DBQ
During the period of time from the 1880s to the 1930s, Japan and India both were beginning to mechanize their cotton industries. Both of these countries had similar recruitment techniques, but differed when it came to who the workers were and where they came from, and the working conditions they had in the mill.
Documents 1, 2, and 6 all show the increased usage of machines in Japanese and Indian cotton factories. The chart in Document 1 that details the production of cotton yarn and cloth in India shows how India utilized more machines to create more yarn and cloth in 1914 than in 1884. The chart shows how machine spun yarn was surpassing the amount of hand-woven yarn, as well as how the amount of machine-made cloth is quickly catching the amount of hand-woven cloth, which shows the mechanization of India’s cotton industry. This document is reliable because it is data collected from British colonial officials who would have no benefit of altering the data in any way. The Indian economist Radhakamal Mukerjee who wrote “The Foundation of Indian Economics” (1916) in Document 6 talks of how handloom cloth weavers cannot compete with the machines in the factories and are rapidly declining. This shows India’s step towards a more mechanized cloth industry. The document is not completely reliable because as an economist, the author may have overemphasized the decline of India’s handloom weavers to show economic growth. Comparable to India’s increased production of machine spun yarn is Japan’s outlined by the chart in document 2. Japan’s incredulous increase in machine spun yarn from five million pounds in 1884 to 666 in 1914 dwarfs India’s growth that was 151 million pounds in 1884 to only 652 in 1914. Document two may not be completely reliable because the data may have been altered to make Japan’s Industry is improving just a bit faster than India’s.
Though Japan and India were similar in their implementation of machines in the cotton industry,