to 2As
and convergence with those of general labourers in the countryside and

in the towns (see Chart 1).29 Whole families of weavers often earned less
than an individual skilled worker. Unfortunately, comparison of family
earnings between categories is impossible.
A small number of records indicate the earnings of women in the weav-
ing industry when they sold their labour as individuals. When women
wove cloth, these records reported no distinction between their earnings
and those of men.30 Women’s work in non-weaving processes of cloth
production, however, was rewarded in especially meagre terms, except
among Poona silk weavers (Table 5.2).
Overall, women received signiicantly less in weaving workshops than
they did even in the general labour market for unskilled workers. There
may have been a number of reasons for women’s lack of leverage in nego-
tiating better wages. As noted in the previous chapter, women hired in the
karkhanas almost always had some male relative (in most cases their hus-
bands) working in the same place. Employers might have paid less in such
circumstances because they viewed women as secondary contributors to
family earnings. For their part, women in artisanal families may have
preferred working in handloom workshops, where they could be free to
attend to unpaid family tasks on their own schedules, such as taking
care of children and preparing food. Hammocks, for instance, could be
stretched out in the weaving workshop to accommodate sleeping babies
as women engaged in winding yarn nearby.31 In some cases, concerns
28
See various district gazetteers. These wages clearly appear to be daily wages rather than
piece rates.
29
Most wages were given in daily terms. For wages given in monthly form, I have assumed
a work month of twenty-seven to twenty-eight days, given that weavers took approxi-
mately thirty holidays per year. The chart is based on igures from the district gazetteers
of the Bombay Presidency.
30
Sholapur District Gazetteer, p. 270; Khandesh District Gazetteer, p. 229.
31
This picture is based on descriptions weavers provided of handloom workshops in
interviews.
about the maintenance of female respectability may have also led to

strong family preferences that women work near male relatives and not
seek employment outside; these concerns might have been particularly
strong among Muslim families.
Information from the famines of the late 1890s conirms this picture of
very low weavers’ wages. At that time, the Bombay government and local
municipalities were considering schemes to offer relief to weavers, and
they conducted investigations of various sorts to determine existing stan-
dards of payment in order to estimate the costs of such projects.32 One
report on the Koshtis working in Tembharni (Sholapur District) found
that the yarn needed to keep a family going for eight days cost ive rupees,
and the weavers could turn this yarn into six rupees worth of cloth (for a
proit of only one rupee). If this situation was typical, then weaving fami-
lies in this place were earning only two annas per day, probably less than
the agricultural wages for individual male labourers.33 Another report
from Bijapur District is perhaps even more helpful, indicating that in
“ordinary times [i.e., non-famine times] each family gets 7 annas/day. The
proit of the shopkeeper and weaver excluded, it is clear that not more
than 6 annas is the price of labour of each family per day in ordinary
times” (italics mine).34 A family of ield labourers in the countryside with
one working male, one working female, and one working boy would
have earned a similar amount. Other reports from this period similarly
report wages approximating those for unskilled agricultural labour.35
Appendix I provides detailed accounts from the famine records on all the
costs involved in making two different types of cloth. These igures are
indicative of very poor wages indeed.
Finally, a small amount of wage data in P. N. Mehta’s report suggests
that wages had not improved by 1910. Mehta provides a series of igures
for different products made in different centres. Typically, these average
about four to six annas per day. In Dhulia, for instance, sari weavers took
a fortnight to weave twelve saris of 20s yarn and received four rupees,
32
There were a number of such reports, but several mention the payments weavers would
realise from producing a particular kind of cloth without indication of the time it would
take to make this cloth.
33
Assistant Collector to Collector of Sholapur, 20 April 1906, in MSA, RD, 1906, vol. 378,
comp. 402, p. 61.
34
Report from Collector of Bijapur, no. 7/575 of 1896, 10th Dec. 1896 in MSA, RD
(Famine) 1897, vol. 35, comp. 49, p. 219.
35
Final Report on the Famine of 1896–7 in the Bombay Presidency, Sholapur 15 Jan. 1898
in MSA RD (Famine) 1898, vol. 15, comp. 107, pt. XV, p. 391; Enthoven, The Cotton
Fabrics of the Bombay Presidency, p. 17.
eight annas for the work, or about ive annas per day, slightly more if
payments for warping, winding, and sizing, which often would be done
by the weaver’s family, are included. In Parola, apparently, sari weavers
received six annas per day in good times, but less than three annas per
day in bad seasons.36 As we shall see in Chapter 7, wages for artisans
improved in the early 1920s, only to fall dramatically after 1927.
The Economic Vulnerability of Artisans

In discussing one aspect of the weavers’ circumstances – the uncertain-
ties and instability of their lives – we are entirely on solid ground. It is
clear that the vast majority of weavers were buffeted by drastic changes
in their circumstances from season to season and over the course of their
lifetimes. Most artisan families would have been highly aware that times
of relative comfort were likely to be ephemeral.
Seasonal luctuations affected most small producers annually. As sug-
gested earlier, demand was tied to the harvest and to the wedding season.
In a good year, signiicant cloth buying might persist from October to
June, that is, from the winter through the hot months. In the rainy sea-
son, however, agriculturalists tended to cease their purchases of cloth
altogether. It was at this time that the weavers were most vulnerable,
most likely to make a deal with moneylenders that would constrain their
ability to improve their situation when buyers returned to cloth stores.
These cycles inevitably depressed earnings during this period. Even the
most highly skilled weavers in Khandesh found that their daily earnings
fell to as little as two annas per day during the slack season, less than
half their earnings during busy times.37 Weavers in Bhiwandi earned nine
to seventeen rupees a month during the months when they found work,
but because of the extensive lean periods in their business, their earnings
averaged seven to twelve rupees a month over the course of the year.38 As
we have seen, karkhanas in some towns regularly shut down during the
slow season each year.39
These kinds of regular, almost predictable, annual luctuations, how-
ever, were often punctuated by more serious periodic crises that could
render even the marriage season a time of want. Such crises could be
36
Mehta, Report on Handloom Industry; Mehta provides payments for a number of types
of cloth but only indicates the time involved in weaving in several of these.
37
Khandesh District Gazetteer, p. 198.
38
Thana District Gazetteer, p. 389.
39
Joshi, Urban Handicrafts of the Bombay Deccan, p. 92.
caused by crop failures (which left agriculturalists unwilling to pur-

