Oct. 25.
We listened the other evening to a discussion on the industrial unrest, at present, so pronounced in Shanghai, It was agreed that there were many causes for' our troubles, some of them unavoidable, and some for which we are partly responsible. One speaker asserted strongly that the high rent charged for dwelling houses is, far and away, the chief cause of discontent and the perpetual demand for higher wages with which employers. of labour have to deal, Tt i true that there is a virulent communistic agitation which stirs up and provokes the workers to make unreasonable demands, but the sting of the Propaganda lies in the fact that, workers carry, in the' exorbitant rents which they must pay for their houses, a burden heavier than they can bear, This paper has indicated that the debasement of the' copper currency, which has recently slumped to such an extent that its purchasing power: is only half of what it was not very long. ago, also, contributes largely to make the Jot of the poorest class of worker a particularly unhappy Renis, we know, are a burden difficult to carry. subject of the discussion was the cost of living to the workers and it was agreed that Chinese spend quite as large a proportion of their wages in rents as do their foreign fellow sufferers. And they get less value for their money. The recently published report of the Traffic Commission showed that, many Chinese put a temporary boarding their rooms at night, half way between the) floor and the ceiling. They thus double the space available for sleeping but reduce the amount of needed for respiration. This shows the straits to which) people are reduced for lack of) house room, for even the poorest would not choose to sleep iggledy like this, were it not a case of needs must when the devil drives. It is true that, most Chinese can sleep anywhere but it is equally true that such sleep is not rest; it has its inevitable reaction on the health and temper of those concerned:
The cause of the high rents in Shanghai is the limited amount) lof space at the disposal of those who wish to build. Land is extraordinarily valuable, building costs are higher than they) were and threaten to increase in the near future; in these circumstances it is vain to look for relief in the lowering of rents. The value of a house, like the value of any other; article, is the price it will bring in the market. And as long as houses bring the rent they present do their owners will xact all they can get—as would all do were we in their! shoes. The exceedingly high price of land, in and near the Settlement, is due to the limited area available for building pur-The Municipal Council took the only course that could possibly bring relief to rack-rented citizens when they laid lout roads outside the Settlement! limits and so increased the available building space. Street unions and other Chinese bodies thought they were doing their' country patriotic service when they opposed the opening these roads and brought building operations, to a great extent, to a standstill. They, doubtless honestly believed that they were curbing the aggression foreign capitalists. What they really succeeded in doing was in making available dwelling space the more crowded than i was and in laying a burden, heavier than they can bear, on their own nationals. A Chinese friend told us recently that in his neighbourhood, the rents of houses had been quadrupled in three years. The present policy of the bodies we have named benefits no one but the wealthy owners of houses already built and penalizes most heavily the poorer Chinese workers who must, perforce, live in over.
owded and insanitary bar racks, a prey to epidemics like the cholera which decimated their numbers last summer.
The Y.M: C.A. have recently rendered a good service to Shanghai in building a model block of workmen's houses in Pootung. These houses are built on a business basis. They re let at a cheap rate, but it is expected that they will repay the outlay on their construction and yield a moderate return in terest. We commend this!
"scheme to the attention of those who employ large numbers of workers. Capital invested in the provision of houses for the masses might not yield a large It is probable return but if it went some. way and there is practically no motor-ai
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.