52 SOCIAL SCIENTIST ants'. The system extended even to the furniture and cutlery trades in what was called the 'House Industry'. The term 'putting out system' was, of course, yet to be coined and Marshall had conveyed the concept by other terms like "give out", "deliver out", "distribute" or "put out" materials for processing the products at different stages on 'piece work prices'. This 'the capitalist' had done to avoid the trouble of housing and superintending the workers and at the same time with a view to retaining a great many persons in his books whom he could play off 'one against another' because of their weak financial position and lack of acquaintance with one another. The system took a new turn in modern industries, particularly in trades requiring assembly line of production as in the case of electronic goods. While devoting a section to the role of cottage industries out of which the factory system had grown in Western Europe and 'the domestic putting out system was sometimes a stage between individual's workshop and the factory'. Arther Lewis (1955/1963, pp. 137, 139) cites the recent examples of Indonesia which 'excelled in reorganising old trades' and particularly of Japan which 'excelled in organising new trades on a cottage industry basis'. Here the private merchants supply the raw materials to the craftsmen who work in their homes or in small workshops. "The system is specially famous for its extension into trades where a commodity has to be made in several parts; the parts are put out to individual craftsmen or to small workshops, working to detail specifications whereafter the assembly is done in central factories." In our country also different parts of radio and television sets, electric fans etc. are manufactured now-a-days in the decentralised sector out of the materials supplied by the parent firms; assembling is being done in some central factories and the final product is sold under a particular trade mark. Even in the steel industry billets are said to have been supplied under a system of subcontracting by some industry to small firms engaged in manufacturing housing materials, particularly iron rods on the condition that the latter fulfil the requirements of the zonal marketing centre of the parent firm as it was reported us by an iron industry at Guwahati (Assam). In a field investigation in 1980-81 it was also found that nearly 44 per cent of the commercial and semi commercial handlooms, cent per cent of the spinning and reeling units, brass and bell metal establishments or about 60 per cent of the cottage industries in aggregate in these trades in Assam were working under the putting out system. The industrial units had borne no business risk, they simply worked, while taking delivery of the raw materials, to the order and specifications of the material supplying agencies, viz., private dealers, co-operative societies and/or semi-government agencies like the Assam Khadi and Village Industries Board and received only the wages. While classifying the industries from the business risk bearing angle we had termed these units 'dependent' as distinguished from 'independent' ones which while bearing the business risks worked with their own raw materials, did the marketing of their products and earned profits if any (Baishya, 1989, pp.