F & B (Canteen) Token: The India UnitedMills group. Multiple denomination tokens

[asm]

India United Mills is a group of 6 Mills with a fascinating history. In its long history, dating back almost 150 years, the tokens were issued for workmen to have food in the Canteen.Initially the Mill seems to have issued tokens of 1/2 Anna denomination which may have been later increased to 1 Anna (probably to account for inflation). I base this on the metal of the tokens. The 1/2 Anna Tokens of all 6 Mills are round and in Copper. However the 1 Anna tokens, probably to account for increased cost of Copper, were struck in Brass. All these tokens were issued prior to or just immediately after independence.

Much later, we see the advent of Aluminum tokens in the denomination of 5 Paisa and 10 Paisa. These tokens may have initially been struck for individual mills as was the case with the original Copper and Brass tokens and then, later were struck without the details of the mill that struck them.

I am uploading images of the tokens in my collection and will keep adding once I get more.

Amit

[asm]

India United Mills - Mill No.1.

Known tokens are in Copper (1/2 Anna) and Brass (1 Anna).

Inscription in Hindi: India United Mills Limited / Number 1 Mill. REVERSE: CANTEEN TOKEN / INDU with value in both Hindi and English.

Value: 1/2 Anna.
Round Token with Hole in the center.
Metal: Copper    Weight:   g.      Size:   mm

No image available as yet. Will upload as soon as I get the token.

Value: 1 Anna.
Square Token with rounded edges with Hole in the center.
Metal: Brass    Weight: 4.09 g.      Size: ~ 20 mm X 20 mm

[asm]

India United Mills - Mill No.2 & 3.

Known tokens are in Copper (1/2 Anna) and Brass (1 Anna).

Inscription in Hindi: India United Mills Limited / Number 2 & 3 Mill. REVERSE: CANTEEN TOKEN / INDU with value in both Hindi and English.

Value: 1/2 Anna.
Round Token with Hole in the center.
Metal: Copper    Weight: 3.15 g.      Size: 20.5 mm



Value: 1 Anna.
Square Token with rounded edges with Hole in the center.
Metal: Brass    Weight:  g.      Size: ~  mm
No image available as yet. Will upload as soon as I get the token.

[asm]

India United Mills - Mill No.4.

Known tokens are in Copper (1/2 Anna) and Brass (1 Anna).

Inscription in Hindi: India United Mills Limited / Number 4 Mill. REVERSE: CANTEEN TOKEN / INDU with value in both Hindi and English.

Value: 1/2 Anna.
Round Token with Hole in the center.
Metal: Copper    Weight: 3.55 g.      Size: 20.5 mm

 

Value: 1 Anna.
Square Token with rounded edges with Hole in the center.
Metal: Brass    Weight:  g.      Size: ~  mm

No image available as yet. Will upload as soon as I get the token.

[asm]

India United Mills - Mill No.5.

Known tokens are in Copper (1/2 Anna) and Brass (1 Anna).

Inscription in Hindi: India United Mills Limited / Number 5 Mill. REVERSE: CANTEEN TOKEN / INDU with value in both Hindi and English.

Value: 1/2 Anna.
Round Token with Hole in the center.
Metal: Copper    Weight: 3.79 g.      Size: 20.5 mm



Value: 1 Anna.
Square Token with rounded edges with Hole in the center.
Metal: Brass    Weight:  g.      Size: ~  mm

No image available as yet. Will upload as soon as I get the token.

[asm]

India United Mills Dye Works.

No token in my collection as yet.

[asm]

India United Mills - Tokens common for all units (no mention of the mill number).

Inscription in Hindi: India United Mills with value in Hindi around central hole. REVERSE: CANTEEN TOKEN / INDU .

Value: 5 Paisa.
Square Token with rounded edges and Hole in the center.
Metal: Aluminum    Weight: 1.53 g.      Size: 20.5 mm




Value: 10 Paisa.
Pentagonal Token with Hole in the center.
Metal: Aluminum    Weight: 1.51 g.      Size: 22 mm

[asm]

....and here is the interesting History of these mills.