chase cloth), by escalating grain prices (which left weavers unable to
purchase all their food needs), and by dramatic changes in the costs
of raw materials involved in making cloth. Every twelve years weavers
faced a Sinhast year, when rural families believed it was inauspicious to
arrange marriages, and as a result did not make their usual purchases of
cloth. When severe crises struck, merchants might cease inancing arti-
sans altogether.
Evidence from Ahmednagar between the 1860s and the 1930s gives
some idea of the volatility of artisanal existence. The late years of the
American Civil War apparently were very dificult times for local weav-
ers, in part because of the high costs of cotton (and hence yarn), and
in part because of sharply escalating food prices. The margin between
the earnings weavers obtained for their cloth and the amounts of their
purchases of grain closed so greatly that many persons who did weaving
during part of the year were compelled to shift to cultivation. Between
1865 and 1875, however, a fall in the cost of raw materials due to the
increased availability of yarn from the spinning mills of Bombay coin-
cided with a fall in grain prices, thus providing some breathing room for
small producers. This period of relative stability ended in 1876 when a
major famine struck, rendering much cloth un-sellable and grain prices
skyrocketing. Many artisans were forced onto famine relief works.
After the famine, the market rebounded, in part because of the demand
among “poorer classes whose clothes were worn to rags by famine,” and
in part because the building of railways reduced the costs of steam-spun
yarn further, which led to a temporary cheapening in grain prices.40 The
number of handloom weavers expanded, as even workers from outside
hereditary artisan communities tried to enter the profession. The 1880s
and 1890s were then marked by further ups and downs until major
famine struck in 1896–7 and again in 1899–1900, years that also coin-
cided with extensive plague. A further critical moment was experienced
by local weavers between 1914 and 1917, when the prices of yarn and
dyes rose dramatically in a time of general inlation in grain prices. And
of course the worldwide Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s struck
artisans very hard, as we will see. Thus any weaver who lived to the age
of ifty in Ahmednagar during this period would have experienced three
or more signiicant general crises over his lifetime, in addition to more
speciic familial trauma produced by domestic misfortunes. Many did not
40
See Chapter 1.
survive these calamities and life spans of more than ifty were probably
in the minority.41
This account of Ahmednagar District’s history highlights the impor-
tance of two different kinds of crises: those produced by severe crop fail-
ures and those produced by high costs of raw materials. I now turn to
each of these types in greater detail.
Urban Weavers and Famine

Three devastating famines struck the Bombay Presidency during the late
nineteenth century: in 1876–7, 1896–7, and 1899–1900. These famines
caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, the depletion of western India’s
cattle stock, and the failure of agriculture over wide areas in the region.42
These famines, however, had a particularly drastic effect on small cloth
producers. When faced with anticipated crop failures, one of the irst
steps taken by agriculturalists was to cut back on their expenditures
on non-food items such as clothing. Well before severe food shortages
were certain, the market for cloth contracted severely. Textile merchants,
fearing a collapse in prices for their existing stocks, stopped providing
advances or supplies of yarn, effectively cutting their weavers loose into
unemployment at a time of sharply escalating food prices. Large numbers
of looms quickly ceased work. The reliance of artisans on bosses who
provided them with yarn or wages became a major liability during a time
when these bosses were trying to reduce their losses radically.
Famines of food thus were brought about primarily by famines of
work. Lack of employment affected not just the weaver himself but every
member of the weaving family. Once merchants ceased to provide yarn,
the preliminary jobs performed by women and children, notably the prep-
aration of yarn for the loom, stopped as well. Most weaving families were
thus left with no means of sustaining a livelihood in their localities.
Reports from all three of the great nineteenth-century famines
comment on the dramatic nature of weavers’ unemployment. During the
famine of 1876–7, for instance, the collector of Kaladgi District remarked
that cloth manufacture among the many weavers in the large towns had
41
See the Ahmadnagar District Gazetteer, pp. 347–9 for the account up to 1884.
The later parts of this account are drawn from evidence that will be examined in more
detail later.
42
For a more complete overview of these famines, see B. M. Bhatia, Famines in India: A
Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India, 1860–1965 (Bombay: Asia
Publishing House, 1967); McAlpin, Subject to Famine.
reached an absolute standstill, and that artisans and manufacturers had

been “brought to penury due to cessation of trade.” The government had
had to provide advances simply for weaving families to attain a meagre
subsistence.43 The Collector of Nasik indicated that in Yeola, where a
considerable business had existed in iner, often silk, cloths, “the demand
so entirely failed that Government had . . . to advance materials to the
weavers and buy up their work to save them from starvation.” “These
people [the weavers],” his report went on, “have probably felt the scarcity
more than any other class in the Collectorate.”44 In Sholapur, there were
reports of many weavers abandoning their occupation due to the severe
contraction of the market for coarse cloth.45
Similarly in the famine of 1896–7, reports of unemployment pre-
ceded the depletion of food stocks. In this case, the crisis for weavers was
particularly acute because it coincided with a Sinhast year, and the mar-
ket connected to marriage activity had already contracted severely. The
monsoon rains began violently in 1896, washing away a large portion of
the young plants in the ields. Then a drought followed, causing yields
throughout the Deccan to fall to about one-third of normal, in some cases
to less than one-tenth. Agriculturalists quickly stopped making cloth pur-
chases. Fearing that they would not be able to ind a sale for their existing
stocks, many merchants ceased commissioning new products, throwing
tens of thousands of weavers out of work across Maharashtra and north-
ern Karnataka. In Nasik, the collector reported in December 1896 that
“a very large proportion of Momin weavers are really now in a state of
destitution and require assistance.”46 In Sholapur, local reports suggested
that thousands of weavers had lost their work by October 1896 and were
leaving town. Many of these, the reports indicated, “did not even get a
roti” at the time of Dassera.47 Seven to eight thousand additional weavers
(of a total population of perhaps twenty thousand weavers) came to par-
ticipate in the special relief works set up for artisans during the famine.48
43
Administrative Report of Kaladgi District, 1876–7, MSA, RD, 1877, vol. 14A, comp.
1287, p.15.
44
Administrative Report of Nasik District, 1876–7, MSA, RD 1877, vol. 16, comp. 1151,
p. 202.
45
Administrative Report of Sholapur District, 1876–7, MSA, RD, 1877, vol. 19, comp.
1195, p. 303.
46
Collector of Nasik to Commissioner, C.D., 11 December 1896 in MSA, RD (Famine),
1897, vol. 35, comp. 49, p. 82.
47
Kalpataru ani Ananda Vritta [in Marathi], 25 Oct. 1896, p. 4.
48
Fortnightly Famine Report from Sholapur, 8 Sept. 1900, in IOLR, Bombay Revenue
Proceedings (Famine), 1900, P/5988, p. 5965.
Image 10. “Special Famine Relief Camp for Weavers Organized by the American
Marathi Mission, c. 1900” (Note presence of women, men, and children.)
Source: The Report of the American Marathi Mission, 1900.
Less than one-third of the weavers in Ahmedabad and Ahmednagar were

