WAR WORK IN CHINA

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23300, 9 April 1941, Page 6

WAR WORK IN CHINA

Production in Small Factories

A writer in the “China Defence League Newsletter,the issue of February 15, 1941, which has ■ just arrived, describes the work being done in the small factories known as the Chinese Industrial Co-operatiyes. ’With Rewi Alley he had just completed a tour of inspection of the Chungking factories. He says: “In Chungking, as elsewhere, textiles are the chief co-operative industry. The depot master who acted as our guide would lead us through a maze of hillside paths—then we would, hear the click-clack of the shuttles on the type of wooden foot loom that is used in China—and gome lonely temple or farmhouse would turn out to be another factory. Many of the co-operatives are making towels. It is interesting to know that co-op towels just about monopolise the market in the war-time capital to-day. “On the main street of the city there is a cooperative store with many products on its shelves. - Chungking-woven stockings, cotton goods, towels. Furs from the Mohammedan co-operatives in Kansu." Good woollen cloth and rugs from other points in the north-west. Canned chicken, beef, fruits, and vegetables from Wanhsien down the river. Glassware and pottery, leatherware and metalware, soap and toothbrushes, glass gallons of alcohol and sulphuric acid—an encyclopedic array of commodities selling at prices that are, low for war time. The need for increasing domestic production screams at one from every poster on every hoarding in Chungking. All the newspapers are writing feverishly’ of plans to control fluctuating prices, and huge sums are set aside to create government stores of every type of goods in order to control the market.”