Industrial worker in India

Until the end of the Great War in 1918 there was no real organization among the industrial workers of India. Strikes there were occa insionally, but they roused no great interest among the middle-class politicians who led the political movement of those days; and industrial disputes, when they occurred, were regarded with almost complete apathy by those not immediately concerned in them.

And then, in April of that year, occurred a small incident in Madras which seemed to be the signal for the industrial workers in all the main industrial centres of India to organ ize themselves to obtain better economic conditions. Two young men, who had interested themselves for some time in social and religious work among the textile workers of Madras, visited the office of New India, the late Dr. Annie Besant's now defunct daily paper, to seek the advice and co-operation of Mr. B. P. Wadia, her assistant editor. Mr. Wadia was a politician with somewhat radical leanings, and the Madras Government had conferred on him in the previous year the distinction of interning him with Dr. Besant and another colleague for their ardent advocacy of home rule for India.