able to continue working.49
Perhaps the richest discussion of the weavers’ situation came from
H. M. Desai, a revenue oficial travelling around Bijapur District dur-
ing the famine. He reported in mid-December 1896 that food stocks in
the market of Guledgud appeared to be plentiful, that there was no sign
of traders withholding grain from markets, and that those artisans who
resorted to the bazaar appeared healthy. He concluded, however, that
large numbers of weavers would soon be in a very serious condition.
Surveying several streets in the weavers’ area, Desai found that looms had
stopped altogether in 40 out of 135 houses, and that 332 out of the 468
looms in these houses were not operating. In some houses, he discovered
just a few pieces of half inished cloth, a clear indication of the inability
to purchase suficient quantities of yarn. “Not even ive per cent of the
houses we visited,” he reported, “contained more than a sack of grain,
49
Letter from Khan Bahadur Jahangir Pestonji Vakil, Chair, Ahmedabad City Famine
Relief Committee, to Collector of Ahmedabad, 7 Aug. 1900 in MSA, RD (Famine) 1900,
vol. 210, comp. 134, pp. 134–5; IOLR, Bombay Revenue Proceedings (Famine), 1900,
P/5985, p. 1403.
while in the rest none were to be seen. On enquiry I found they had all
lived from hand to mouth, and made purchases of grain on the weekly
market days.” He concluded, “all agree, and I have no reason to differ
from them that by the end of January next from four to ive thousand
people will be wanting means wherewith to support themselves.”50 Those
producing ine goods were struck with special severity.
Not all centres were affected equally by food shortages. Because many
weavers of Surat supplied international markets not affected by famine,
they did not require public relief during the great famine of 1899–1900.51
Reports from Yeola late in the 1896–7 famine indicate that a number of
small producers found work in relief camps and others had migrated, but
that there had been a certain revival of employment with the approaching
end of the Sinhast year and the consequent increase in woven goods for
wedding purposes.52 Yet the numbers of those struggling to subsist was
clearly very large.
The fate of ordinary weavers stood in sharp contrast to that of many
peasants who owned their own lands. Holding food reserves and other
resources from previous years, possessing credit in the form of their land
and houses, and perhaps able to eke out a small crop, landowners and even
tenants often had at least some capacity to survive. During the famine of
1896–7, for instance, the collector of Sholapur reported that the smallest
property holders managed to last out the famine in their villages:
Whenever a man had a small piece of garden land, he appeared to have

no real dificulty in tiding over the scarcity. The fact that in a year when
only about 1/10th part of the occupied area of the District have any crop
at all, 82.4 per cent of the land revenue was recovered without recourse
to any coercion except for the issue of notices, in itself proves that the
landowners during a series of ordinary seasons had kept reserves for a
year of famine.
Some cultivators paid their revenue in King William rupees, indicat-

ing that they had been saving for such an emergency for some time.
In some villages, peasant cultivators opened up underground chambers
50
Report of H. M. Desai, 19–12–1896 in MSA, RD (Famine), 1897, vol. 35, comp. 49, pp.
128–41. The quote is from 141–2.
51
Letter from Collector of Surat (Weir), 24 Nov. 1899, IOLR, Bombay Revenue Proceedings
(Famine), 1899, vol. 5789, p. 1155.
52
Survey Commissioner and Director, Land Records and Agriculture, Bombay to Chief
Secretary to Government, RD (Famine), 14 May 1897 [report on famine in Nasik
District] in MSA RD (Famine), 1897, vol. 27, comp. 167, p. 593.
in which they stored grain. Landowners and “their regular servants,”

meaning those who worked permanently for particular patrons, “can
raise enough grain for a fairly comfortable existence.”53 Reports from
elsewhere in the Deccan suggest that many small occupants and tenants
were able to keep alive without having to enter famine relief works.54
The position of agricultural labourers, by contrast, was closer to that of
the weavers. Individuals from the lowest castes, who commonly served
as day labourers in the Deccan, were consistently represented in the
relief camps in numbers far out of proportion to their percentage of the
total population.
The fate of handloom weavers during these three calamities illustrates
in particularly acute form the value of the “entitlement approach” to
famine developed by Amartya Sen.55 According to Sen, famines are not
simply products of food shortage; indeed, he argues that during a number
of famines, including the Bengal famine of 1943–4, no absolute unavail-
ability of grain existed, but large numbers of people nonetheless died of
starvation. Sen instead concludes that subsistence crises develop when
particular groups within a society lack the ability to command food at
critical moments, for instance, when they are unable to sell their services
and have no money to make grain purchases. His approach suggests that
long-term structural factors, for instance, social inequalities associated
with the development of market economies, need to be taken into account
in any examination of episodes in which large numbers of people starve.
For the weavers, starvation was a product of the forms of inequality
that characterised the handloom industry in western India. Unlike the
Bengal famine, each of these major famines in western India during the
late nineteenth century was undoubtedly precipitated by a serious failure
of crops, which in turn was brought about by severe weather conditions.
Food scarcity, however, does not explain why many weavers were reported
to be in a desperate position well before most other groups in society, and
why they suffered when grain shops still possessed ample supplies. Their
vulnerability stemmed from their structural place of dependency in rela-
tion to sahukars and karkhandars as well as from the collapse of local
cloth markets. It was the insecurity of their work that left them exposed
53
Administrative Report of Sholapur District, 1896–7 in MSA, RD 1898, vol. 21, comp.
67, pt. VI, pp. 52–8.
54
See for instance, reports in MSA, RD (Famine) 1897, vol. 26, comp. 241 and MSA, RD
(Famine) 1897, vol. 27, comp. 167.
55
Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
to famine conditions. The fact that an urban occupational group, the

handloom weavers, was among the most severely affected during times
of rural scarcity indicates the connectedness of changes happening in the
small towns with those taking place in the countryside.
Weavers’ Response to Famine

