GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE


The Calcutta jute mills offer one of the earliest examples of the exploitative nature of globalisation. 


In the late 1800's, as Britain industrialised, Dundee emerged as a major industrial hub. People from all over Europe migrated to Dundee seeking work in its jute mills. Work in the Dundee jute mills offered little but drudgery, exhaustion, low wages and constant danger of accidents. Dundee’s working class lived and laboured in conditions that were among the most miserable in the empire.


By the 1900's, the fortunes of Dundee had turned decisively. Under political and economic conditions reminiscent of globalisation today, enterprising Scottish jute barons had moved capital to a lower cost base in Calcutta, driving the Dundee mills out of business and amassing vast fortunes for themselves.


Thousands of migrant workers flocked to these new factories in Calcutta to chase the new economic dream. But work in the Calcutta jute mills offered little but drudgery, exhaustion, low wages and constant danger of accidents. Calcutta’s working class lived and laboured in conditions that were among the most miserable in the empire.


The collapse of the British empire and the advent of plastic killed the jute trade in Calcutta. By the 1960s, most of the mills had shut down.


In recent decades, resurgent global trade has seen many of Calcutta's jute mills re-open. Inside, Victorian-era machines crank out an ever-present, ear-splitting din, jostling for space alongside modern Chinese ones.


Operating these machines are the same migrant workers, faces covered in dust, ‘stour’ clogging eyes, mouths and noses. Like Ghosts in the Machine.


Little seems to have changed in a hundred years. Work in the Calcutta jute mills offer little but drudgery, exhaustion, low wages and constant danger of accidents.

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