agents which secured a commission on output rather than profit.

Secondly, the
output of cotton goods was subject to considerable fluctuations, especially in
Bombay, which suffered a series of supply and demand crises associated with
famine, plague and increased competition in the China market between 1893 and
1913. Perhaps as a result, the Bombay mills were slow to diffuse innova-tions in
production technology in the late nineteenth century, and in particu-lar stuck to an
inappropriate and less productive type of spinning machinery (mules rather than
ring spindles) for much longer than their rivals in Japan. Labour supply was never a
problem for the cotton industry, but it was some-times difficult to maintain labour
discipline, and the Bombay mill workers were able to mount significant strikes in the
early 189os, 1901 and 1908 in defence of wage levels. The ties between Bombay
and Lancashire in technical information and machinery supply remained close; one-
third of all technical staff in middle management in the Bombay mills were
Europeans down to the 1920s, although the absolute numbers of such staff ceased
to rise significantly after 1913, and almost all of the machinery and plant used in
the Indian indus-try was supplied from Britain.

During the 192os the Bombay industry continued to run into difficulties, which
eroded its competitiveness to a serious extent. Although by now the Indian industry
was by far the largest supplier of the home market, it was not able to fix its own
prices, even after the considerable revenue-tariff increases of the early 192os. The
Bombay mills did not control the market for Indian raw cotton, the price of which
formed by far the largest item in the production costs of yarn and cloth. Over half of
the Indian crop was exported to Japan, and there was an extensive and unstable
petty-commodity dealing system in yarn, cloth and raw cotton for domestic
consumption centred in Bombay that was seen by the mill owners as an
encouragement to speculation and cornering. Attempts to control the operation of
the market by legislation stirred up considerable discontent in the 192os, while
moves to bypass the smaller dealers by direct agencies in the interior ran into the
sand during the slump at the end of the dec-ade. Japanese exports of cloth to India
were also an important threat to Bombay immediately after the First World War and,
although they were held in check for most of the 192os, they reappeared after 193o
to supply about one-tenth of the market for mill cloth by 1938, despite import tariffs
of up to 5o per cent.

The cotton textile industry of western India was the site of the most complex and
comprehensive set of industrial labour institutions in modern South Asia.