SHOLAPUR COTTON TEXTILE INDUSTRY 69 in 1876 to generate employment opportunity in a region which was frequently affected by famine.11 This naive assumption gives the impression that the mill was some, sort of charitable enterprise. In reality, besides the easy availability of raw cotton, " low transport costs and the nearness of markets,13 the famine conditions prevailing in the late 1870s proved to be a conducive factor for the generation of cheap labour supply. During the scarcity conditions of 1913-14, the government did not have to start famine relief works. Labour was absorbed by the Sholapur cotton mills, the construction works on the Nira Right Bank Canal and the Pandharpur Bridge of the Barsi Light Railway. The Collector reported that there was no question of relief works though the district was passing through a year of acute crop and fodder failure following upon successive bad seasons.14 Therefore, the government was saved the expenditure of starting famine relief works and the mills were only too willing to recruit this labour for which there was a demand throughout the war years. This would, in turn, imply state help and protection to the millowners in the ensuing years. In 1918, Seth Narottam Morarji, the owner of the Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Mill, subscribed Rs 5 lakhs and Raja Narsinggirji, Rs 1 lakh for the war loan. The Sholapur Spinning and Weaving Mill made profits worth lakhs of rupees during the war and the shareholders of the company obtained high dividends. In 1921, the C unit of the mill was established.15 This indicates that although the mills faced labour shortages due to the plague, strategies were devised by the millowners to make profits during the war. The mills devised another novel technique for fulfilling their labour requirements. The employers resorted to the recruitment of persons from the criminal tribes settlement started at Sholapur in 1912 for which they received support from the government. The government created the illusion that it was reforming the tribals by sending them to the settlement in Sholapur where they could earn an honest livelihood by working in the mills. It was portrayed as a civilising mission undertaken by the government for the 'salvation* of the criminal tribes.16 In reality, thfc criminal tribes settlement at Sholapur was like a penal colony17 and the persons residing in it were a captive labour force readily available for the local mills. Sholapur was the largest centre of the criminal tribes' settlements in India, with a total strength of 3,491 in 1919 out of which 79% of men and 38% of women worked in the city's mills. It was handed over by the government to the American Marathi Mission in 1918