Hongkong, April 29.
From January 13 to March 5, inclusive, of this year, the enormous overseas trade between the Orient and the Occident, for which Hongkong is the major clearing house, was seriously crippled. The China coasting trade was all but suspended and the important local traffic between Hongkong and South China, French Indo-China, Siam, the Straits, the Dutch Indies and the Philippines was completely _paralyse. There is no maritime nation which has_ trade or hopes for trade with the Orient which did not feel at some time during these two months of trade disrupt tion at Hongkong a sharp reflex from the seaman's strike, which directly affected over half a. hundred shipping companies, which put over 10,000 Chinese seamen and firemen on the beach" in Canton, and which had sufficient indirect effect upon the interests of every Occidental doing business in the Orient to elicit from him more or less intelligent expressions of opinion upon the British colonial administration of Hongkong, the Canton Government and the hitherto unappraised labour movement within Cantonese-speaking coolie dom.
This expression of opinion of commercial men throughout the Orient did not cease with the close of the strike. Indeed the terms of settlement gave it fresh impetus and infused- casual careless criticism with a bitterness which grows rather than diminishes as a greater and greater perspective upon the events of the strike seem to reveal the fact that instead of solving a serious problem it has given birth to one. The persistence of Treaty Port gossip and comment upon the strike and its possible influence upon the future relations of Occidentals and Or-rentals on the China Coast is the apology for this article. The strike is no longer news, and no new information has been put at the writer's disposal which would be sufficient excuse for retelling the story of the strike for its own sake. But the opinion prevails that the strike was an event which will take an important place in the history of foreign relations with the Orient.
If this is true, the "why" and "how"? of it are going to be the subject of radical disagreement among historians, because opinion upon the "why? and "how" is already crystallizing on the very scene of action in widely different moulds and is being shaped in its various forms by both persistent misinformation and careless guesswork. During the past month, travelling down the Coast from port to port, casually discussing the strike with all classes of Chinese and foreigners, including the persons in authority throughout the movement both in Canton and Hongkong, the writer has at various times shared with every possible group every shade of opinion and prejudice. Recently he has been treated to the contemplation of quite a little unimpeachable documentary evidence. Let no one imagine, however, that the writer is prepared to pass final judgement for the benefit of the future historian. This article is designed only to indicate which are the vital points that are still at issue and to undermine some of the bitter opinion which is founded upon persistent misinformation.
Spontaneous or InspiRep?
All discussion of the "how" and "why" of\ the strike boils down to two major questions, or groups of questions. The first is: Was the strike spontaneous with the seamen or was it inspired from Canton? Was the cause economic or was it poli cally fomented and fostered as an act of reprise] upon Hongkong Government in return for real or imagined offences. against the Kuomintang administration in Kuangtung?
The second is: If the strike was politically inspired, did the Hong-ong Government deserve it? Had its official attitude towards that part of China with which Hongkong enjoys most intimate relations been so antagonistic that it elicited and merited a labour boycott, engineered solely as a demonstration of resentme, This second question is, in the sight of both Chinese and foreigners in the South, by all odds the more vital, and seems indeed to be the only question which Chinese officials or British merchants find it worth while to discuss when speculating upon the effect of the strike and its settlement upon future relations between the foreigner in China and the Chinese.
Chinese officials in Canton and labour leaders, replying to direct questions, insist that-the strike Was spontaneous with the seamen and that the causes and continued inspiration of it throughout were economic—a demand for more pay growing out of a real need. Foreign merchants and the Hongkong authorities see in the economic need, the existence of which they admit -with qualifications, an excuse for the strike only, as distinct from a cause, and assert with conviction that the cause and the inspiration were political throughout. The Chinese in Canton, when not answering the direct question as to the cause of the strike, indicate, by constantly referring to the objectionable attitude of Hongkong towards Canton and by expressing great satisfaction in the fact that the Hongkong Government was taken down a peg, that the foreigner is right in assigning a political cause to the whole. movement. The Chinese enemies of the Canton Government in the South make the flat statement that the whole strike was inspired and engineered by the Kuomintang. This is to be expected. Neutral Chinese, merchants, ex-officials and others, state with equal finality that Sun Yat-sen's following deliberately fomented and fostered the strike, but think that it was a good thing in that it shattered to some degree the "almighty" attitude of the Hongkong Government. In short, no one finds it worth while pretending that the sustaining cause of the strike was purely an economic need except the Kuomintang officials and labour Jeaders, and they only in answer to a direct' inquiry into the cause.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.