July 3.
Tine fact that we have got a brand new trade union of our own ought to make all good citizens of Shanghai straighten their backs and realize that our Model Settlement is in the front rank of the world's progress. Visitors to our city, too, must notice that the worship of the: great god Democracy, with the feet of iron wixed with miry clay, is carried on as assiduously here as in any go-ahead city of the West. Trade unions in England were the legitimate descendants of the old trade guilds and are the inheritors of an unbroken tradition that stretches back many hundreds of years. China hag also had her trade guilds for an unknown length of time and though this latest addition is the child of the West adopted by the Orient, it is certain that aeclimatization will present no difficulties to its growth or ultimate nationalization.
The early history of trade unions is a long story of repression. At their inception they were looked on with suspicion as being subversive of the social order and inimical to the wellbeing of the state. They have won legal recognition only after a long struggle which can searcely yet be regarded as having come townend. But while a certain section of the community of the "die-hard type is, in every land, opposed to any and every combination of labour, moderate opinion everywhere not only recognizes that trade unions have become an integral part of the social system but welcomes their existence as a valuable asset making for the progressive uplift of the working class. The trade union not only guards the legal right of the worker to struggle for a living wage, but it encourages habits of thrift and enacts provident benefits for its members which raise them a long way above that class of casual labour which depends on the day's work to provide the day's food. During the two years of depression which have succeeded to the hectic boom in trade gaused by the war, trade unions
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.