Artisans attempted to cope with the crises posed by late-nineteenth-cen-
tury famines in a variety of ways, including participation in collective
protest. Their actions during these times, however, were strongly condi-
tioned by their sense of entitlement to food and work, their notions of
respectability, and their understandings about what was possible.
Although unemployment was the immediate cause of the crisis among
weavers, work relations became only a minor site of struggle during the
famine. There is some evidence of resistance to yarn merchants and cloth
sellers. In Guledgud, it was reported that Marwari merchants had ceased
making cash advances to artisans or loans on the security of weavers’
homes, no doubt because of the uncertain prospects for future cloth
sales. A number of handloom weavers responded by refusing to return
the cloth they had manufactured from the yarn earlier provided by the
merchants, and instead took it directly to market.56 In short, the weavers
of Guledgud followed the well-established tactic of quietly withdraw-
ing their services to those who failed to provide expected patronage. In
general, however, such everyday forms of struggle occurred on a small
scale; none relected direct confrontation with the men who dominated
the cloth business. Collective action, as we shall see, was taken primarily
against grain merchants who controlled food supplies.
The search for alternative kinds of employment proved a more impor-
tant form of response to subsistence crises than collective protest against
employers. Often the closest source of work was a relief camp set up
by the government to perform some public project like road building
or tank construction. Many artisans did indeed enter public relief. Yet
many others, especially those with the highest level of skills, hesitated to
join.57 Municipal councillors in Sholapur in 1897 remarked that local
weavers preferred to “be half-fed and stay at home rather than join the
relief works.”58 Notions about the relative respectability of certain kinds
of work may have played some part in these hesitations. Some regarded
56
Report of H.M. Desai, 19 Dec. 1896, MSA, RD (Famine) 1897, vol. 35, comp. 49, p. 131.
57
Report on the Famine of 1896–7 in the Bombay Presidency-Satara District, MSA, RD
(Famine) 1898, vol. 15, comp. 107, part XIV, pp. 283–4.
58
Kalpataru ani Ananda Vritta, 10 January 1897, p. 2.
breaking stones and carrying earth on relief projects as undigniied activ-

ities for craftsmen with high levels of skill.59 The sense of having mas-
tery of one’s own time that came with the weaving profession may have
also made some hesitant to submit to employment involving direct over-
sight and close forms of labour discipline in the camps, where evalua-
tions were regularly made about whether inmates had put in a full day’s
work. Colonial oficials reported fears that the weavers’ touch might be
injured if they engaged in the kinds of heavy work required at the fam-
ine camps.60 All such attitudes may relect a deeper anxiety, that of being
permanently reduced to a deskilled proletariat dependent on the casual
labour market.
For many weavers, migration over very long distances to ind employ-
ment seems to have been preferable to joining public works. In some
cases, they travelled back along the already familiar paths that had
brought them to western India. During the famine of 1876–7, hundreds
of families in Yeola, a town whose weavers were largely Muslims from
the United Provinces, were reported to have returned to the manufactur-
ing centre of Benares. Several hundred others went to the princely state
of Indore, situated along the Bombay-Agra highway, apparently attracted
by reports they might receive patronage there.61 In Sholapur during the
famines of 1896–7 and 1899–1900, large numbers of weavers went back
to their home regions in Telangana.62 The local newspaper, Kalpataru,
reported in October 1896 that because of the earlier famine, two thou-
sand weavers had suddenly left the city:
There was a continuous queue of such people [weavers and others like
them] for three or four kilometres on the Boramani road. Some were
bidding their last farewell to their friends, some embracing and crying
loudly, some wiping tears from their eyes and walking with their eyes
toward the ground, some were worried about their offspring – similar
scenes were seen throughout the crowd.63
59
British oficials on at least one occasion referred to these hesitancies as relecting “caste
prejudices.” Assistant Collector of Belgaum to Collector, Belgaum 19 April 1877 in MSA,
RD (Famine) 1876–7, vol. 99, comp. 173, p. 381.
60
See, for instance, Letter no. 242-Famine, 23 January 1897 in MSA, RD (Famine) 1897,
vol. 160, comp. 73, p. 244.
61
Revenue Commissioner to Secretary to Government, Famine Department (no date),
MSA, RD (Famine) 1876–7, vol. 99, comp. 173, p. 343; and Assistant Collector, Nasik,
to Collector of Nasik, 9th February 1877 in the same compilation, p. 447.
62
For instance, see Indian Famine Commission 1901. Appendix, vol. II: Evidence of
Witnesses, Bombay Presidency, pp. 1041–3.
63
Kalapataru ani Ananda Vritta, 25 October 1896, p. 4.
Paul Greenough has argued that family break-up associated with migra-
tion during the Bengal famine of 1943–4 relected a culturally patterned
form of disintegration; members of the family who were most highly
valued in local culture, especially adult males, were allowed to control
resources that ensured survival; whereas less-valued members, women
and children, were set adrift to fend for themselves.64 Migration behav-
iour of weaving families during famines in the Bombay Presidency, no
doubt, relects a kind of cultural patterning based on gender and age dif-
ferences, but perhaps one that represented less a form of disintegration
than a strategic effort by the family to ensure its reproduction. Famine
migration was largely a step undertaken by men who sought some way of
maintaining family incomes without having to engage in forms of labour
they deemed demeaning. Yet such men did not usually leave their depen-
dents without hope of staying alive. In some cases, women and children
were sent to the relief projects, where they could sustain themselves with
food doles and wage payments on famine works. During the famine of
1896–7, for instance, most male weavers in Malegaon had left town, but
one thousand Momins, mostly women and children, crowded the relief
works, and an equal number had to be turned away.65 In effect, such
weaving families coped by attempting to diversify their sources of subsis-
tence. The population of weavers in most cloth-producing centres recov-
ered soon after these famines, suggesting that many families were able to
reconstitute themselves once the demand for cloth rebounded.
Famine migration was in a sense not an extraordinary action, but one
consistent with the social experience of most artisans. That is, it relected
the fact that most handloom weavers were mobile labourers who enjoyed
neither the social protection offered by village patrons nor any kind of
contractual claims to employment that might be enforced by the state.
For members of the weaving family, the willingness to uproot themselves
from their places of residence and to live apart from each other over
extended periods of time had long been essential to guaranteeing social
reproduction in such a climate of instability.66 At the same time, tem-
porary migration allowed the larger industry, which required signiicant
amounts of skilled labour – but very unevenly over the course of the
64
Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943–1944
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).
65
Collector of Nasik to Commissioner, CD, 4 Dec. 1896, MSA, RD (Famine), 1896, vol.
9, comp. 62, p. 320. In this case, the Collector deemed the Momins’ approach as illegiti-
mate, and eventually closed the works.
66
See the discussion of migration in Chapter 2.
year – to reconstitute itself after the famine. In short, famine migration

