The petitioners in each of these two cases are the proprietors of an industrial concern in Salem district engaged in the manufacture and sale of beedis. The manual labour of rolling beedis was done by persons to whom it should be convenient to refer as the beedi rollers. Between the proprietors and the beedi rollers intervened a set of persons known to the industry as “contractors”, but whom I shall refer to for the purposes of this judgment as intermediaries, a less controversial nomenclature.

Thousand beedis rolled constituted the unit of work on the basis of which a beedi roller was paid for his work. Who paid that amount and who was legally bound to pay are questions to which I shall advert later. Till October, 1956 the beedi roller was paid Rs. 1-6-0 for every unit of large beedis and Rs. 1-8-0 for every unit of beedis of small size rolled by him. The rates were increased to Rs. 1-14.-0 and Rs. 2-0-0 respectively in October, 1956. In July-August, 1957, the Government increased the excise duty on tobacco by 2 annas per pound. That was in due course reflected not in the price ultimately charged to the consumer, but in the remuneration paid to the beedi rollers which was cu