CHINESE LABOUR REVOLTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 185, 4 August 1923, Page 13

CHINESE LABOUR REVOLTS.

WIN MOST OF STRIKES. ° UNIONS ORGANISING RAPIDLY F t THREAT ACJAIXST WESTERN v INDUSTRY t i By DREW PF.ARSON.i * The organisation of labour union* iri ( China is awakening the slumbering giant i of the Far East. After some months of travel and study in China. I am con- , Vinced that 'the most signitieant thing in that great country it. not her civil wars, nor her bandit raid?, nor her , trouble with Japan, but tiie fact that Chinese labour unions have so grown , in number and in power that they ] have won ninety percent of their strikes ( for average wuge increases of twenty- } five per cent. an.l. finally, that they ( have shown China her two most powerful weapons: the strike and the boycott. ( One illustration, the Hongkong sea- , men's strike, will bear oul my point. 11 Last year 30.000 seamen, for the most part em ployed on British-owned ships at Hongkong, struck for higher wages. The shipowners cli<l everything in their power to break tlie ranks of the seamen'? union. The latter kept its men in line by threatening death- to the family of any striker vlio deserted to the shipowners. Xot a man left the union. The strike dragged on for over two months, and finally the seamen began to struggle tack to their homes in the interior, only to rind that the Hongkong authorities barred them from riding °on the train*. Nothing daunted, the seamen set out on foot. But when Ihev reached the 'boundary line .between the British leasehold of Kwantung and China proper, they were confronted by British troops, who shot them down as they tried to cross the 'border. That one act of violence lost the strike for the shipowners. Immediately, every cook, nurse, every house boy, every bell-hop, every baker. butcher and candlestick maker in all Hongkong struck. Th« issue had ceased to be one between the seamen and the owners, and had become a fight between British and Chinese. The British community, living as it did absolutely dependent upon native servants and industry, was paralysed, and in less than a week the seamen were granted every demand. SPREAD OF STRIKES. The Hongkong seamen's strike will go down in history as one of the most important events in recent Chinese history. By it the Chinese not only learned how to remedy their industrial ills, but how to expel the foreigner from, their country. Following tihifl strike, union organisation spread with feverish haste to all the larger cities on the coast, and up the rivers to the railroad and factory centres. A British steamboat captain on the Yangtze River told mc of a etrike caused 'by the accidental sinking of a Chinese junk by the backwash from hie own .boat. When he tied up at night, one thousand pounds damages were demanded of him, and his Jerew would not touch a rope, nor hie coolies unload a pound of cargo, nor the merchants sell him an ounce of food, nor anyone allow him a pint of drinking water, until he paid the money. An American steamboat captain sunk seven junks, and wai forced 'by the ettVke and boycott to pay a 'bill which almost cent l;s company into fcnkn|)tcy. When the Jnpanaee reftacd to evacuate Shantung, Chinese merchants not only refused to handle goods "Hade in Japan," but Chinese coolies refused to unload Japanese ships, co that Japan's trade with China —30 per cent of her total exports —was practically "ruined. Such is the international significance of China's new weapon. Locally, union organisation has included all classes of labour, from postmen to incense workers. In Shanghai over eixty unions were formed in the last six months, and out of fifty strikes only two, those of the riceha coolies end female silk workers, were lost. In South China, lalbour organisation has been especially rapid, so that there is hardly a trade that has not some form of union. The Chinese union register takes in irat only those trades familiar to the westerner, but euch eastern crafts ac pillow box makers, wood carriers, fire-cracker makers, bamboo craftsmen, joss-paper makers, tea pickers, and gold-leaf makers. Out of fifty strikes which occurred during the last nine months in Canton, only that of the potters was lost, while every other strike resulted in large wage increases, the hairdressers getting a sixty per cent rise. ADOPT SOVIET PROGRAMME. Organisation is eecond nature to the Chinese. For a century or more the K.o Ijou-Hui has held the mass of workers together in a loose "Brotherhood Association," which has now been trans- ] formed and divided up into ibona fide j tebour unions. These -were generally organised under the mask of promoting educational and social welfare, 'but immediately took up the battle-cry of increased wages and when their demands were unheeded, struck for them and generally won. For instance, the Pootung strike was really caused when a foreman dismissed a worker for smoking three times on the premises. But the entire ■factory struck out of sympathy and beforp. tile strike was a day old. it became an issue of wages and hours. The growth of unions in North China has been slow. Because according to the Provincial Constitution, the right of labour to strike or organise is denied. But under the leadership of Dr. Sun Vat Sen, the old Parliament, sitting at Canton, has made labour unious legal in South China. Recently a delegation of union leaders appeared before the Peking Parliament and formally requested certain industrial reforms. It may be significant to note in passing that these reforms were identical, word for word, and paragraph for paragraph, with the industrial law s of the Soviet, a cony of whieli I had secured while in Siberia. After the customary tea party and much waste of polite Chinese language, the labour delegates went home with as much accomplished as anyone had expected— absolutely nothing. However, the important point is 'that for the first time in Chinese history, labour united on a definite programme. CHINESE ACTRESSES STRIKE. The Peking Parliament has continued to do nothing, and meanwhile strikes of •■ill kinds and descriptions have continued to prosper. The Sing Song girli of Canton organised an Actresses" Union and staged a spectacular walkout, followed shortly after by a general strike of school teachers. Their complaint was the (Imp of Canton currency on the •xchange, giving their salaries just

eighty piT cent o< their ordinal pU£ troops surrounded the arsenal and flrett upon striking workers, the latter retaliating by setting fire to the explorn and causing a damage of over a million i pound*. On the Hankow-Canton iailroad. strikers threw them *elve ß across the rail., and over one hundred of them c were killed when the troops ran the train.* over their martyred bodies. Persuasion rather than violence Bowever ha* usually settled Chinese strikes. In a Shanghai carpenters' depute, the cmplovers granted the workers' demands on Condition that the tatter abandon their union, .loin the employer. WMelation, and work together peacefulh ( "grjSTin** conditions .ere re- ( vealed in the Piang«hiang coal mines, < when the miners struck agamst a ( twenty-four hour day «"1 >« ued "»* 1 ultimation-.-'-Most of our workmen , have an income of but twenty copper* a ] day. With this, if we buy rice, we aave , nothing left for clothes \\> have o be , content either with hunger or ""kedness . Even- day we live in dark holes like , animals, and are subject to request , We cannot stand this in- t humaTtreatment any longer. We want i to live like men." According to n Y.M.CA. *f**T>l ««Wn these workers were .hauled to the surface after the terrific strain of their twenty-four hour shift, they sal near the month of the shaft and blinked at , ■the sunlight, too apathetic to move into _ their huts/ Unfortunately they d.d . not. win all of their demand?. Industrial conditions in China are not such as to make any labour revolution dangeroufily imminent. China is a , nation of 'small farmers most ot whom i live at some distance from the targe industrial centres. But Chinese labour has -found itself." its. enmity ie especially directed against foreign exploitation and there is always the possibility that it may do ior China what it did for Russia", which, by the way, was also a country of farmers.