bolstered key aspects of the economic order that was developing wher-
ever signiicant numbers of weavers lived.
In their participation in grain riots, however, weavers did challenge
important aspects of small town capitalism. Such collective actions were a
particularly prominent feature of the famine of 1896–7: They occurred in
Sholapur, Karad (Satara District), Hubli, Dharwar, Ranebennur, Nargund
(Dharwar District), and other towns. They nearly threatened to do so in
other towns with signiicant weaving populations such as Ahmednagar
and Malegaon. In Poona, government oficials took credit for preventing
riots when they conveyed to grain dealers a “gentle hint” that the poor
might be ready to begin looting local stores if prices continued to esca-
late.67 Weavers were at the forefront of many of these incidents.68
In attacking grain shops, weavers joined other town dwellers in
responding to an abnormal rise in prices and to the commonly shared
belief that local merchants were withholding stocks. In the initial stages
of famine of 1896–7, many grain dealers through much of the Bombay
Presidency hoarded food on the expectation that prices would continue
to rise; others sent food to the Central Provinces and to northern India
where prices were already at high levels. As prices rose and rumours of
rioting spread, some dealers withheld grain out of fear of being robbed
by the distressed poor. Government oficials sometimes tried to persuade
merchants to make grain available in such circumstances, but they lacked
the authority and the inclination to compel traders to lower their prices.
The most serious grain riot occurred in Sholapur city in November
1896. A later report would comment that the incident “was not the out-
come of any intense scarcity . . . but brought on by themselves by the grain
dealers of Sholapur, who so wildly speculated on the chance of a serious
famine occurring and drove the poor people to exasperation by the uncer-
tainty and absurdity of their market rates.”69 Local traders had made large
purchases of grain earlier in the season, intending to hold it until prices
had risen signiicantly. Already, before the riot, there had been an increase
67
Final Report on the Famine of 1896–7 in the Bombay Presidency (Poona), MSA, RD
(Famine), 1898, vol. 13, comp. 107, pt. XI, p. 268; See also MSA RD (Famine) vol. 21,
comp. 43 for discussion of grain riots in the Presidency.
68
Collector of Nasik to Commissioner, CD, 4 Dec. 1896, MSA, RD (Famine) 1896, vol. 9,
comp. 62, p. 320; Representation of the Deccan Sabha Relating to the Present Famine, 3
December 1896, MSA, RD (Famine), 1896, vol. 9, comp. 85, p. 486.
69
Final Report on the Famine of 1896–7 in the Bombay Presidency, Sholapur, 5 Jan. 1898,
MSA, RD (Famine), 1898, vol. 15, comp. 107, pt. XV, p. 348.
in reports of “dacoities, robberies and thefts” in the city; the district mag-
istrate, L. G. Deshmukh, had convinced a few grain dealers to keep prices
low for the poor, but he had also asked the district superintendent of
police (DSP) to station armed men in the grain market. On 8 November, a
crowd of local residents, many of them local Mangs and Mahars (persons
from “Untouchable,” non-weaving castes), went to the magistrate’s bunga-
low, pleading to have their grievances against the grain dealers redressed.
Deshmukh, having no legal authority to interfere with the operation of the
market, was unable to satisfy the crowd with his response.
After leaving the magistrate’s ofice, the crowd, now joined by many
out-of-work Padmasali and Momin weavers, proceeded to a local basket
shop, carrying away a large number of sticks to use as weapons. It then
went on to the grain market, where its numbers grew to as much as twelve
or ifteen thousand. Soon many of those present began to loot the stores
of rice, juwar, and ghee. Most of those whose stores were attacked were
Gujaratis or Marwaris. When part of the crowd found itself unable to
break down the door of two storekeepers, some of its members climbed
the house walls and opened the granary. A large number of sacks of grain
were seized. Not one shop was touched where merchants had previously
agreed to provide grain to the poor at reduced prices.70
By the time the DSP had arrived, the market was entirely in the pos-
session of the crowd, and local police had lost control. Members of the
crowd pelted some of the police with stones and made threatening ges-
tures and insults to others. The DSP tried to calm those present and draw
them out of the shops they were looting, but the riot continued unabated.
Finally, he decided to order the police to ire. Four rioters were killed,
and a larger number were injured. The district administration called in
troops to maintain order, but for days rumours of further potential distur-
bances circulated.71 Total losses incurred in the rioting were estimated at
25,000 rupees.
As the DSP himself would recognise, participants in the riots were
weavers and others without work who had a “grievance against the
70
Kalpataru ani Ananda Vritta, 8 Nov. 1896, pp. 1–2.
71
The most complete report of this collective action is contained in MSA, JD, 1897, vol.
251, comp. 178, esp. the letter of the DSP to the Commissioner CD, 28 Nov. 1896,
221–4. The episode is important historically in another sense because Deshmukh, one
of the irst Indian ICS oficers, was censured for failure to take a stronger personal role
during the actions and for dismissing British troops sent to the scene without consulting
the British Superintendence of Police. Deshmukh himself pointed to the overconidence
of local police and the removal of an armed guard in the market several days before
the event.
grainsellers for selling grain at what they consider to be an unreasonable