Over 150 years old, the India United Mills No 2 & 3 are located on what was once known as the "Chinchpoogly Oil Mills", a workshop for pressing vegetable oils. Even as owners and names changed, this lent it the name by which it remained known to mill workers and locals for over a century — 'Telachi Giran' (oil mill). Located near the suburban bungalow of Parsi merchant Nusserwanji Tata in Byculla, it caught the eye of Tata's enterprising son Jamshedji, who had then, just returned from a trip to England to study the new technology of spinning and weaving cotton with steam power.
With help from his father and a Bohra Muslim merchant Sheikh Adam, whom he had met during a visit to Manchester, Jamshedji Tata bought and expanded the site of this Oil Mill. In 1869, he inaugurated his first mill, named after the wife of the then Prince of Wales - later King Edward VII. It was called the "Alexandra Spinning & Weaving Mills". In less than three years, JN Tata sold the site, buildings and machinery for a healthy profit to a Bhatia Jain builder and speculator, Keshowji Naik, who was then busy erecting a factory on a neighbouring site in Kalachowky, which he called the "Kaiser-i-Hind" Mills after the King - Emperor. Naik's stint in the mill industry was short-lived. He went bankrupt in 1875 and was tried and convicted for fraud (falsifying accounts to his co-promoters) in 1878.
The winning bidder for the shuttered Alexandra Mills, in the insolvency court auction in 1879 was Elias David "ED" Sassoon, the son of the Jewish banker and merchant David Sassoon, whose wealthy family had fled Ottoman Baghdad in the 1850s, spreading across the emerging port cities of the East India Company in India and China, in search of new business being opened by British shipping, telegraph and railway networks.
Sometime in 1880, the refurbished and expanded mill was re-opened by his sons, now styled the "Alexandra and ED Sassoon Spinning and Weaving Mills". This Mill was to be later known as India United No. 2
After constructing an advanced chemical and mineral plant, the Turkey Red Dye Works on the waterfront at Dadar in 1890 (which was later on called India United No. 6), Sir Jacob built his eponymous flagship - Jacob Mills (which was later on called India United No. 1), which opened in Lalbaug in 1893. Rachel Mills (which was later on called India United No. 4), named for his wife, was launched in 1895. In the 1900s, he bought over and launched the Edward and Meyer Sassoon Mills in Lower Parel, named for his cousins. But Sir Jacob, who had transformed his father's trading firm into an industrial giant, had no children to inherit his intricately managed business and philanthropies in India.
Injured as a pilot during World War I, Sir Victor Sassoon, an aviation enthusiast and real estate baron who managed the family firm in Shanghai, was persuaded by his dying uncle to take the reins of his India operations. Restless and ambitious, by the mid-1920s Sir Victor had rationalised the firm's management, modernised and expanded plant and machinery and fully electrified the family mills from steam drive to electric traction.
As the fashion for royal titles and foreign names waned between the wars, Sir Victor centralised the six original mills named after his uncles, aunts and cousins and renamed them the "United Mills" numbered from No 1 to No.6.
In 1926, from his new head office 'ED Sassoon Building' (now known as NTC House), designed by renowned British architect George Wittet Sir Victor took the firm public, 60 years after his family had migrated to Bombay. However, the company (United Mills), as per the records of the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai, was incorporated on 19 February 1920.
While the worldwide Great Depression in 1929-30 drove his biggest competitors to bankruptcy — ED Sassoon & Co. led by Sir Victor took over or bought out ten additional mills in Bombay City, including Elphinstone Mills, David, Apollo Mills, Manchester Mills (later called India United No.5), and the India Woolen Mills.
As World War II raged across the Middle East and Asia, ED Sassoon was the city's largest private employer, with over 30,000 workers, managers and staff in their textile and woolen mills, dye works, offices and shops in Bombay City supplying military and civilian demand. At their peak, their 15 mills produced over 2,640,000 yards of cloth per day besides enormous amounts of yarn.
Recouping his losses in luxury hotels and real estate in Shanghai — which he had just lost to the Japanese Army invading China — Sir Victor finally sold off the family business at the end of WWII, and lived his final years in the Bahamas. He once said that "I gave up on India, and China gave up on me". In 1945, Messrs Aggarwal & Co. owners of Indu Fabrics, a firm of Marwari merchants, bought and renamed the company, India United, or "Indu" Mills.
While run profitably until the 1960s, the group of mills were nationalised by the National Textile Corporation (NTC) in 1974 when unfair government policies forced them to down shutters and the killer labour strike in Bombay mills in 1982 – 83 probably caused the demise of most mills. The vast heritage that stayed invisible to the public when the Mills were working has almost entirely disappeared from the city. Most of these enormous compounds have been converted into the offices, malls, banks and towers of a new global economy. These Mills of mid-town Mumbai, hidden from plain view behind massive compound walls, until the coming of flyovers and high-rises in the 2000's, were amongst the first factories of the global Industrial Revolution. A handful of Mumbai's most historic mills remain today and are managed by the Centre-owned National Textile Corporation (NTC).
The erstwhile India United Mills nos. 2-3 in Kalachowky are now being developed by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation as the city's newest and largest museum, a museum devoted to the history of textiles and industry. This will give most citizens of Mumbai their first view past the gates of one of the city's earliest cotton mills — and into the rich industrial heritage earlier only visible to the workers, staff and owners who built India's first modern industry in Mumbai. Sadly, NTC still has no clear plans for its 12 remaining mill compounds in space-starved Mumbai, including three other Sassoon-Indu mills. The group's flagship mill, known as Jacob Sassoon or India United Mills no. 1 was once the city's largest factory. Today, it is crumbling in full view of the Lalbaug Flyover, a silent monument to an earlier stage of technology which connected the city with the global economy, and laid the foundations India's industrialisation by the Tatas and Sassoons.

