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work of roads together with industries like those of coal, jute, cotton
and tea sprang into existence and underwent extraordinary develop-
ment. From 1868 onwards we find the Sone, Orissa and the Midna-
pore canals undergoing construction, the three schemes being nearly
completed in 1881. The year 1871 saw the completion of 2,800 miles
of the first general scheme of railways in India linking up most of the
important towns and cities, Calcutta among them. Between 1872
and 1881, 525 miles of railway were constructed in Bengal and from
1872 and 1881-91 a further 1,051 miles had been added to this total,
which was still further increased by another 1,614 miles of line opened
in 1901.
The coal industry, which in 1860 had an output four times as
great as that of ten years previously, exported in 1905 from the
Bengal coal-fields alone seven and quarter million tons. The jute and
cotton industries, which in 1860 were in their infancy, now possess
mills scattered throughout the whole of Hooghly and the neighbour-
ing districts, jute mills alone in 1904 possessing nearly 20,000 spindles
and employing an average daily labour force of close upon 140,000
persons.
Calcutta, the centre of this new movement, rapidly expanded
under the stimulation of increasing commercial activity, which
necessitated also the establishment of docks and the extension of
harbours, together with the erection of vast blocks of buildings
throughout the city and its widening suburbs.
All this expansion has meant LABOUR-labour on the aggregate
in vast amount-labour brought together and employed under con-
ditions little different and certainly no better than those that may be
met with at the present time whenever and wherever projects of a
similar nature to those we have alluded to, require to be carried out.
Year after year, now in this district, now in that, innumerable labour
camps must have been formed. Along every new railway, every canal,
every important road under construction, and around every engineer-
ing or building project, or associated with every rapidly develop-
ing industry there must have sprung into existence these more or less
temporary aggregations of labour with the almost certain consequence