high price.”72 Their actions relect their notions of what was fair mar-
ket practise.73 Pre-colonial states in India had intervened in the market
during times of food shortage by opening charities where grain would be
distributed or by preventing grain exports from the kingdom.74 This prac-
tise was continued in some of the “native states” during the nineteenth
century, including, interestingly, Indore, the territory to which many
weavers had migrated in 1896. Yet the colonial government increasingly
viewed such restrictions as interference with free trade, and insisted that
the export of grain from localities be allowed, even in the worst short-
ages. In some cases, municipalities that opened cheap grain shops in times
of distress were censured for unnecessary interference with the operation
of the market.
The crowd of weavers and others in Sholapur, on the other hand,
clearly felt that interference with the market to ensure a fair price in times
of dearth was justiied. Its members showed a high degree of purpose-
fulness in their actions. In irst approaching the district magistrate, they
gave voice to their belief that it was a responsibility of the government
to prevent hoarding. Although weavers may not have expected the state
to protect their work, they did expect it to intervene to ensure their
access to food at reasonable rates. When oficials failed to take action,
the crowd felt suficiently angered and emboldened to seize food itself.
Participants in the crowd showed a high degree of selectivity in target-
ing grain shops owned by outside traders and in skipping the shops of
merchants believed to be engaged in fairer trading practises. Shopkeepers
themselves were not attacked, only their property.
Interestingly, this episode and others probably had some inluence on
the access of local people to food in the long run. The violence in Sholapur
was followed up by efforts funded by local merchants and organised by
Bal Gangadhar Tilak to develop a relief project that would put weav-
ers to work in weaving sheds. After the government refused to provide
72
DSP, to Commissioner, Central Division, 5 Dec. 1896, MSA, JD, 1897, vol. 251, comp.
178, p. 287.
73
Obviously, there are strong parallels here between the values of participants in these
acts of violence and the values of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain studied by
E. P. Thompson in his classic article, Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English
Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76–136.
74
See Bhatia, Famines in India, p. 111; Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern
Bengal, p. 50; David L. Curley, “Fair Grain Markets and Mughal Famine Policy in Late
18th Century Bengal,” Calcutta Historical Journal 2 (July–Dec. 1977), pp. 1–26 cited in
Greenough, p. 50.
funding for this project, local civic leaders formed a weavers’ guild with
missionary sponsorship.75 The district magistrate did try to inluence mer-
chants to reduce their prices. Local philanthropists also contributed to the
opening of cheap grain stores. On one day, nearly four thousand migrants,
many of them presumably weavers, were helped with funds.76 The local
municipal council also attempted to pressure the colonial government
to provide special relief to weavers.77 Such efforts were informed in part
by the fear that rioting and other forms of social disorder might recur.
Thus collective action was a potentially effective behaviour of people who
lacked adequate channels for making their voices felt within the ordi-
nary structures of the colonial state.78 Seemingly, the willingness of large
numbers of people to engage in violence at such moments was sparked
not only by strong feelings of frustration but also by a hope that such
actions could inluence those with the power to make grain available.
Crises of Supply
Another major source of uncertainty in the lives of small producers were
the luctuations in the costs of raw materials. To recapitulate an argu-
ment made in Chapter 1, artisans of western India had become wholly
reliant on national and international markets for their materials. Around
the middle of the nineteenth century, perhaps the majority used imported
British yarn; by the late nineteenth century, a large portion had made the
transition to yarn manufactured in Bombay, Ahmedabad, or Sholapur. By
1910, most used German dyes to colour their cloth. Silk, gold, and silver
for jari products and other materials were imported. Over time, cheap-
ening prices in some of these products, especially cotton yarn, did help
weavers and other producers to carry on. Sudden changes in Indian or
world markets, however, could drastically reduce the margin between the
cost of production and the payments received by the artisanal family.
The most dramatic crises brought about by these kinds of develop-
ments occurred during World War I. Although the war years have usually
been seen as a time of economic expansion in India, the period 1914–17
was almost uniformly a traumatic one for small producers. On the one
75
For the role of the merchants and of Tilak, see MSA, Revenue Department (Famine)
1896, vol. 22, comp. 73. The Weavers’ Guild is discussed in Chapter 6.
76
Kalpataru ani Ananda Vritta, 27 Dec. 1896, p. 3.
77
Kalpataru ani Ananda Vritta, 10 Jan. 1897, p. 2.
78
David Arnold makes a somewhat similar argument about the eficacy of grain riots in
“Looting, Grain Riots and Government Policy.”
hand, most artisans did not compete for markets with goods manufac-
tured abroad, so the abrupt decline in imports provided little boost in
sales. On the other hand, most small producers relied on imported raw
materials. The costs of most of these materials shot up signiicantly.
First of all, the price of cotton yarn rose steadily during the war. As
European industry devoted itself to meeting war needs, imports of for-
eign yarn dropped. The resulting increases in yarn prices directly affected
weavers in northern Karnataka, who used English yarn in their products.79
According to contemporary accounts, however, a wider impact was
brought about by the fact that reduced cloth imports gave the modern
textile industry unprecedented opportunities to sell cloth in the domestic
market, and factory managers now utilised nearly all the yarn made in
the mills themselves.80 As supplies available in the general market dwin-
dled, prices of yarn rose signiicantly. By 1917, they were often 50 per
cent higher than those that weavers had paid before the war.81
An even greater rise in the prices of aniline dyes compounded the
weavers’ dificulties. With the onset of the war, the supply of German dyes
was virtually cut off. The pre-war net consumption of dyes in India had
been on average 15,351,000 pounds per year, valued at .645 rupees per
pound. In 1915–16, imports had fallen to 693,000 pounds. Prices of dyes
rose to about six rupees per pound, up to ten times higher than pre-war
levels.82 Because dyes had constituted about 10 per cent of the value of
most saris, this represented a substantial rise in the artisans’ costs. Weavers
struggled to make coarse cloth without dyes or to use inferior colouring
agents. Merchants at the time, however, often simply refused to buy the
cloth without a guarantee that the colours would be fast, which the arti-
sans were unable to provide.83 In reports that mention only one of the two
factors, the changes in the cost of dyes are stated more frequently than the
cost of yarn as a cause of weavers’ distress. By contrast with the hand-
looms, many of the mills held stocks of cheap dyes during the early years of
the war and thus were not so strongly affected by these price increases.84
79
Testimony of R.B. Ewbank, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Indian Industrial
Commission, vol. IV, p. 557.
80
Bell, Notes on the Indian Textile Industry, p. 4.
81
Annual Report Relating to the Establishment of Co-operative Credit Societies in the
Bombay Presidency, 1916–17, p. 20.
82
Bell, Notes on the Indian Textile Industry, p. 4.
83
Land Revenue Report of Ahmednagar District, 1915–6, in MSA, RD 1917, comp. 511,
pt. V, p. 97.
84
Land Revenue Report of Sholapur District, 1915–6, in MSA, RD 1917, comp. 511, pt. V,
p. 249.
Cost increases of other materials had similar effects. The price of raw
silk also rose during the war years. The largest importer of Chinese silk
in Surat reportedly could now obtain only half of the quantities it had
been importing through Bombay before 1914. At the same time, Surat’s
export market in the Ottoman Empire had dried up as a result of wartime
conditions. The number of workers employed by one local irm engaged
in silk manufacture and commerce fell from 150 to roughly 20.85 Silk
production dropped everywhere at the outset of the war. In Yeola, which
manufactured silk saris for a domestic market and presumably had found
substitute sources of raw silk from Japan or Bengal, the industry had
rebounded signiicantly by 1917, a result of the prosperity of agricultur-
alists in the cotton growing tracts of Berar and Khandesh. Still, according
to a local report, the condition of weavers was “not as good as before
wartime.”86 The jari industry, which relied on imports of gold and silver,
also took a blow due to controls on imports of precious metals.87 This
had a profound inluence on the manufacture of high-value saris in places
like Surat, which used gold thread extensively.
Other calamities sometimes piled up on top of these economic prob-
lems. Major loods hit the small towns of Dharwar, Belgaum, and Bijapur
in 1917, destroying weavers’ homes and places of work, and causing the
handloom industry in some cases to come to a standstill.88 Epidemics of
cholera hit weavers in some towns, and plague affected artisans through-
out the Presidency.89 In 1918, these problems were compounded by rural
famine through much of the presidency, when weavers were again unable
to ind buyers for their cloth.90 In 1918–19 came the great world inlu-
enza epidemic.
The dificulties of subsistence under these conditions were consider-
able. In Khandesh, it was reported in 1915 that the prices of low-quality
yarn had gone up 15 per cent and those of fast-dyed yarn by about 40 per
cent, whereas prices of saris had fallen from three to two rupees and even
lower.91 In the following year, prices of cloth in the Presidency still had
85
Ansorge, Report on an Inquiry into the Silk Industry, Vol. II, p. 31.
86
Land Revenue Report of Nasik District, 1916–7, MSA, RD, 1917, comp. 511, pt. VI,
p. 129.
87
Land Revenue Report of Surat District, 1915–6, MSA, RD, 1917, comp. 511, pt. IV,
p. 103.
88
Annual Report, Co-operative Credit Societies, Bombay Presidency, 1916–7, p. 20; Annual
Report, Co-operative Credit Societies, Bombay Presidency 1917–8, pp. 18–19.
89
Annual Report, Co-operative Credit Societies, Bombay Presidency, 1916–7, p. 20; Land
Revenue Report of Nasik District, 1916–7, MSA, RD, 1917, comp. 511, pt. VI, p. 129.
90
91
Land Revenue Report for East Khandesh, 1914–5, MSA, RD, 1916, comp. 511, pt. V, p. 12.
not risen to compensate for the increased costs of production because the
mills were continuing to dispose of pre-war stocks of cloth. One oficial
remarked, “At present, the margin between the cost of manufacture and
the selling price is barely enough to keep the weavers and their fam-
ilies alive.”92 A report on the conditions in the Presidency from 1917
indicated that the prices of yarn had gone up 50 per cent from pre-war
levels and those of dyes nearly 1,000 per cent, but those of cloth had
risen only 38 per cent.93 The weavers were being squeezed from all sides,
as grain prices had also risen signiicantly. Wage data from Pathardi in
Ahmednagar District indicates that weavers there were earning only four
annas per day. This was said to be “the rate an agricultural labourer
earns,” but the same report in fact indicates that the wages of unskilled
labourers and agricultural workers had gone up to six annas per day.
Masons and carpenters were by then earning one rupee per day.94 By
1918, once cloth prices began to keep pace with inlation, payments to
weavers clearly improved, and some in the Presidency were earning one
rupee a day, albeit in a continued environment of escalating grain prices,
famine, and inluenza.95
Weavers adapted to the crisis of World War I in a variety of ways.
Those who chose to remain in their locales in many cases turned to mer-
chant-capitalists for inancial support and became dependent artisans or
wage workers.96 Dificult times, after all, were often an opportunity for
bosses to tighten their controls over labour as long as they saw some
future prospect for better markets on the horizon. A number of weavers
tried to cope with higher dye prices by turning to the production of plain
cloth, by importing cheap dyes from south India, or by trying to revive
old, abandoned methods of manufacturing vegetable dyes.97 These lat-
ter efforts unfortunately met with only limited success, because the dyes
were not fast and the range of colours limited, and because consumer
92
93
94
Land Revenue Report of Ahmednagar, 1915–6 (Eastern Division), MSA, RD, 1917,
comp. 511, pt. V, pp. 21–23.
95
Annual Report, Co-operative Credit Societies, Bombay Presidency, 1917–8, pp. 18–19.
96
Land Revenue Report of Dharwar, 1916–7, MSA, RD, 1918, comp. 511, pt. VIII, p. 215;
Land Revenue Report of Dharwar, Land Revenue Administration Report, Part II, of the
Bombay Presidency, including Sind for the year 1915–16, MSA, RD, 1917, comp. 511,
pt. I, p. 235; Land Revenue Report of Ratnagiri, 1917–8, MSA, RD 1919, comp. 511,
pt. III, p. 3.
97
Land Revenue Report of Belgaum, 1915–6, MSA, RD, 1917, comp. 511, pt. VIII, p. 13;
Land Revenue Report of Belgaum, 1916–7, MSA, RD, 1918, comp. 511, pt. VI, p. 7;
Land Revenue Report of Belgaum, 1917–8, MSA, RD, 1919, comp. 511, pt. III, p. 7.
preferences had not adjusted to changes in the availability of goods.

