Chinese Mill Workers who Attend Reading Classes It takes courage, does it not to work an eleven hour day—or fan eleven hour night—and then to use a scanty leisure to try to learn to read, and to reach out. after something vaguely richer and to-be-desired?
Yet that is what some Shanghai women who are employed in factor-1d mills have been doing now several years. Innate, Chinese people, is a respect for the written word. They desire both to write it, and to read it. They are prepared to pay the cost in time and fensrgy to do In four centres' now the Y. W.
A. has groups of women' employed in Inrge scale industry, who Jeome night by night for class work and for club activities. The group which has had the longest contin. nous existence is in the Model Village in Pootung—largely tobacco! women.
The newest centre, having been Jopened in 1929 is in Ferry Road, the midst of @ group of cotton mills, Two houses in a li constitute the "Centre," which is already be-Jcoming the place toward which the residents nearby come at night. Tt has to be "nearby." Even two oF three blocks was found to be too far for girls to venture out at night, three years ago, in Chapel. /"Roughs," men, thought it a humor rous pastime to jeer at them as they went, and invade them class.
"Cotton" women are a difficult group for whom to plan educational and club activities. Their "shifts" falternate—two weeks day shift: two Fweeks night shift. Their leisure therefore also alternates. They are evening students one week, and day students the next. But their own pleasure in the group companionship ax well as in their pursuits, is. real.
"Is there any real leadership Jamong these women themselves?" Will industrial women in China exhibit the same qualities which woman of similar occupations have done in the West—or will the group be always the prey of the "outsider" who desires to use it? The answer: to this question, so often holds the key to'some of the tions of the future. Chinese industrial women do possess latent pow-Jers of leadership and initiative. They show it as they plan the Jown activities and chair their own Jelass meetings. They lack large experience, of course, and the confidence which comes from practice.
The Y. W. C. A. in China been among the first of women' groups to recognize that large social Jchanges accompany the coming =f large scale industry and the employment of women therein. And realize too that for a woman to be Jaway from her home and children
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.