The present industrial unrest in China is part of a world-wide movement in industry. On my recent visit to a score of different countries I found 300 strikes a year in Japan, a serious political and industria] situation in India, the tramways of Egypt at a stand-atill, strikes in Italy, Germany, France and England and over 2,000 strikes a year over America. What is the cause of this industrial unrest? A labour leader in Shanghai states that "it lies in the general justice of wages and conditions in industry to-day. Labourers _in Shanghai," he states, "are working at least 10 hours a day, some 14 hours, and a few even 16 hours 2 day. As for boys there are many instances of wages of $3 to $5 per month being paid. At the present time the cost of living, per head per month, is $10. A wage scale must be drawn up which allows that sum per head in every family."
PROFITS AND THE PRICE, Many of the factories in China to-day are not paying in the present financial depression. But many of the Chinese and foreign factory owners made large profits of over 100 per cent. a year during and after the war. The following from the Maritime Customs Trade report for 1920 is typical of such a factory making over 100 per cent.
"The following is the wage bill per day: skilled labour, foremen, 35 to 60 cents; ordinary labour, men 30 cents to 50 conte; women, 20 cents to 30 cents; boys, aged about 15, 20 cents to 30 cents; girls, aged about 15, 10 cents to 20 cents; small boys aged about 10 years, 10 cents to 20 cents; small girls, aged about 10 years. 7 cents to 10 cents. The working hours are from 5.30 a.m. {o 5.30 p.m., and from 5.30 p.m. to 5.30 a.m respectively. No. meals are supplied by the ans Most of the cotton used ix produced locally, and the factory is able ce turn out about 7,000 piculs monthly of coarse yarn. It will be seen that the company is in an exceptionally favourable _posifion. With the raw product at their doors, an abundant and absurdly cheap labour supply to draw on, and no vexatious factory laws to observe. It is not surprising that their annual profits should have exceeded their total capital on at least three occasions.""
Were these yearly profits of over 100 per cent. at the cost of human life? Bishop McConnell after his recent trip through China wrote:—
"The situation in the silk mills is no better. The girls stood at their work through a 13-hour day. The steam in the atmosphere of the room was se dense that I had to take off my glasses in order to see. Outside was the severe cold of a China winter into which the girls had to pass when they had finished work. The wages for a 13-hour day were 20 cents. I asked the manager for the ago of a girl—pointing into the group at random. 'She is about eight years old,' he said, and then he beamed upon me with the comment, Isn't it fine that we have in China a system which will put wage-earning within the reach of little girls who would otherwise earn nothing?"
"Go through the cotton mills in Shanghai between three end four in the morning and you will find what another visitor recently did: Small boys 10 and 12 years of age, were working stripped to the waist. Little girls, even smaller than the. boys, eight or nine or ten perhaps, were standing between double rows of whizzing unguarded machinery, steadily but wearily feeding the machines: One mite, perhaps eight years old, was curled in an exhausted heap on the. cement floor sound asleep. At the end of a log row of roaring machines a woman sat, her head down on her arms, perilously near the unfenced machins at.which she has been working. At the end of another row an old woman, her black hair white with cotton fluff, sat bolt upright, fast asleep. Over in a corner, under a pile of cotton waste, a tiny baby was spending the night while his mother worked at a machine near by. And everywhere there was the unceasing roar of the machinery, the heat and humidity, and the cotton fluff filled the air. In one small hospital there were one day thin winter three children under 10 years old, The arm of one had been caught in an unfenced machine and was all but torn off. The leg of another was smashed from hip to ankle by the teeth of a machine. The third, a little girl, had been caught by the hair in her machine and her scalp torn off. No one of these accidents would have happened had tha machine been fitted with safety devices. Most of the accidents happen on the night shifts, between two and four in the morning.. The workers grow weary, heads drop with sleepiness, vigilance ts relaxed, but the unguarded machines go
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.