Yet they did allow some artisans to persist in their trades, albeit at very
meagre standards of living. In other cases, small producers made more
drastic adjustments. At one point, the “caste panchayat at Dharangaon”
(presumably the organisation of the Momins) relaxed rules preventing
begging among weavers, and nearly one hundred begged daily on the
streets.98 The resort to begging itself might be seen as a strategy of arti-
sans who were experiencing severe strains but who wished to position
themselves to resume their activity once business rebounded.
Exiting the industry or the locale was another option. Clearly thou-
sands of artisans simply abandoned their profession during the war years,
although many probably did so with the intention of returning to cloth
production when the crisis ran its course. A few made their way into
agriculture, but more entered the labour market in small towns; yet still
others joined the army.99 Many chose to migrate in search of more sta-
ble work. In contrast to famine periods, moving to artisanal centres in
other regions of India was not a very viable option, because rising yarn
and dye prices were found everywhere. Migration to the bigger cities cer-
tainly offered brighter prospects. Because of their familiarity with yarn
and cloth, weavers and other artisans often were attractive candidates for
employment in the mills, which were experiencing considerable expan-
sion. There are reports of signiicant numbers of weavers in Dharangaon
migrating to work in the factories of Ahmedabad and Broach, and of
weavers in Sangamner, Yeola, and Bhiwandi moving to Bombay.100 In
Bhiwandi, 1,500 weavers and dyers migrated from the town in 1915–16
and another 1,000 in 1916–17, a result of the stoppage of the handloom
industry. Collectively, this must have been about half of the total artisanal
population of the town.101
98
Land Revenue Report for East Khandesh, 1914–5, MSA, RD, 1916, comp. 511, pt. V, p. 12.
99
Land Revenue Report of Dharwar District, 1916–7, MSA, RD, 1918, comp. 511, pt.
VI, p. 7; Testimony of R.B. Ewbank, Minutes of the Indian Industrial Commission, vol.
IV, pp. 548, 557; Annual Report, Co-operative Credit Societies, Bombay Presidency,
1915–6, p. 15; Land Revenue Report of Ratnagiri, 1917–8, MSA, RD, 1919, comp. 511,
pt. III, p. 3. Resort to agricultural labour is mentioned only in Ratnagiri, an area where
weavers were probably part-time cultivators involved in the production of only very
coarse cloth.
100
Land Revenue Report for the Bombay Presidency, 1915–6, MSA, RD, 1916, comp. 511,
pt. I, pp. 14, 19; and Revenue Report of Ahmednagar District, 1914–5, MSA, RD, 1916,
comp. 511, pt. V, p. 25; Land Revenue Report for East Khandesh, 1914–5, in MSA, RD,
1916, comp. 511, pt. V, p. 12; Land Revenue Report of Nasik District, 1914–5, MSA,
RD, 1916, comp. 511, pt. V, p.13.
101
Land Revenue Report of Thana, 1915–6, MSA, RD, 1917, comp. 511, pt. IV, p. 225;
Land Revenue Report of Thana, 1916–7, MSA, RD, 1918, comp. 511, pt. III, p. 12.
That such large numbers of artisans moved during World War I is