Amit

[krishna]

A very detailed story, thanks a lot for sharing!!!
Very sad, all the once mill workers are todays rickshaw drivers or odd jobs men

[Figleaf]

A great story, illuminating decades of history with a rich cast, from smart members of the Tata family via a fraudster and the jaw-dropping Sassoon family to faceless bunches of bureaucrats who at least thought of turning a piece of industrial history into a textile industry museum. It's worthy of a Bollywood film.

Sure, krishna. The lower-ranking workers lost their jobs (and access to the company canteen!) and for many of them, that was an extension of a life of grinding poverty. However, there is another angle to that part of the story. The textile industry requires lots of clean water and turns it into polluted water. It provides work, but the jobs are badly paid and they can be filthy or dangerous.

Though electrical machinery has brought great improvements in the quality of the work, the industry still needs low cost labour to compete. Textile is a good way to start industrialising, but in the longer run, it will not contribute much to development. The issue is therefore not people losing their job, but making people fit for other, better work. That is a challenge many governments are not up to.

Peter

[krishna]

Sure, krishna. The lower-ranking workers lost their jobs (and access to the company canteen!) and for many of them, that was an extension of a life of grinding poverty. However, there is another angle to that part of the story. The textile industry requires lots of clean water and turns it into polluted water. It provides work, but the jobs are badly paid and they can be filthy or dangerous.

Though electrical machinery has brought great improvements in the quality of the work, the industry still needs low cost labour to compete. Textile is a good way to start industrialising, but in the longer run, it will not contribute much to development. The issue is therefore not people losing their job, but making people fit for other, better work. That is a challenge many governments are not up to.

Peter

Agree a 100%
Most politicians do not have the vision to secure the future of their populace in the long term
Only narrow personal interests dominate the discourse as there is no accountability after the term has ended

Focus is only on doling out freebies, which get them elected at present, but make the future generations indebted

[asm]

Here is an interesting piece of information provided by a FaceBook 'friend' who had himself used these tokens and had resided in the mill premises.

India United Mills known as Indu Mill had 6 units in Mumbai. The Mills had their own canteen for workers.
There were 3 types of Token used.
* 1/2 Anna (3 paise) Token for a Cup of tea.
* 1 Anna ( 6 paise) Token for Vada, sev, chiwda and pav (bread)
* 6 Anna (36 paise) Token for Lunch.

The Brass tokens were used till 1975 which were then replaced by Aluminum Tokens which were in use till all the mills had closed in 1980's. The 1/2 Anna token was replaced by the 5 Paisa token and the 1 Anna token was replaced by the 10 Paisa token

The change over from Brass to Aluminum was done because the metal value of the Brass tokens exceeded their purchasing power and workers started to sell the tokens to scrap dealers to make a little money.

Amit

[Figleaf]

Highly interesting information on the use and value of the tokens. Some conclusions:

• Tea seems relatively expensive (or snacks relatively cheap). Was clean water available on the mill grounds as an alternative?
• ½ anna and 1 anna pieces could be used at the same time, so they do not necessarily represent a price increase.
• Lunch and snacks seem filling - depending on the portions - but short on vegetables and fruit. Was there a way to add those (e.g. edible plants and fruits growing along the roads, or small vegetable gardens at home?)
  
• Tokens for 6 annas must be hard to find. Perhaps only better paid staff used them?
• Decimalisation signified a hefty price hike. Pre-decimalisation, there were 16 annas in a rupee. To replace 1 anna by 5 pence is therefore a 40% price increase.

Your Fb contact is very valuable, as fewer and fewer people will still know about these times. If you don't mind, I would like to find out from him a) if the tokens were subsidised and b) if they were part of a larger (social) programme. Here are some sample questions:

• Were the prices of tea, snacks and lunch comparable with, higher than or lower than street prices off the mill grounds for a comparable amount of food or drink?
• Were the tokens given for free, e.g. when wages were paid or sold?
• If tokens were sold, were they priced at par (e.g. 1 anna money for a 1 anna token, below par (e.g. 20 tokens for a rupee) or above par.
• Were tokens given as a bonus, e.g. for overtime, good work, vigilance on security or a long time with the company?
• Was housing on the mill grounds a privilege or a duty?
• Did workers pay rent? If so, was mill housing cheap, expensive or about the same as housing outside the mill?
• Would workers have (compulsory) uniforms? If so, was clothing cheap, expensive or about the same as clothing outside the mill?
• Did the mill provide medical services free or for a fee? If so, were they cheap, expensive or about the same as medical services outside the mill?

Peter