TATA SONS, LIMITED. This is an Indian house founded by the late Jamsetji N. Tata, a Parsi merchant and indus trial pioneer.
The conduct of these enterprises of national importance is vested in the hands of Messrs. Tata Sons Ltd., of Bombay, under the chairmanship of Sir D. J. Tata, and the combined capital of their undertakings is estimated at £50,000,000 providing employ ment for an industrial community of nearly a quarter of a mil lion people.
Perhaps one of the most prominent of the industrial concerns founded and managed by or associated with the firm of Messrs. Tata Sons Ltd. is the Tata Iron and Steel Co. Ltd. It took 20 years to realize this project of manufacturing iron and steel in India on western lines and on an extensive scale and to evolve a workable process of smelting India's iron ore. It cost nearly £14,500,000 to raise the works from the site of a veritable wil derness into a well ordered and up-to-date city, appropriately re-named after its great founder—Jamshedpur—the first and only steel city in India. The works have a capacity of nearly 800,000 tons of pig-iron and over 600,000 tons of finished steel per annum. Pig-iron, ferromanganese, rails, plates, and sheets, corrugated and galvanized sheets, agricultural implements, sul phate of ammonia and sulphuric acid are some of the principal manufactures, with associated companies manufacturing electric cables, wire products and tin plate.
This hydro-electric group consists of four companies—the Tata Hydro-Electric Power Supply Co. Ltd., the Andhra Valley Power Supply Co. Ltd., the Tata Power Co. Ltd., and the Kundley
Power Co. Ltd., the aggregate capital of which may be put at nearly £15,000,000. The equipment is planned to generate about 321,000 E.H.P. between the four companies, with the probability of an additional increase later on, to supply motive power to the factories, the tramways and the railway lines in Bombay and surburban extensions and to provide electricity for lighting and domestic purposes.
The contribution of the Tata house to the cotton mill industry, which made Bombay a great industrial centre commenced when the first of a group of mills—the Empress Mills—was inaugurated at Nagpur in 1877, which in time revolutionized the cotton in dustry in India. These mills even to-day challenge comparison with the best textile mills of Lancashire. Other mill companies have since been floated and Messrs. Tata Sons Ltd., have now under their charge, besides the Empress Mills, three others—the Svadeshi Mills, the Ahmedabad Advance Mills and the Tata Mills. The four mills have over 300,00o spindles and 7,500 looms, and bleaching, dyeing and finishing equipment. A capital of nearly £7,500,000 is involved in these mills under the man agement of Messrs. Tata Sons Ltd.
Besides the above, the activities of the Tata house extend to many other undertakings, such as collieries, cement factories, construction and building companies, insurance and trading com panies, and an oil mill as well as a large hotel. (K. P. M.)