again testimony to the considerable mobility of this category of economic
actors. Indeed, the records of some districts indicate that weavers were
the only occupational category there to move in signiicant numbers dur-
ing the war. Seemingly, they either already possessed information about
potential prospects elsewhere or quickly gathered such knowledge once
their circumstances turned for the worse. Subsistence in this profession
almost required a certain readiness to move if economic conditions got
rough.
Collective action against merchant-capitalists, however, was a rela-
tively minor method of responding to subsistence crises. I have found evi-
dence of only one such incident, the brief mention of a strike of weavers
for higher payments for cloth from local dealers in Hubli around 1917.
Seemingly, these were actions taken by independent artisans at a time
when demand for cloth was starting to revive and textile prices were
beginning to rebound, and they relected an effort to share in the beneits
of the improving commercial environment.102 A single sentence, unfortu-
nately, is all the evidence we have on this episode. For the most part, small
producers either did not see protest against bosses as either an effective
or legitimate method of handling crises, perhaps because they were well
aware that the insecurity of their circumstances made them especially
vulnerable at such times.
Conclusion
Thus, despite all the evidence of the continued dynamism of small-scale
production and of the agency of individual weaver-entrepreneurs, the
ordinary artisan in western India lived under conditions of extreme
poverty and insecurity. Sahukars and karkhandars in the small towns
maintained their positions in great part by depressing the payments to
small producers to levels signiicantly less than those of other skilled
workers in the economy, as well as by sustaining their access to a pool
of cheap workers who had little employment during part of the year
but who could be mobilised during the times of highest demand. The
circumstances of weavers, dyers, printers, and jari makers were remark-
ably similar to those of unskilled, casual labourers in the countryside
or cities. Their earning levels were at best only marginally higher, they
experienced the same kinds of uncertain access to work, and they lacked
102
the resources and reserves needed to withstand periodic economic crises.

Like ield labourers, the artisans’ well-being was tied to the agricultural
harvest: They could ind themselves in a dificult position while grain was
ripening in the ields, and in conditions of great stress if the crop failed
altogether or prices escalated sharply.
We have little knowledge of the methods small producers used to cope
with the more ordinary conditions of chronic poverty. They must have
had a myriad of ways of economising on family expenses and scroung-
ing out incomes that are invisible in the records. We do, on the other
hand, have evidence of how they handled extreme crises. They developed
a large repertoire of methods that allowed them to ight off absolute
hunger and prevent their permanent absorption into the general labour
market. Above all, they showed a willingness to move that may have
exceeded almost any other set of actors in the western Indian economy.
Moving did not just secure subsistence when times were toughest; it often
allowed weavers to remain in a profession offering freedoms and leisure
they could not ind elsewhere. For the most part, however, these strategies
did not involve any direct collective confrontation with the merchants
and karkhandars who provided work; the uncertainties of their employ-
ment seem to have precluded this except perhaps when demand for their
services was the greatest.
The straitened circumstances of artisans in the Bombay Presidency
certainly attracted the attention of colonial oficials. By the irst decade
of the twentieth century, government oficers were beginning to devote
considerable time to studying local crafts. Dozens of reports began to
be devoted to the topic, and at least two government departments in the
Presidency began to focus on the problems of local industries. The next
chapter turns to the policies of the colonial state and to the reasons its
activities were so ineffective.

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5

Small Town Capitalism and the Living

The subordinate place of western Indian artisans within the structures

market as landless workers in the countryside or as casual wage employ-

Artisanal Poverty and the Structure of the Economy

level, the availability of cheap European imports and textiles manufac-

the maximum returns during short periods of extensive activity with-

Qualitative Indications of Poverty

“The weavers as a class live from hand to mouth,” stated W. T. Pomfret,

[T]he dwellings of the poor [especially weavers] were usually found to

Image 9. “Weaver at Loom Over Pit, Sangamner Town, 1913”

Maconochie reported in 1906 that half of the weavers in the Sholapur

and segregation extremely dificult, and it becomes clear that to check

From Surat, an oficial reported during the plague:

What is particularly striking in many of these accounts is the repeated

Table 5.1. Rates per Day of Work in British Currency

Occupation 1788–1797 1798–1817 1818–1820

late nineteenth century. As we have seen in Chapter 1, Marshall reported

18 S = Wages of Skilled Workers

16 S = Wages of Skilled Workers

Table 5.2. Women’s Wages in General Labour and in Cloth

Unskilled Female Labour Wages to Women in Cloth Industry

and convergence with those of general labourers in the countryside and

about the maintenance of female respectability may have also led to

The Economic Vulnerability of Artisans

caused by crop failures (which left agriculturalists unwilling to pur-

Urban Weavers and Famine

reached an absolute standstill, and that artisans and manufacturers had

Less than one-third of the weavers in Ahmedabad and Ahmednagar were

Whenever a man had a small piece of garden land, he appeared to have

Some cultivators paid their revenue in King William rupees, indicat-

in which they stored grain. Landowners and “their regular servants,”

to famine conditions. The fact that an urban occupational group, the

Weavers’ Response to Famine

breaking stones and carrying earth on relief projects as undigniied activ-

year – to reconstitute itself after the famine. In short, famine migration

grainsellers for selling grain at what they consider to be an unreasonable

preferences had not adjusted to changes in the availability of goods.

That such large numbers of artisans moved during World War I is

the resources and reserves needed to withstand periodic economic crises.

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