This work is concerned with the early history of labour in the Bombay cotton textile industry. It takes into account various facets of workers` lives--economic as well as social, cultural and political---and emphasizes both the uniqueness and commonness of the workers` experiences with relation to the rest of the population. The author begins with a structural outline of the industry, its history and demographic specificities. The long hours of work, the struggle to reduce them, ventilation, wages, housing, liquor consumption, diseases and indebtedness are discussed with reference to various points of view--of workers, of millowners, of colonial officials of social workers and of nationalists.